: Nothing like the smell of spam in the morning - coming to you through the
: "benevolent" acts of Akamai and Digex - sent to POC handles blatantly stolen
: from ARIN's whois database.
: Yo, Digex: this just reminds me how much your "sales team" sucked the last
: time around, when there was a DS3 contract up for grabs on an RFP.
: This spam certainly cuts you out of any future consideration for a while:
: You'll find yourself in good company with Savvis, I am sure.
Very sorry this happened. Marketing purchased a 'trial version' of
a list that apparently had ARIN-gleanings. Use of that list has been
suspended with all partners, and we are working on ways to make sure that
we can 'pattern match' any such similar crud from future lists. This is
the first of the lists that has been a problem (though we have in the
past had one or two salespeople who were quickly unconfused on individual
solicitations), and we intend to make sure it won't happen again.
If anyone has any heuristics for ensuring that lists don't have automated
new-domain or SWIP gleanings, I'd appreciate them; for now we'll just
search for hostmaster@, ipspace@, and other role-looking accounts.
How 'bout only sending marketing emails to email address that specifically
REQUEST to receive them?
Sending marketing email to addresses on any type of "purchased" list is,
by nature, unsolicited. I'm sure it's bulk. Which makes it look awfully
pink and meaty to me.
If anyone has any heuristics for ensuring that lists don't have automated
new-domain or SWIP gleanings, I'd appreciate them; for now we'll just
search for hostmaster@, ipspace@, and other role-looking accounts.
a heuristic that i would use would be:
please don't purchase "contact" lists from people.
please don't hire marketing folks who think that this is a good idea.
sales the old-fashioned way still works, you know. learn about people in
your market, get to know what they want, contact them individually when
you think you can make a sale.
since when did blind email campaigns to lists of people whose _origin you
can't even determine_ become a reasonable-sounding sales technique?
this isn't postcard-in-the-mailbox stuff, guys. and the people buying it
aren't likely to impulse-buy, anyhow. jeez.
We should probably take this off-list but I want to make one important
point.
By definition, you can't buy an opt-in list. If you buy it, and use it,
you're spamming.
You've always seemed to me to be an intelligent fellow, and you should be
able to figure out why my assertion is, in fact, true. If you're not sure,
I'll be happy to impart additional clue in your direction but it will be
offlist, since this is NANOG and not SPAM-L.
And if you need any tools with which to pass on said clue to Marketing,
feel free to accept my offer of help (but again, I think you're a pretty
smart guy and you should be able to thwack Marketing a couple times with
the cluebat on your own).
Hope this helps; have a great day, and good luck educating The Droids.
Bull. If I as an individual give permission for an organization I have
some sort of relationship with to have mail sent to me by third parties,
that's my perogative. What you are in fact saying is that I'm not allowed
to give that permission.
The problem is that the sleaze factor that permeates the space.
That's not the only problem. People sign other people up for those lists
as a revenge tactic; consequently, those lists are worse than worthless if
they don't include the IP & timestamp of when that person signed up (and
are still hazardous to use even with that info). One is far, far better
off collecting addresses through clear, legitimate opt-in methods...
> Bull. If I as an individual give permission for an organization I have
> some sort of relationship with to have mail sent to me by third parties,
> that's my perogative. What you are in fact saying is that I'm not allowed
> to give that permission.
>
> The problem is that the sleaze factor that permeates the space.
That's not the only problem. People sign other people up for those lists
as a revenge tactic; consequently, those lists are worse than worthless if
they don't include the IP & timestamp of when that person signed up (and
are still hazardous to use even with that info). One is far, far better
off collecting addresses through clear, legitimate opt-in methods...
Yes. That was, more or less, the point I was making, though I did a very
BAD job of making it.
More to the point - plenty of marketers have twisted the meaning of
OPT-IN. Wide misuse of that phrase led me to say what I said, but I didn't
take into account the fact many people subsequently reminded me of: it
*is* common to have a merchant ask if it's ok to give your contact info to
other companies. So, I misspoke. All of the people who took me to task
were correct. I'll have to be a little more careful of what I say in the
future.
We should probably take this off-list but I want to make one important
point.
By definition, you can't buy an opt-in list. If you buy it, and use it,
you're spamming.
I would argue the point there - not that I do *any* marketing, but I know a
few online services (bigfoot, a few other sites) where one of the conditions
of usage is that you accept advertising material from them and their "chosen
partners" ie anyone they can sell advertising space to. Such lists could be
considered Opt In (as each recipient has made a decision to accept UCM in
return for services) but each should be clearly marked to show it *is* part
of that program, lest it be mistaken for true UCM (which would also be a
good way to distinguish such lists).
