Writer’s block is something that exists and that I sometime experience. That happened to me yesterday and it is funny to note how I was saved by an email.
The email I got yesterday was spam. The content of the spamming manager who sent the email was about registering for an event. He/she did not know it got to the wrong person’s Inbox…mine.
Therefore I decided to blog about it.
Now there are few things that are wrong with this kind of emails and spamming managers sending them. I’ve identified a few and please comment if you feel there are more it would be of great use for most of us.
– Permission
I know I am a bit repetitive with this but this email confirms that in this case there will never be enough repetition. Seth Godin wrote about Permission in 1999 and it has been cited in Marketing books ever since. Now the spamming manager simply did not read a Marketing book in the last 10 years, or worst she/he read it and thought that it would have been great to do the opposite. I tend to read more than 100 blog posts per day plus two online newspapers. I love to be active in things that I like. Obviously this event wasn’t among the happenings I was interested in. I heard about it and ignored it. Why do you feel that sneaking into my email would have changed my idea?
The fact that you can send instantly 2 million emails to 2 million people made the spamming manager paranoid. By cutting costs of sending brochures she/he thought that now she/he was able to convince the whole world to come to the event. I think that you should be very careful when you engage in such a megalomaniac activity. A lot of people (like me) will perceive the email as an interruption to their daily routine. An unwanted piece of information about an event the I might have liked made me perceive the whole thing as crappy, badly organized, invasive, arrogant and so forth. Spend your money on social media next time to promote and maybe you’ll engage in some useful conversation and beware of using email just to cut costs.
– Sponsors
The bulleted list that I’ve erased is a long lists of participants, sponsors included. I would be so angry with the spamming manager if I were a sponsor. As an interrupted professional who has just seen his Inbox violated I will now perceive negatively any person, organization, company associated with the spamming manager who sent this email. I think I would withdraw from the event immediately.
– Price #1
I don’t want to go too much in depth analyzing the content of the email as I think that in this case the way it was proposed was inappropriate. Nonetheless, I should emphasize that the spamming manager proposed me a discount of 150$. Early birds are great tools but proposing such a large discount does not help in the perception of the overall quality of the event.
– Price #2
Has it occurred to you that there is a new concept of conferences called BarCamps where people set up the whole conference, invite important speakers, collect the participation of huge sponsors and keep everything free and accessible? I think the invasion of my Inbox is telling me that this event is a thing of the past.
– Location
The event is in New York City. I am in Italy and unless you pay me the trip it is highly unlikely that I will travel to NYC just to attend.
– Content
I hid the content of the conference on the snapshot, but trust me it was completely unrelated to my interests.
This whole accident tell us a great story.
– Watch out who you send communication about your next event
– Ask for permission
– Inform, do not try to persuade with old style tricks
– Integrate the open approach as much as possible
– Be an event manager not a spamming manager
