When a self-titled “award winning entrepreneur” sends you unsolicited marketing email (otherwise known as spam), one has to assume that none of those awards were for e-marketing. If you’re trying the electronic equivalent of a mail shot, you really need to be sure that the distribution list you use contains well-qualified addresses of people who have actually subscribed, or registered an interest, in these communications…and those sorts of list cost money!
Today I received one such unsolicited email from someone called Fiona Hudson-Kelly. In this spam, she describes herself as an “award winning entrepreneur” offering to train folks on modern marketing tools, including email campaigns. Naturally, this spam includes an “unsubscribe” link, despite never having subscribed. I know this because (a) I never subscribe to any such list and (b) the address I received it on wouldn’t be used for any such purpose. In other words, it was a spammers list of trawled email addresses.
Here’s an excerpt…
The internet has changed the way in which we reach clients, have you brought your marketing techniques up to date to make the most of these new opportunities? You can now send out an e-mail campaign and watch to see who opens your e-mails and who visits xxx web site, you can then use other marketing methods to reach these people including telemarketing which is very targeted or direct mail to those who have shown an interest.
Oh, the irony! An example of how not to conduct an e-mail campaign right there – for free! Their website, at the time of writing, was broken and a google for their name pulls up a load of self-referential hits but little from any 3rd party, aside from a couple of other folks pointing out the foot-in-mouth nature of spamming folks while claiming to be in a position to train budding entrepreneurs on e-marketing! Her twitter and LinkedIn pages are also incongruously light for someone who so blatantly lauds their own status.
The lesson is simple. DO NOT SPAM POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS! Nothing damages your credibility more. If you want to drum up a business training junior entrepreneurs or consulting on small businesses, then do it properly with a well-constructed site and appropriate links/materials in electronic and paper press. (Google Chris Cardell for an example of someone who does a much better job of getting people to opt-in, although getting off his mailing list seems to be nigh on impossible).
I’m fed up with this Fiona Hudson-Kelly SPAM too. It started about the beginning of August 2010 and I get spammed every few days.
Putting her om my mail server black list for perpetual spammers is a bit extreme and normally reserved for the worst domain offenders but I fear it has come to that. Fiona Hudson-Kelly has the worst business model I have ever encountered. She clearly doesn’t have the first clue about effective marketing nor do the fools that operate her SPAM SITE. Completely clueless and some of the worst SPAM MARKETING I have ever seen in 11 years of running an e-commerce store.
I’v just attended one of Fiona’s marketing workhsops and I have to say I thought she was absolutley excellent, very professional and knowledgeable. What I dont get is this culture of bad mouthing people using the internet when you could just ask her to remove you from her mailing list.
Unsolicited marketing phone calls are considered a nuisance and the reported reaction to this problem combined with the fact that we have a telephone preference service to try and stem them (albeit not very successfully) exemplifies just how frustrating and unacceptable this nuisance is. It’s the same for cold-callers on the doorstep. Email spammers are no different – not in the least.
It is absolutely an act of ignorant and inconsiderate selfishness to place the burden of managing unsolicited nuisance marketing on individuals who are involuntarily targeted. It is wrong to expect the recipients to refine an unsolicited spammers mailing list by requesting to be removed! Furthermore, the vast majority of spam mails contain “remove me” links which serve no other purpose than to verify the email address as a spam target. Perhaps you also think we should take even more time to research each spammer to judge whether they would be likely to honour our request to shut the hell up?
Legitimately frustrated people are going to complain – and when someone makes the ironic faux pas of claiming to be an e-marketing expert via a spam shot, frankly they deserve to be bad-mouthed…and an effective complaint vector would be online opinion (the “internet” or www is not just for parochial marketing purposes, my dear).
Finally, you would claim she was excellent as she’s an associate of yours – you both have “@thetrainingpod” email addresses and appear linked together in your efforts as revealed in a trivial google search. Your disingenuously worded opening sentence makes the subtle but, I suspect, deliberate inference that you were a non-biased attendee. Poor form, sir, very poor form indeed.