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Marketers get a bad rap. I don\u2019t mind admitting that, in my case, it goes doubly so<\/a>. Ex-smokers are notorious for being significantly more critical of smokers than most people, and that truism can be applied to virtually anything. So as an ex-marketing professional, I tend to be ruthless<\/a> in my opinion<\/a> of marketers, especially in this age of spam. I know what\u2019s involved in marketing and how far-removed it can be from reality. Often, it\u2019s used with the precision of a rocket launcher, and unfortunately, some marketing people forget that the ultimate goal is to leave people with a smile, and not a frown. Let\u2019s face it: the numbers don\u2019t lie. Marketers make up for a large chunk<\/a> of the vile stuff that invades our inboxes each day. In a world where the message is king, it seems that there are far too many would-be usurpers to the throne, and that, friends, is what results in civil unrest.<\/p>\nAnd they\u2019re not helping themselves. When we see articles like \u201cEight Simple Rules to Evade the SPAM Filter<\/a>,\u201d it purveys a real sense of just how disparate is the rift between the people tasked with the duty of delivering the message (the marketers) and the people who are meant to receive the message (the rest of us). To think that the ultimate goal of marketing is to land unwanted messages in the inbox rather than the spam folder, well\u2026wow. It leaves me speechless, and it reminds me that, just like in all walks of life, there are good marketers and then there are bad marketers. Bad as in incompetent, although there are malevolent marketers out there, too, who care more about clicks than conversions.<\/p>\n So, this week, when I came across a jewel of a message from a marketing professional, I couldn\u2019t help but stop and take it in, and it made me smile. It was a totally different kind of wow. I\u2019m talking about a blog post written by HubSpot.com<\/a> CMO Mike Volpe. In the blog post, entitled \u201cAn Open Letter to Marketers: Make Love, Not Spam<\/a>,\u201d Mr. Volpe takes advantage of Valentine\u2019s Day to reach out to marketing professionals:<\/p>\n \u201cIn much of the world, today is Valentine\u2019s Day<\/a>, a celebration of love. But this letter I am sending you is not a love letter. This is an open letter to the marketing community about one big way in which we’re not being lovable<\/a>.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean the messages sent by hackers in a basement from a third-world country about transferring millions of dollars from Nigeria, or how to buy Viagra without a prescription. I mean what many of us marketing folks do as part of our jobs at legitimate companies. Marketers send millions of emails to people without their permission every single day …\u201d<\/p>\n Accompanied by an adorable video that uses some pretty convincing children to put a fine point on the problems surrounding spam and printed matter, Mr. Volpe\u2019s post strikes at the very heart of a problem that we, as IT professionals and end users, have been bemoaning for years. The indiscriminate manner in which many marketers blanket the world with unwanted messages has had exactly the opposite effect for which it was intended.<\/p>\n Companies pay good money to have their products and services elevated to a place where the would-be consumer will see it, want it, and buy it. Unfortunately, we\u2019re not in Kansas anymore. The world of Mad Men<\/em><\/a> in the 1960\u2019s, when there were three television channels, a moderate number of radio stations, and a handful of newspapers and magazines, is a long-dead dream. Today, we\u2019re bombarded with media messages, at the computer, on our phones, in front of the TV, and so-on. Everywhere we look, there\u2019s a new message. Millions of channels, and only so much time in the day to soak up the information. Yes, it makes a marketing person\u2019s life more difficult, but one thing hasn\u2019t changed much since the 1960\u2019s: the consumer. Guaranteed as I\u2019m sitting here, if Walter Cronkite\u2019s future<\/a> had hit forty years earlier, the consumers of the 1960\u2019s would be just as pissed off by the glut of unwanted information. They just would have looked better doing it, in their cocktail dresses, three piece suits, and fedoras.<\/p>\n Hats off to you, Mr. Volpe. Your message reminded me of why I first got into the marketing business so many years ago. Then, it was fun, exciting, and enlightening. It was empowering to be able to shape people\u2019s opinions and educate. My, how things have changed.<\/p>\n Now, marketing people, are you going to listen to what\u2019s being asked of you, or are you going to perpetuate an out-of-control problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marketers get a bad rap. I don\u2019t mind admitting that, in my case, it goes doubly so. Ex-smokers are notorious for being significantly more critical… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[11,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-spam","tag-allspammedup","tag-bot","tag-botnet","tag-malware","tag-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1767,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/1767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}We, the marketing industry, have a problem with spam.<\/strong><\/h2>\n