
Stop lying to me, email marketers - bmpafa
https://medium.com/@brandon_74967/when-marketers-lie-3ad6d6b38c7f
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TallGuyShort
I've had a couple of serious offenders like this: way too many repeated
emails, clearly automated but also obviously trying to deceive in that regard.
In a couple of fun cases, they have used the names of actual, important people
at the company as the sender - I guess to seal the deal and make me feel like
this is an important email and I'm an important user.

Here's what I do to feel slightly empowered (although it has no effect other
than finally stopping emails from that particular company): I call the
company, and I tell them the name of the person I need to speak to urgently.
Since it's the name of a VP or something often attached to these emails, that
person is usually busy. But I tell the person on the other end that I've
received 3 emails from them, and that they have insisted on speaking with me,
and it's obviously very important. They will eventually get pulled out of a
meeting to speak with me on the phone, at which point they realize that I'm
responding to one of these emails. And they tell me it's fake and they didn't
actually want to personally speak with me, and then I tell them the email is a
lie and I hope they learned their lesson.

It's childish and stupid, but man does it make me feel good to call them on
their crap.

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bmpafa
Love it-you had me at 'childish and stupid'

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rectang
If you're skeptical of marketing and able to discern lies within marketing
materials, you're not the target audience. You're water in the gas tank of the
world's economic engine -- but take comfort that people like you only amount
to trace contamination and won't cause a stall. Just accept your lot, devnull
all the ads, and move on.

~~~
FridgeSeal
"You're not the target audience, ignore it and move on" isn't a good enough
reason to allow these companies to continue doing this.

Should we really just let them exploit those who aren't as good as we are at
detecting this? No, no we shouldn't. Turning the other cheek because you're
immune and not calling them out on it is part of the reason that advertisers
have pushed further and further into exploitative methods.

~~~
IntronExon
Serious question then is, how do we resist? How do we act in the interests of
people who often don’t see the need for help, and resent it when offered?

~~~
FridgeSeal
Adblockers, publicly and repeatedly calling them out as much as possible.
Blockers for hitting them where it hurts and calling them out to try and force
their tactics into daylight. Someone else in the thread mentioned a tactic
they employed of calling up the company and asking to speak to the CEO/whoever
felt the need to contact them so urgently. Put the onus back on them as much
as possible.

In terms of our less astute friends, education and patience I guess. The idea
of digital privacy has been eroded pretty far and advertisers have
successfully pushed the idea that it's completely fine to give it all up and
let them harass us as much as they want for the digital equivalent of shiny
rocks, so we're facing a long uphill battle there.

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ams6110
I wonder if I'm in the minority -- but when I look at unread email I see only
the sender and subject. If I don't recognize the sender, and the subject line
sounds like marketing-speak, including phrases such as "we've missed you" or
"checking in" or "touching base" or "reaching out" or is something generic
like "hey" that email is getting deleted unopened. I delete dozens of messages
a day unread on that basis, and it only takes a few seconds.

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rovek
Also fairly confident that many unsubscribe links have little effect.

I often wonder if I'm losing my mind thinking "I swear I unsubscribed from
this last week"

~~~
rectang
Legit entities are generally very concerned about spam scores and
deliverability, so will faithfully unsub you if you can fight your way through
to the unsub interface. That won't get rid of everything, but it helps.

~~~
nugi
But 'unsubbing' from sketch spam will just mark your email address as known
good for more spam. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

~~~
rectang
Unsubbing from, say, the people you've done business with but don't want to
hear from any more, is worth doing. It's not all darkness, there are shades of
grey.

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kbos87
TurboTax has been relentless with these kind of tactics this year. Their
subject lines include words like “1 New Message” and “IRS” in varying
combinations that when skimmed probably make a lot of less adept consumers
think they are receiving some kind of urgent official communication.

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misnamed
It would be nice. Don't see it happening anytime soon, but do like this author
naming and shaming.

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skmurphy
Market opportunity: evolving spam filters to detect this nonsense.

