Email

Email

by Mike Masnick




Spam Will Get More Graphical?

from the uh.... dept

Yet another example of a lazy marketer who simply doesn't get it. An executive of an "image serving company" (note the bias) is pointing out (correctly) that email ads risk becoming like banner ads where everyone skips over them. My one edit on his thoughts here, are that this has clearly already happened a long time ago. Even emails that people requested are considered spam when they're not relevant and/or they show up way too often. However, then this guy starts pitching his company as the bizarre "solution" to this problem. His idea is that if only advertising emails had more annoying flashing graphics then everything would be okay. The thinking on his part is that even if people just delete the email, those who use a "preview pane" will still see the image - even if briefly. Well, of course, these days you shouldn't use the preview pane and you shouldn't have HTML mail turned on. Furthermore, the idea that the way to get around people getting sick of annoying emails is to make them more annoying doesn't make much sense. If your business really depends on someone catching a glance of an image while they're deleting your unwanted message, perhaps you need to be in a different business.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Apr 16th, 2004 @ 3:12pm
  • No Subject Given

    by NOBODY

    I love evolution.
    It has an option that lets you run html, but turns off all tracer graphics. Good stuff.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • May 24th, 2004 @ 1:01pm
  • [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE]

    Well, if those images are hotlinked from another server, as seems to be the case in most spam, that's a guarantee that I won't see the ad at all...
    I have Mozilla Thunderbird set to block all external images, and from what I've heard, the next version of Outlook Express will do so by default as well.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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