Activewords Spam?
Jake's Jive has a live one today: One of my responsibilities at Lockergnome is defending our good name against accusations of spamming. Unfortunately, because it's very easy to spoof an e-mail address or associate another company's name with an unsolicited message, defending our integrity is an on going battle. I've been put through the paces by several ISP's in the past because our newsletters are labeled as Bulk Mailings (which they correctly should be), but after a detailed explanation or two, the sysadmins generally come around and realize that we are one of the good guys. So, when I'm forced to be ready to defend our company against accusations of spam, due to other companies outright stupidity, it really PISSES ME OFF! Today, Chris forwarded me a message from a subscriber, who received the following mailing from ActiveWords…
You rely on your computer, and so do your customers. Keep your computers (and theirs!) running in near-perfect condition with the help of Optimize 3.0. Use it to get rid of unnecessary files and junk, clean out your registry, and even streamline boot times.
5 Comments
Anonymous
June 20th, 2002
at 9:47pm
Wow…
Anonymous
June 21st, 2002
at 5:28am
Massive over-reaction on jake's part looks like to me. He'll get the hang of the business/relationship thing when he's a bit older.
Anonymous
June 21st, 2002
at 9:13am
Bob, do you not understand the ramifications that an e-mail like this has on a company such as Lockergnome, whose survival depends on being able to send out legitimately requested e-mails?
I don't see any indication from his post that Jake overreacted in his communications with any of the parties. If you think he's overreacting in his post, well, then so be it. It's his own blog and his own forum to post whatever he chooses. As far as the business/relationship thing, if there were any missteps in this case, it does not appear that they were taken by any members of the Lockergnome staff… who were unaware that the LG name was being used at all.
Anonymous
June 21st, 2002
at 7:33pm
Bulk Mail is a sensitive topic. I've got first hand experience working with clients who send mailings to over 5,000,000 willing/subscribed recipients per week. Things like “double opt-in” and “proof of consent” come into play. When ISPs get involved, they scan those messages and accuse every party mentioned of playing a role, and they've got to scramble to prove themselves legit quickly or run the risk of losing their bandwidth.
Bob, you'd get a better understanding of the severity of this if you worked in the industry. Until then, I can see why you couldn't possibly understand the importance. Jake certainly had cause for concern.
Anonymous
June 24th, 2002
at 8:53am
Guys, are you forgetting that Lockergnome published an offer from ActiveWords over a year ago, where ActiveWords gave away a free copy of their software to Lockergnome subscribers? That's how I first heard of them, and I live and die by their software (I find it very useful for what I do).
When a company gives away their software for free, no one is naive enough to think that it's really FREE right? There's always a cost involved. In this case, ActiveWords gave away free copies of their software in order to get names and email addresses that they could use to promote upgrades down the road. It's a “loss leader” – they take a loss on potential sales NOW in order to potential make some money down the road when people are addicted to using the product. Is there anything wrong with that? I don't think so – it's business. These guys have a good product and deserve to stay in business.
I hate spam as much as the rest of you (perhaps more so) but I think that Jake is over reacting and perhaps even Activewords themselves are forgetting where they got these names from originally…