Please Support Our Spam

Question: when is spam not spam?

If you ask Recruiter Daily, they’ll tell you it’s when you’ve been notified by them that they will be sending it to you.

If you ask JobX, they’ll tell you it’s when you’ve signed up to receive their “newsletter” and therefore are obligated to receive it FOREVER, despite the fact that you’ve unsubscribed.

Both of these answers are incorrect. Let me extrapolate.

Last week, Recruiter Daily informed me that from now on, because I subscribe to their news, I will “occasionally” be receiving advertising from their advertisers. Well, thanks there, kind of you to tell me. But how does this sort of softening change matters in any way? Recruiter Daily; hear this. I subscribe to receive your updates, not advertising from your sponsors. Whatever the rationale for your decision to share your mailing list with your advertisers, and however politely you request that I read their propaganda, what you are doing surely falls under the description of spam:

It’s illegal to spam (Spam Act 2003). So don’t.

Next: JobX. And I won’t be prettying this up with humorous metaphors about stalking ex-lovers (JobX – I’m just not that into you). I’m gonna tell it straight. This is a point of online etiquette, as well as a principle of law. As my regular readers know, I have had a hard time trying to escape unwanted mail from JobX. Despite my attempts to dodge their steady flow of advertising into my inbox, and my having written about this already, yet another piece of garbage advertising from these persistent junk mailers crossed my desk late last week. Uuuuuuuuuurghhh (this is the sound of a grown man chucking a hissyfit).

I respect clever marketing. I respect building relationships with clients. I do not respect spammers. Spam is unimaginative, cheeky and illegal. It shows a disrespect for the intelligence of your client base – and it also demonstrates a very lean understanding of marketing on the net.