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Susan Favro said:

> Based on her interest in a product we sell (she sent
> an email to me several months ago and I responded
> to her email), I included her in our next email newsletter.
It would appear that it was this action on Susan's part that caused the
reponse that Linda made with respect to her online marketing techniques
in a rather unfavorable way.

The take home lesson for everybody here should be to not add people to
your e-mail mailing lists unless specifically asked to do so, since you
risk being considered (and publicly denounced as) as "spammer."

And I know that Linda is not alone in her dislike of this practice.  My
father constantly complains about the "junk" e-mail that he gets because
he has been added to e-mail mailing lists of, get this, FRIENDS he has
known for 30 years who are sending him...and all their other friends
something they found interesting/funny/whatever (so this is not just a
lesson for retailers who are trying to sell something, but also for
adding people to your "joke" list, or your "forward this to all your
friends" list).  And because they are his friends, he doesn't know how
to tell them, "Please stop doing this."

Though it is more trouble, it is also adds a more "personal" touch to
the commercial aspects of the whole thing if people would ASK before
doing such things.  Susan could probably have staved off this negative
response of Linda's simply by sending her an e-mail (or adding to the
e-mail that she sent in response), "I have a regular e-mail newsletter
that I send out to people who I think might be interested in some of my
products as they become available, would you like me to add you to that
list?"

However, Ed Hauser's comparison with computer tracking of purchases and
auto-generated solicitations based on buying patterns with 1950s local
butchers being aware of their customers meat cut preferences is not
quite an accurate comparison, for several reasons.

The first being that the 1950s butcher usually confined his
recommendations on cuts of meat to when you actually visited the
butcher's shop and were thinking about buying meat; it probably would
have been less happily received were the butcher to, say, call you at
home while you are in the middle of some other task.

Additionally, this same butcher would probably not have been very well
received if he were to constantly be recommending cuts of meat that you
DON'T have any interest in.  And herein lies one of the biggest problems
with much of the computer generated commercial offers, they are rarely
ever right. The local butcher didn't start volunteering recommendations
for specific cuts of meat until he had a pretty good idea that he DID
know the customer's meat preferences.  Until then, he let the customer
do the asking, as the last thing he would want is to get the reputation
of being pushy--after all, he had to actually interact with these people
regularly.

Which brings us to another BIG difference: Not only did the butcher know
the customer, but the customer knew the butcher.  It wasn't the case of
a virtual stranger keeping tabs on your eating habits.  And I am willing
to bet that even back in the 50s time of "personalized service" the idea
of a stranger going through your garbage to establish a "profile" of
your life habits would not have been well received...or even a stranger
keeping tabs on your meat purchases while you are in the butcher's shop.
Computer tracking by some software geek in India who uses and sells your
information to who knows who is VERY different.

It may be that when computer programs get better at tracking people's
preferences so that they actually are capable of making recommendations
that are likely to be met favorably, that the response to the idea of
computers doing this will be looked upon by people...well...more
favorably.  Until then, you would do well to not use such techniques
without first asking permission, because if you first ask for
permission, if the recipient is not happy with the outcome, they can
kick themselves rather than you

Actually, the local butcher probably has some kind of non-verbal (you
were, after all IN the shop and could see each other) way of doing this.
I am willing to bet that even back in the 50s, that there were some
customers that the local butcher wouldn't dare make such a
recommendation to because they knew that it wouldn't be well received.

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)



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