Not a huge fan of this to be honest. From my perspective as a user, I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam, but I would treat it largely the same.
I'm also unsure that it's a good long term strategy for the business. It may generate some customers, but building a customer base on people who have A) shown themselves to be relatively fickle in choosing a host and B) have a tendency to use public channels to raise issues strikes me as a unstable base.
I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam...
Unsolicited email from parties you have no involvement with is spam by definition.
And note to spammers and marketers on HN, I know I'm abusing my spam filters, but if I see emails from parties I don't recognize because "I subscribed for updates to one of their partners" (or some other bullshit explanation like that), I instantly flag them as spam, even if they have an unsubscribe button, because I can't unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to and I refuse to validate my email address like that.
The easiest way of killing spam is to hit the spam-button in Thunderbird. Spam is always spam and I have more fun things to do than find some unsubscribe button. That will only mark my email as active and give a better price when selling it further.
But I know people around me making a lot of money with it. Because, unfortunaly:
- a lot of users open those mails;
- they read it;
- they click on the links;
- they don't report it as spam.
It sounds crazy, until you spend a lot of time working on website for people outside of your geek bubble.
I worked in porn quite a lot, and you see 80% of the male population in there. Spams work on them. Crazily stupid ads as well : "click to fuck now for free". Yes they do click. And yes they pay.
Comments
Not a huge fan of this to be honest. From my perspective as a user, I don't want businesses I have no involvement with contacting me out of the blue. It's not quite spam, but I would treat it largely the same.
I'm also unsure that it's a good long term strategy for the business. It may generate some customers, but building a customer base on people who have A) shown themselves to be relatively fickle in choosing a host and B) have a tendency to use public channels to raise issues strikes me as a unstable base.
Unsolicited email from parties you have no involvement with is spam by definition.
And note to spammers and marketers on HN, I know I'm abusing my spam filters, but if I see emails from parties I don't recognize because "I subscribed for updates to one of their partners" (or some other bullshit explanation like that), I instantly flag them as spam, even if they have an unsubscribe button, because I can't unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to and I refuse to validate my email address like that.
The easiest way of killing spam is to hit the spam-button in Thunderbird. Spam is always spam and I have more fun things to do than find some unsubscribe button. That will only mark my email as active and give a better price when selling it further.
It's even more fun doing it in GMail, because if enough other people do it then spam is more likely to be widely dealt with in the manner it deserves.
You can create a filter for the word "unsubscribe" if you're feeling dangerous
I'm with you.
But I know people around me making a lot of money with it. Because, unfortunaly:
- a lot of users open those mails;
- they read it;
- they click on the links;
- they don't report it as spam.
It sounds crazy, until you spend a lot of time working on website for people outside of your geek bubble.
I worked in porn quite a lot, and you see 80% of the male population in there. Spams work on them. Crazily stupid ads as well : "click to fuck now for free". Yes they do click. And yes they pay.