Ethics — The Envelope Please!

A Note about Ethics-the Envelope, Please …
March 16, 2009

How
Do We Communicate in 2009?

About a month ago, I sent out a note asking for your opinion
about something. That request is copied below.

And you responded . . . in numbers that I haven’t seen,
percentage-wise, in quite a few years. Well over one percent
of you weighed in. That may not sound like much,
but I remember the days when people would share their
opinions a lot more freely. Nowadays, far more of us ignore
e-mails than open them, so this strikes me as a sign that I
hit a button with my question last month.

Here’s the original:

=====================BEGIN

An interesting conundrum:

You receive a piece of e-mail. It’s from someone you’ve
never heard of. It’s blatant marketing/sales stuff. No
pretence about anything else, no content that you (with any
luck) find at least a little bit useful in the hopes that
you are encouraged to stay in touch. Just a sales pitch. No
opt-out link on the e-mail, even.

And then you notice that your e-mail address is in the “TO:”
line, along with that of several dozen, or hundred, or
thousand others. You can see them all. They can all see you.

You “respond to all”. You express your opinion about getting
the email in this way. The fact that it was spam? No big
deal. The fact that your e-mail address has been revealed to
all those other people? Sloppy, unprofessional, and opening
you up to inclusion on that many more lists.

A couple of people respond back, negatively. You’re accused
of being as bad as the person who sent out the original
letter. It’s only a couple, so you presume those were his
real-world friends trying to make an example of you for
having the moxy to call him out publicly.

You then do exactly what you were thinking was going to
happen to you: you include your new peers on your own
mailing list, and you send notes
like this one.

And you hear from the same couple of people. They are angry
and indignant. They demand you remove them from your mailing
list. They could have removed themselves by using the
“unsubscribe link” clearly visible in the email. You don’t
lecture them, and you don’t ignore their wishes; you remove
them.

The Big Question:

HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING WRONG?

I’m interested in your answer, and

if you have an opinion I hope you’ll share it with me.

The business world has changed. Heck, the entire
world has changed. Find me a parent of a child between the
ages of 11 and 19 and I guarantee they’ll tell you how they
really, really, really just don’t understand this new world
with texting instead of talking, multiple simultaneous IM
sessions, and “C U L8R”s
.

So is being opportunistic by making new contacts the way I
described above cool? Or is it crossing a line. Or lines?

You may hit “delete” now.

=====================END

We haven’t done any kind of statistical analysis of your
answers, and frankly don’t believe that one would be
meaningful. It’s called a ‘self-selecting sample’, and even
if we had collected data from many millions of respondents
instead of asking a few thousand there’s a real question
about whether the stats would mean anything.

Instead, I offer a few choice responses. And I encourage you
to both think about what these say, and what you might
learn:

Krishnakumar V. wrote: A very interesting question, Jeff :-). I
would consider any mail without an unsubscribe option as
spam. Also, mailing to harvested mail ID’s is spam — when
you haven’t had even a single electronic touch-point with
the recipients of your mail. On the other hand, if you are mailing your first level
contacts in linked in or another social network (with clear
unsubscribe instructions) about YOUR interests, I think
that’s perfectly legitimate. I would consider being in your
network an “electronic touchpoint”.

Shawn S. wrote:

I’m afraid, I fall into that hole myself
Jeff and am trying to learn new ways of communicating
properly. I am sure I have inadvertently “spammed” some
folks and now have purchased a program to hopefully avoid
that. I want to be respectful of people’s time and
interest…as I’d like them to be respectful of mine. Frank R. wrote: Generally, I don’t think it’s cool to
market to people that you don’t have any other connection
to. I guess my hierarchy of coolness :) is: — If you have never had any contact with the individual in
any way, it’s inappropriate.

- If you have had some contact — i.e. perhaps someone
expressing interest or asking a question — maybe then

it Is ok to add them to a mailing list automatically, as
long as each communication always has a clear link to
unsubscribing.

I’m definitely interested in this because — I have sort of
broken my own rules on this recently.

I’m also a musician. When I recently recovered from a bad
leg break and got myself back to gigging,

I wanted to put a mailing list together. Normally, I viewed
spamming other people about music to be — not so cool.

But, this time, I decided I’d just collect up everyone in my
personal address book — all kinds of music and non-music

contacts over the years — and mail them directly asking if
they wanted to be on my mailing list or not.

I left it that if they wanted off, they should just ask, and
I’d remove them. The default would be — they’re on the
list.

It’s not vitamin, male-enhancement, and other crap spam I
get nailed with daily, but still, at the end of the day — it

is — unsolicited marketing. and finally (and with the most feeling, I think)
Kevin H. wrote:

Yes, one would be as bad as the spammer,
generally. However, I have done exactly that. Emailed everyone on a
local spammer’s list. I did it to humiliate them in the
local business community and because I was still on their
lists after 4 unsubscription requests. I did it to cease
their incessant spams from being rewarding to them.But ironic, isn’t it…that we could fight spam with
spam…. It is sort of Orwellian or Bush-ian.So, I explained to their whole list how they came about
being on the list, as I know where this email address was
harvested from. Many were harvested from my business association which by
the way has a no-spam policy. I was affiliated with many on
the list. The spammer used the list — but didn’t even join
the association.

I got four thank you’s from associates and strangers. I
served a need for all of us.

But if I continued spamming them…well, I guess “spamming”
says it all…

I am very forgiving, but when complete strangers, including
LI and Facebook Network Marketers who barge into my life
with “opportunities,” completely uninvited, I am ruthless.
My email account or social networking account is for me to
build relationships that may or may not turn into business,
not a place where I go to see if yet another network
marketer wants to sell me on their opportunity to start a
business — I mean opportunity to be a Ponzi scheme
salesperson.

[uh oh — tangent alert!]

I am no more forgiving when someone barges into my life than
I would be to a salesman putting his foot in my door. Our
online activites are for us, and we should have zero
tolerance to persons barging into our lives to push their
agendas. Oh, my favorite part: Lying on the LI form that we
already have a business association. Yea. Lying makes me
want to do business with them. Typical network marketing — I
remember being in big meetings where they were told a little
deception to get people into their plans was good for the
prospect and should be done.

So, if I sent out an anti-spam newsletter to these people, I
would be spamming them. The one-time effort is something I
feel needed to be done for myself, the list, and to
effectively communicate to the spammer, and to publicly
shame them after multiple private attempts to resolve the
issue.

I was also on a local list several years ago for musicians,
and someone sent out an ad for a guitar or something. I
re-spammed them and got two rebukes from people. I emailed a
local person back directly after they sent everyone they met
at networking events an ad. That also was grey area, as he
had made a contact, but I personally consider it wrong.

Also wrong is when people just put you on their freaking
mail lists just because you met at a networking event.
AAAAAARGH.

We need to stop annoyance marketing.

HERE’S MY FOLLOWUP QUESTION:

Are we now a kinder and gentler society than existed not so
long ago (the positive spin), or has the amazing power that
the Internet conveys turned us into a bunch of whiners (yep,
that one’s pretty darned negative)?

I’m leaning toward the positive. And I hope you do the same.
And act acccordingly.

Let me know what you think . . .

Thanks, Jeff Yablon President & CEO
PC-VIP Inc./Virtual
VIP