Trick a Journalist — The next “innovation” in email marketing

I’m sick of how marketing is being done today. Automate scraping leads, automate nagging them with email, automate some series of actions to get them to succumb to your pitch.

My inbox is full of people sending me “Did you get my email? You didn’t reply. Were you eaten by a shark?” Rarely though are they real people anymore.

The worst examples are from companies I already do business with sending me umpteen emails to become their customer. “Hey Nate saw you run a business, you should use us.” I already do. Well, now I’m reconsidering.

It’s bots all the way down.

This awful form of communication also reaches people trying to get more press. If they can just email more journalists over and over and over again.

Check this terrible example out.

https://www.trickajournalist.com/

Trick A Journalist!? A stalking AI bot. Journalists treated as suckers. As prey.

Journalists at major business news sites wrote glowing reviews about our crypto startup. You’ve probably even read about us, and yet we didn’t even have an idea. :) Suckers. — Startup Hustler

I’ve got a secret though…

Trick A Journalist is a site I made.

I even took out a few ads on places like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn for this awful product. And people are signing up for it. :( I was equally surprised Facebook, Google and LinkedIn even approved of the ad, but that’s another story.

Doesn’t even mince words. “Let’s get you more suckers.” Approved.

So I made Trick A Journalist as satire on how bad marketing has gotten. But I also made it for a much more important reason.

It’s a Bad Marketing Honeypot. The people signing up for this, and unfortunately there’s quite a few, are banned from using Highrise.

Anyone who signs up for this isn’t going to be a customer of ours. They’re fired. Done. There’s plenty of great customers, we don’t need this other scumbag business.

Highrise contains tools like email integrations and bulk email, but I don’t want them to be used for purposes like Trick A Journalist.

I know plenty of other CRMs and email tools would be happy to have their business. I’ve got plenty of their emails sitting right here.

P.S. You should follow me on YouTube: youtube.com/nathankontny where I share more about how we run a business, do product design, market ourselves, and just get through life. And if you need a zero-learning-curve system to help authentically create and strengthen relationships with people, you really should try Highrise.