Monday 5 December 2011

Eat your Greens - Read Your Spam


You can get rid of most of the nasty spam with a firewall virus and spam protection.

What I mean is the other flotsam destined for the digital incinerator
 ‘The Big Give starts today’ – titter ye not:  it was about raising money to transform the stalls of the Watford Theatre
Does Size Matter... For Online Panels? An attempt to move me to a new supplier or Interested in a brand new staff survey product that is launching this week?

In the first case it’s someone who should/could use our services but so far has proved unresponsive – in the second it’s a genuine attempt to bring a new approach to online surveys – in the third it’s a stupid competitor telling me what they are about.

So from a quick glance I’m considerably more up to date about some of what’s going on, than I was 10 seconds previously.

But that’s not the norm – footballers diving theatrically in the penalty box? – nothing compared to the wild, over - reaction often met when we sent round a service update.  ‘We’ve been spammed’, yelp the recipients.

One guy phoned in to yell at being on a mailing list, we had derived from his membership of the publically available Chamber of Commerce list – then asked for a quote.

A particular heartfelt plea goes out to the Gatekeepers particularly school secretaries: Hey guys – why do so many of you make policy decisions on behalf of your school – so many of you, when invited to consider a research service on behalf of your school, send us a rapid ‘No Thanks’ response – Really?? – ‘after due consideration of a complex offer, all stakeholders persons have reached consensus.’  
Yeah right!

One Gatekeeper said ‘no thanks’ when the company was already using the product.

Not reading your spam is often the sign of a lazy mind – the easy option for which you can’t be blamed - the word ‘spam’ is of course derived from the Monty Python sketch where it was mentioned 132 times ( at least) – without reading this unsolicited email you wouldn’t have known that. I rest my case!