If you want to tell me why I’m getting an email (newsletter) that’s fine. It’s actually quite helpful, as I could easily forget how I ended up subscribing myself to a list or if I ordered from somewhere…
However putting this kind of text in your email footer is one sure fire way of getting me to list you as a spammer:
DISCLAIMER: This message is not “SPAM” because it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions. This message was offered to you for one of the following reasons: your email address has been selected from a database that you have subscribed, your email address was made public by you; you have requested to receive the offer; you are a partner of our company; your email address is in our database as a result of previous correspondence.
There are so many things wrong with that disclaimer that it’s almost impossible to know where to begin.
The ones I “love” are:
“it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions”
Um .. ok… so? That doesn’t mean anything at all…
The one though that really gets me is the “your email address was made public by you”
That is both hilarious and scary
(And just in case you’re wondering – I got two copies of the same spam to two addresses that aren’t published anywhere .. )
I see this a lot with Irish businesses (even the same email to two separate non-public addresses) It’s so wrong on every level that a credible business should spam in such a fashion, and feel they are justified *because they say so*. Never mind regulations and laws, social conventions and common courtesy, if they put it in their disclaimer, all is fine. Aaah!
-rant over
Ah I got this earlier and just flagged it as spam though I really want some automated way to get these spamers blocked completely.
The “your email address was made public by you” bit really pissed me off
As an addendum to this, just received an email from http://www.milestonemedia.ie to an old email address, and at the bottom, they have the cheek to state “This email was sent according to the guidelines of the Data Protection Commissioner All recipients of this mail were compiled from online directories therefore given permission to be contacted by email.”
I feel like giving them a good bollicking over their ‘interpretation’ of those guidelines