Adventures in Mobile Marketing

I wrote about Political Spamming, and how our dearly elected circumvent and generally ignore CAN-SPAM regulations, and general email etiquette. Well lately the spam in my inbox is from public relations professionals. At issue:
- no reference to how they got your email
- strange subject lines “News item for ya, Anna” (???)
- largely irrelevant content – None of my blogs even remotely get close to this kind of content: celebrity diets.
- no unsubscription process – nor indicator on how they got my email.
- no reference to who they are, where they are from or on whose behalf they act – who is this from?

And the email in question:

At the Marketing Sherpa talk last February I sat at a table with a PR person who admitted that her industry does have the most heinous email etiquette. We joked for a bit about the Wired editor Chris Anderson (author of Long Tail) published a list of all of the PR spammers — as a kind of quid-pro-quo. I like this quote from Chris, regarding what press releases he does use:

Given that each one of those side projects is more narrow and geeky than the last, it’s a rare press release indeed that is focused enough to be relevant.

That’s what we focus on in email marketing: relevancy. So yes, it’s good PR vs. bad PR, it’s knowing the audience.

Just checked and that domain- popculturepr.com- is in Chris’ list. Sigh. Well, here are to the PR companies that don’t want to be considered spammers. Tips: warm up the cold call by…

- Doing some research & show your work. Do any of my posts seem at all interested in celebrities? If so, reference them in the email so you draw the connections for me.
- Work on the Subject Line. Use more words to describe who you are from: pop culture PR, and what blog this is in reference to. I write several!
- Provide an unsubscription. This can be your company’s list, or from some parent corporation. It ensures that you’re creating an opt-in list of journalists, and you won’t spam me, and generally “I asked for it.” It will raise your reputation with the journalist and set expectation.
- More sender branding. It’s simple to the point of being… spammy. Tell me where you’re from.

More Reading
Techdirt: PR Spam On Why You Shouldn’t PR Spam Bloggers?
Chris Anderson vs. Public Relations Spam