Flashes of Panic

Ever since I rejoined corporate America (albeit on my own terms) I’ve been hearing advertising and marketing people use the phrase “email blast.” Tonight I saw it in a market survey for customers.

Marketers, please stop using this phrase. I know it sounds cool, and I know it gets you all excited to think about your message exploding all over the internet, but you really, really need to look at this from the point of view of the recipients of your message. We’re people who spend an annoying amount of time removing spam from our inboxes, or filtering out the spam, and the idea of being on the receiving end of your “blast” is really unsettling. It’s a very one-way, very forceful word, and from this side it sounds like something I should be defending myself against.

It’s been nine years since the cluetrain manifesto and hearing this phrase repeated reminds me that a large, large number of companies still haven’t gotten on the train.

Now Playing: Happy from God Fodder by Ned’s Atomic Dustbin

Technorati Tags: advertising, cluetrain, email, fail, marketing, spam