Adventures in Mobile Marketing

In regards to my last post, I got a twitter reply,

"@banane, is email marketing dead? [link to my blog post]"

My post was a methodical, bulleted list of reasons why you should not acquire email addresses from vendors, basically, don’t buy email lists.

Some folks do connote email marketing with snatching up large tracts of anonymous, unqualified email addresses. I don’t. I think that’s a bad practice. This fellow thought that was “the death of email,” to not buy email lists. So… email marketing = buying email lists? To not buy them, is the harbinger of the end?

No, no, he replied, “it’s link bait.” Maybe I think too much about this stuff, but let me get it straight. It’s OK to say my post is the beginning of the end of this industry, refusing to buy email lists, because it’s going to bring more readers to my blog.

Well, speaking of the future of marketing, let’s talk about link bait and numbers games.

First, with link bait, no I certainly don’t mind doing funny, silly, intriguing tweets to promote one of my posts. But misconstruing (if that’s what he did) the purpose of my post or the message I’m making, and sending your followers there, is confusing and kind of pointless.

OK, now to do it all in the name of numbers, I say: in this social media world, someone’s always gaming the system, and what they get out of it is, how to game the system. It’s based on probability, that by increasing your audience, you will have more opportunities. That couldn’t be farther from my methodology. I work on creating meaningful online relationships between companies and their customers, through relevant, timely, and interesting messaging. Not just broadcasting randomly to people unsolicited.

So the fact that the link didn’t make sense, means that poor readers coming over here expect me to be another numbers-gaming popularity mechanism. Well, here you will enjoy some conversations by a small, eclectic, but high-quality group of email marketers discussing the best practices of ethical & effective email marketing. Welcome, if that interests you!