Have you recently received spam from Silver Jangles (“Distinctive Designs for Discriminating Tastes”)? Maybe lots of them? I have received them in batches of three copies on each of three e-mail accounts on and off for the last ten days. Silver Jangles is a small company that sells jewelry for fund raisers. Given that the company’s phone number was prominently displayed in the message I gave them call figuring that they probably didn’t know what they were doing or alternatively what was being done for them. It was an interesting call and got me thinking …
A very pleasant lady answered and confirmed that they had indeed outsourced their email campaign and it was out of control. The service company is E Data Source and a quick googling indicates that they are widely recognized as a source of spam. The nice lady confirmed that they had received six complaints so far but — and this is the surprise — 30 positive responses! She told me that Silver Jangles is trying to stop the campaign and is sorry for any upset they may have caused. This is a very common tale: Small, naive about on-line marketing company looks for list for an email campaign, finds list broker, the list broker lies (you can always tell when they are lying because their lips are moving) saying it is a “narrowly targeted, double opt-in only” list, the price is right, the deal is done, the spam starts. Here’s the worrying thing: This isn’t the first company I’ve tracked down who chose the wrong e-mail “marketing” company and, in common with the majority, they have all received a few complaints but — this is the issue — they got more business than grief. The idea that spamming damages your brand appears to be becoming untrue! Perhaps consumers who have received a whole lot less spam than us geeks and never had to deal with spam on behalf of a huge user population simply have no problem with the spam they do get and, indeed, when it is interesting spam, have quite the opposite reaction! Could it be that spammers are on the way to winning the war? Will only the geeks remain outraged by spam?
