Enjoyed this article?
Take part in the discussion
Related blog/content
Caveman style ABM is pissing off everyone’s best prospects
I don’t want to hear about spear-fishing ever again. I’m Charlie, the head of ABM at Velocity. And I have a bone to pick with tired ABM metaphors. Good…
Charlie Langley | 28. 03. 2024
AI and SGE are a long-overdue wakeup call for B2B SEO
Even before AI and Google SGE came gunning for everyone’s search traffic, B2B was struggling with SEO. Despite endless effort, lots of pages languish in…
Joe Strugs | 13. 03. 2024
Why teamwork solves the B2B SEO malaise
What’s the secret of B2B SEO? Some say volume. Others say clusters. We say it’s collaboration. Find out why we’re right.
Stan Woods | 05. 03. 2024
Comments
Doug Kessler November 12th, 2012
In the old days of direct mail, I once got a piece of junk mail disguised as a tax refund envelope (it was about that time of year).
There may be a fine line between intriguing someone to open a message and tricking them. This was nowhere near the line. Jeff Taros is closer to it but I can see why you resented his.
John Goodridge November 21st, 2012
Glad you mentioned what the product was for. Did you have go back to the email and look?
I can’t even remember what product was being punted on the last trick email I opened – although I have a feeling it was also marketing automation software (what’s with that)
The danger is that the lasting emotion, which glues the memory in place, relates to the trick and not the content. Either admiration at the cleverness, or anger at being duped. It’s like those oh so clever TV spots, where you can recite the dialogue and picture each frame, but can’t remember the brand.
But if email response is a key metric then I can understand why Bus dev execs (titter) would devlve into the black bag to make their targets. Which raises a whole bunch of other issues, right?
Barry Feldman December 13th, 2012
And then there’s even lower skank: the slime buckets who know damn well you won’t read their email, so they cold call via your site’s contact form. It is possible anyone’s ever won an account this way? Yesterday, I got form-spammed by a company trying to sell me dirt cheap blog writing. I’m a WRITER! They offended me twice.
My favorite is the relentlessly worthless SEO scum-sucking peaheads who form-spam you pitching their great search talents. Wouldn’t it be fair to say that an SEO co. who feels form-spam is some sort of modern version of direct response is screaming “WE SUCK AT SEO!”?
Great article Ryan. Love the image too. Compels me to share a story of mine: http://feldmancreative.com/2011/12/your-site-is-the-mousetrap-and-your-content-is-the-cheese/