In the comments area on a recent post by David Davies on unwanted blog comments was a note by Bill Brandon describing a more common form of spam, email spam, generated by harvesting email address from blogs. Anyone who has been publishing a blog for some time and is also publishing their email address is probably subjected to this.
But what it reminded me of was a message I received about a month ago by someone in the field of elearning simulations that was for me an example of spam that wasn’t spam, or at least that I didn’t treat as such. This person made mention of the fact that I published a blog, and then went on to introduce me to their new book on elearning simulations.
Was it spam (or ‘unsolicited bulk email’ to use its more useful/less colourful name)? It was unsolicited and it was email. Was it ‘bulk’? Well, the author may have hand-culled my email address and typed up the message to me. I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. I expect it may have come out of one of the ed tech OPML files floating around, or someone’s web-based blogroll. But the point is, I couldn’t really tell for sure. The tone was such that it appeared somewhat personal, and it was very on topic. If the author hadn’t actually read the manifesto, he was at least very much on the cluetrain.
Did I buy the book? Well no (not because I wasn’t interested, but because it’s about 49th on the list of things I can’t afford right now). Did it work as a email marketing exercise?: I’m not a converted buyer, so not by that measure, but I kept the email in my inbox for a few weeks(regular spam lasts 2 nanoseconds in there), I was interested enough to research the author a bit more, and I’m posting to my blog about it (though you’ll have to puzzle out the specifics yourself, as I won’t shill for a book I haven’t read 😉
I don’t mind unsolicited messages; I just mind unsolicited messages that treat me as just another email address. – SWL