worst practices
If you ask, you must listen
About once a week, I get the same mailing offering me a credit card that earns miles in Continental’s frequent flyer program. It comes from Chase, and it has the Continental OnePass logo emblazoned on the envelope, with a note that says “IMPORTANT - Do Not Discard.” I immediately open them and shred the material [...]
Steve Rubel on marketing pollution
Steve Rubel wrote last week about how bad marketing pollutes the social environment, calling it an all too convenient truth:
However, it’s not just the environment that is endangered by toxins. The atmosphere we breathe online is too is being threatened by pollution - from marketers. The all too convenient truth is that it’s very easy [...]
Knowing what’s in it for me…
I was recently asked to review a marketing plan that an outside firm had put together for a potential client. While I didn’t agree with everything in it, the folks who put it together were clearly professional who knew a lot about marketing. If I had to grade the plan, I’d give it a B [...]
This is why we can’t have nice things
The Washington Post wrote about spam text messages sent to mobile phones last week:
Text messages are the latest tool for advertisers and scammers to target consumers. But unlike junk e-mail that can be deleted with the click of a button, text-message spam costs money for the person who receives it and chips away at the [...]
Sirius Radio’s Department of Web Prevention
Your web site is a place for your customers to do things. This is useful for them and cost-effective for you.
I am cancelling my Sirius satellite radio service. There’s nothing wrong with it; I just don’t listen to it. I used to listen at home, but with so many options like internet radio and podcasts [...]
Rediscovering Telespam
I recently got a new home phone number. I moved all of my services (phone, internet, TV) over to the cable company for a package deal at a good price. I don’t really use the land line much but I’m not willing to cut the cord; it allows my alarm system to call for help [...]
Comcast’s Direct Mail Protection Racket
Targeting direct mail is important, because you don’t want to spend money sending direct mail to people who aren’t going to read it or respond. Cable/telecom giant Comcast apparently hasn’t gotten that message; apparently they are so intent on sending direct marketing mail to all their customers that they’re charging people $2 to stop receiving [...]
They’re back! It’s Yellow Page season.
Since Internet usage still is not ubiquitous, I will concede that advertising in the Yellow Pages and/or the Yellow Book may still be worthwhile for some companies, under some circumstances.
But does that make it worthwhile for them to distribute so many of these books? Walk around my neighborhood for weeks after these tomes have been [...]
Web Sites from Hell: Verizon
If a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes a video is worth ten thousand. Have a look at Josh Hallett’s screencast of a trip to the Verizon web site to perform the incredibly complex task of finding out what a phone line costs.
I’ll spoil the ending: he never does find out. Verizon, like so [...]
Stuck on Facebook
Got a Facebook profile? Well, if you decide you want to get rid of it, good luck: the New York Times reports that Facebook makes it very, very difficult to ever remove your information from the site:
Facebookâs Web site does not inform departing users that they must delete information from their account in order to [...]
