Er...no, actually I don't want your newsletter

I subscribe to a couple of marketing newsletters from an online publisher with a focus on marketing (the irony!). Today they decided to sign me up to another one. On a completely different subject.

Did permission email suddenly go out of fashion?

I don't get it. Why did they do this? Because I'm sure that the outcome is a bunch of people like me, who are now plainly irritated with them. And another bunch who don't bother to unsubscribe, but just filter out, delete or "this is spam" the new newsletter. With all the list quality and deliverability problems associated with that.

How is that better than announcing the new email to subscribers and asking people to sign-up if they are interested?

The hugely pragmatic among you may argue that it's the only way to start a new list off with a decent number of subscribers. To which I say...flashing light...short-term thinking...get over the list size obsession! And anyway, there are other ways to get current subscribers interested in new email offerings without taking the "opt-out only" route.

Plus I could even kind of reluctantly accept the pragmatic list-building argument if the new newsletter was perfectly relevant (though how can you ever know that to be true?)

But just because I like articles on email marketing, I don't see how that qualifies me to want to read about "Jason's love affair with his Apple iBook G4."

Others may play the "but you have a long-term relationship with the publisher that is deep enough to make such opt-out approaches acceptable" card.

No I don't. We don't send each other Valentine cards. We don't go for a beer together at the weekend. They didn't give me a call when my cat died. Just because we use the word relationship doesn't make it a real one.

The only thing keeping me in the flock is that I love (in the platonic sense) two of their email marketing columnists, and I don't want to do without them.

This "assumed permission" approach is a hair's breadth away from what many people would call spam. I've written on it before, as have others in the blogosphere (Tom O'Leary, Hendry Lee.)

I cordially invite anyone to use the comments to present a cogent argument in favor of this approach to email marketing. I am quite willing to change my opinion if the facts demand it. But right now, I don't get it.

More on permission | Tags: email marketing, assumed permission, spam

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