Is All Email Marketing Spam?

This guy seems to think so...

My first reaction was to get defensive and debunk everything he said - I come from an email marketing background so we're a little edgy about being called spammers. But I realized that this guys opinion is really just like alot of people's opinion of email marketing - he believes that everything he receives is junk.

So the second half of his rant makes sense about building trust economies and speaking to customers as individuals. Email as come a long way - but alot companies are still catching up with using email correctly. For a smart marketer this is the opportunity.

Unfortunately the comment that all email is spam is just not true. If you do email correctly and build out your opt in email customer database you should have no problem segmenting your audience and providing extremely relevant information to them. Email is just another way for a company to connect with its customer...its how you talk to them thats important.

He speaks about social networks as the future of online marketing, but when I sign up for Myspace the first friend I have is some jackass I never met before who founded the company - not to mention the daily social network spam from random bands, porn sites, and teenagers trying to build their friend empire online.

I agree however, that if approached correctly social media can be a great medium to market to individuals. Again, its just another channel to facilitate communication and its how you talk to each other that is important. You would apply that logic to every customer interaction whether it be in the store, on the phone, through email, or online.

I guess since this guy is in the search marketing business he has no vested interest in promoting email. The unfortunate thing is that this guy is a marketer and should know better than to spread misinformation... it does a disservice to his credibility and his company.

The plain truth is that email marketing works - otherwise companies wouldn't do it.