November 14, 2002
Why Spam Doesn’t Work
Masha Geller of MediaPost thinks she’s figured out why response rates to spam — um, “email marketing — are so low:
Email marketing company Silverpop yesterday released the preliminary findings of a study they conducted on response rates to permission email and found that one of the most overlooked causes of reduced response rates is “broken” or unreadable HTML. …
Here are some other reasons that occurred to me in just the last 24 hours:
If I had some domain names to register, I’d rather use .COM or .NET than .US or .NAME or .OBSCURE or whatever it is that you’re selling
The cheapest airline tickets are likely to have restrictions I wouldn’t like, even if they are totally guaranteed
Spying on my neighbor’s hot teenage daughter or on our babysitter would be just plain sick
I can’t fire my boss because, well, it just doesn’t work that way
I have more than enough printer ink for now
I haven’really been much interested in farm animals since I was 5 or 6, so I’m not going to go to your web site to look at photos
I don’t believe I can grow rich without doing anything of value
I don’t know what HGH is and I think I don’t care
While I’m flattered that you are impressed by my financial standing, I have more credit cards than I use
I read Nabokov’s Lolita and was quite disturbed by it, so I’m not interested in having Lolitas delivered to my inbox
Yes, my teeth are yellowing (how did you know??), but I’ll check with my dentist instead of buying whitener over the Net
I’m fortunate in not needing a debt reduction program
My wife’s not complaining
Nope, I still don’t need any HGH
I’m an animal rights type of guy so I don’t want a leather coat
Thanks for noticing that I am rather sexy, but sex with women less than half my age isn’t really all that appealing. Besides, if you can see that my teeth are yellow, why can’t you see the ring on my finger?
I’m not interested in toner cartridges that don’t come with HGH, whatever that is
I would have helped you get your money out of Nigeria, but how can I trust an email that doesn’t properly close all of its HTML tags?