Adding People To Your List
In business we’re all keen to grow our lists and have a larger audience to promote to and demonstrate our abilities to, but I feel there is some etiquette involved in developing these lists and I find people time and again, not taking what I consider to be an appropriate approach.
I am on lots and lots and lots of lists – many are not of my choosing. I’ve had my email address for a long time, long before spam became a problem, and long before many businesses were on the web, so I’m reluctant to change my email address or domain and have put filters in place, which at least keeps the majority of spammers at bay.
But it’s those who want to genuinely promote a business service or product that tend to annoy me at times and I’ll tell you why. Over the past couple of days I’ve had Australian businesses send me emails that indicate I’ve been put on a list. No introduction, no ‘are you interested’, just straight out emails sent to their lists. I’ve emailed one of them twice now making it quite clear that I am not interested and that they are contravening the spam legislation – as yet I’ve had no response. The other one emailed me back quickly to say that she thought I’d be interested in what she had to offer and that a mutual acquaintance gave her my details.
Now, I get lots of people giving me other people’s cotntact details but I don’t add them to my list – although they might be added to my database so I can contact them if I want to find out more about what they do. What I do though, is make an initial contact, often via email, and introduce myself, explain how I came to know of them and then let them know why I’m contacting them, i.e. “Joe Smith told me you’d be interested in my services so I’d like to know if that is the case, and how may I help you?” Something of that nature. If they don’t respond I don’t chase and if they do respond but say they’re not intersted, I don’t pursue it. I do get back to the mutual contact and advise the outcome of that contact attempt so they’re kept in the loop.
Perhaps this has something to do with the training I’ve had over the years in various networking organisations, but I feel there is an etiquette involved, and especially with the spam legislation in place, I don’t feel it appropriate to just add people to a list if I have not met them personally in the first place or if they haven’t personally self-subscribed to my online list. How do others feel about this? KMT
professionalism, email etiquette, email subscription, email lists, subscription lists, spam legislation
