CrowdSpring Spam - Fresh and Tasty
08 Aug 2008 | Filed Under: Crankypants + Social Networks
Luckily I am short on sleep, low on health and about a month behind everything I need to do, so I don’t have a lot of spare time to spend bitching. So I’ll just get straight to the point of what’s got my panties in a wad this evening.
I got an email tonight from Angeline Vuong at CrowdSpring. It was also to Angeline Vuong at CrowdSpring; it was a mass email that read thusly:
Hi there,
I’m Angeline, crowdSPRING’s new Community Manager. I saw you used Twitter and wanted to just say hello. If we’re not friends yet, feel free to follow us at http://www.twitter.com/crowdspring. We love to keep in touch with our creatives and buyers..I post lots of interesting / informative blog links, promote designers, and give hints at really cool upcoming projects of interest. Hope to see you on the site. Feel free to say hi!
Best,
Angeline
My response to this was “feel free to kiss my ass” but my email was slightly more polite than that. Some pertinent facts:
- I am in CrowdSpring’s database, in so far as I have a working login there. I have never used the service, never posted a project, never bid on a project, never posted in the forums, never filled out any profile information there. I am not “in touch” with CrowdSpring in any sense of the word, nor am I any kind of community member.
- To the best of my knowledge, I have not at any point provided CrowdSpring with my Twitter details. Their privacy policy doesn’t say they collect that data, either.
- Their privacy policy does say that they may tell me about “targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your specific preferences” - and my specific preferences are set to No way, Jose. Seriously, that’s what the check box option says. (The internet, it is killing me with these hipster kids…)
OK, so according to Sabrina Dent’s Dictionary of Bitch, the above email qualifies as a tasty processed ham product nestled in white bread and lovingly coated with mayonnaise. In other words, it’s spam. But what really irritates me is that it’s not just spam; it’s really crappy spam.
- When you mass email people you do not know, it’s really preferable to attempt to disguise this fact by, oh let’s say… actually sending the email to my actual address, using my actual name.
- Angeline does not “just want to say hello,” as she claims in the second sentence; she wants me to follow her on Twitter. Presumably so I can follow her “interesting / informative” content, like uh, trolling for new members.
- To underscore how completely impersonal and outcome driven this email is, the “if we’re not friends yet, feel free to follow…” line clears that up immediately.
So basically, someone who doesn’t know me from Eve has abused my personal data to spam me with a solicitation to join her (it? them?) on a social network. Despite the social and conversational nature of the network, the communication invitation is completely top-down, and the message being sent here basically boils down to “Follow me, I’m COOL!” I had to double-check this wasn’t a MySpace invite for a minute there.
Seriously, people. It’s called conversational marketing for a reason. It’s called social media for a reason.
Ross Kimbarovsky says:
Hi Sabrina,
I am sorry.
The last thing we want to do is offend. Anyone.
We’re not too proud to admit when we’ve made a mistake. We’re a young company (launched May 2008) and are experimenting with many new marketing tools (Twitter among them). We talk every single day about the risks of being on the bleeding edge, and the risks of not trying. In fact, I recently blogged about the fear of failure. Sometimes, as it appears happened with you, our message isn’t as crystal clear as we intended and isn’t received in the well-intentioned manner that we meant to communicate it.
I really do appreciate that you took the time to write. We certainly want to provide Angeline with the right tools to do her job - and I assure you that despite this hiccup - she is absolutely first-rate at it. I’ve managed many many people in my life and while I’ve met many very capable people, there are very few whom I’d blindly take with me to another company (not knowing what I or that company would be doing). Angeline is one of those few. And I’ve known her for only 3 weeks (she joined us mid-July).
We clearly must do better when swimming in unmapped waters. And we will. We will continue to try new things, and once in a while, we’ll find ourselves lost or lectured. As much as we want to avoid them, mistakes help us to learn and to get better. They help us to better understand our community and how to talk to the rest of the world. They help us to remember that a few sentences in an email might be interpreted differently by someone from America, Italy, France, or Ireland. And in this example - all of them may well have had the same reaction you did. And they help us to remember that the recipients of our communications are real people.
I hope that Sabrina’s Dictionary of Bitch won’t be necessary to interpret this simple apology.
We didn’t do a good job today. We’ll work much harder tomorrow to make sure we do.
Your beautiful boxer forgave people for mistreating him. I hope you’ll forgive us.
Best,
Ross
Friday, 8 August, 2008, 3:40 am–
Ross E. Kimbarovsky
co-Founder
http://www.crowdspring.com
Sabrina Dent says:
Thanks for taking the time to post a response here, Ross. It’s always nice to be heard. I am still deeply interested in how my email address in your database became tied to my Twitter account.
I take my online privacy as seriously as I imagine you take yours. If I supplied you with my Twitter details on your site, that’s fine and just leaves us with the issue of my opt out contact preference being ignored. Oh, and the issue of there in fact being no opt out mechanism at the bottom the email - always a bad move.
If I didn’t supply my Twitter details and you guys are essentially harvesting them for mass marketing purposes, then I don’t even know what to tell you except that behaviour is so far beyond the pale I’m not even sure I’d know what to say.
You seem like a nice guy and I sincerely want you to be able to tell me that Twitter harvesting and privacy policy violations are not going on in your company. Really, really a lot.
Friday, 8 August, 2008, 4:33 ammartin says:
But Ross - these aren’t unmapped waters. The ships and ports may be new, but the waters are well charted.
First off, any direct marketer worth their salt should know the boundaries - legal and ethical - of data protection.
Secondly, if an online marketer hasn’t read, memorised and internalised all the principles of Permission Marketing, then they’d be someone I’d blindly not take with me to another company, knowing exactly what I or that company would be doing.
Thirdly, anyone who sends such an inept spam should be shot on the spot. Even spammers know not to send one mail with multiple BCC recipients. If your copy is trying to be a personal message from sender to recipient “I saw you were a Twitter user…” then you send many single mails, each individually addressed, with personalisation in the copy “Hi Sabrina, I saw you were a Twitter user…” It’s really not that hard to do.
Friday, 8 August, 2008, 12:09 pmDeborah says:
Your beautiful boxer forgave people for mistreating him. I hope you’ll forgive us.
Seriously??? What does one even say to that? Didn’t even get the sex right. *SIGH*
Friday, 8 August, 2008, 12:30 pmJennifer says:
What the heck is the beautiful boxer bit?
Monday, 11 August, 2008, 9:58 pmSabrina Dent says:
Oh, you know, Ross is reaching out to find common ground and tug at my heart strings. Common ground is a great conflict diffusion technique. Like unsolicited email, however, it needs to be applied with artfully and with a bit of tact…
And for the record, my dog hasn’t forgiven anyone for beating, kicking and burning her. Nor, frankly, should she. She’s terrified. I, on the other hand, am merely furious. Dragging in a severely abused animal in attempt to take cover for sending spam is… I don’t even know what that is beyond very bad judgement.
Monday, 11 August, 2008, 10:10 pmvicki says:
I have to say Sabrina, I really dont blame you - what the heck was all that about? Especially the boxer bit, like why…
Working for an “internet company” as I do and one that sends out regular emails to our users there is just no excuse for that mail… and to not include opt out instructions - ouch!
Tuesday, 12 August, 2008, 12:39 pm