I recently started receiving mass marketing emails at my personal email address from someone that's a vendor in my industry that I'm connected with on LinkedIn.
At no point did I ever provide that person with my personal email address or consent to receiving those emails.
With that one act, all of the goodwill that he had built up with the valuable, industry-oriented content that was posted on LinkedIn and limited (but positive) personal interactions went away immediately.
Disregarding the fact that it's illegal (yes, really), scraping my email address and spamming me is not the road to getting on my good side.
If you have something of value that I need, I'm all for hearing about it! But don't just drop me on a list and start clogging up my inbox with more garbage I don't need.
Opt-in marketing can be tremendously beneficial. Even in an age when email rates are at an all-time low, if you truly go out of your way to build a 100% opt-in list of people that truly want to hear from you, it still works.
Even better is a completely opt-in text marketing list! (Email me for details on our text marketing service ;-) )
All of the problems we see start with selfish individuals and organizations that believe their agenda is more important than someone else's time and attention.
I know you love your product and your business. I know that's one of the most important things in your life. But it's not that important to anybody else, so be aware of that and consider the recipient before you destroy any trust or goodwill you've spent time building with your cold or luke-warm prospects.
