Update: Why Do Politicians Do This?
Oct 09 2008
This past two years I have been amazed at the gall of politicians and political parties that are in essence spamming me when I have not opted in to their emails. I have also been forwarded emails like this from many of you across the nation with this same gripe.
Even though there is a loophole in the CAN Spam law that allows politicians to send emails to people even when they do not have an opt in (this needs to change by the way) why do they assume that they should email us. I can tell you that I am not a registered democrat. Now this does not mean that I might not vote that way this time around, but when I (or you) get an unsolicited email from a candidate or a party I cannot understand why they think that this email might make me either trust them or like them more.
Email has been a VERY important factor in this campaign. But just because you can does not mean you should send emails. If we were to take that approach with people we want to target we would get a complaint, get blacklisted, and even possibly get some lash back in social media about us or our brand.
So what are we left to do? What would you do? Do you think that this approach and behavior shows you any value or trust? All this does it place a black eye and set us all back with email marketing and trust.
Buddy you just lost any shot at my vote, even if I liked you before. Bad practices have their consequences and we ALL know this.
Update: Parody on this topic from Obama on the Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_deletes_another_unread
Published in Spam Emails, The Spam Cops, Worst Of Email on Thursday, October 9th, 2008
(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5) 
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October 10th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Political Spam needs to end. I know that the RNC and DNC have huge lists and all senate and congress (not to mentional local cadidates) blow enough email out the doors to make MTA’s melt. They do this because they are unaccountable and they have deep pockets. That makes them an ESP goldmine, but that does not put our best foot forward as an industry.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I agree completely.
1) The law needs to change, no one should have the right to be this annoying, especially politicians, they do enough of this on the airwaves.
2) Just like those of us to have to abide by CAN-SPAM, or similar laws, you always need to do more. These laws are to allow us to prosecute criminals, but common sense (and maybe a little consultation from friendly email marketing experts) will lead to best practices that expect so much more of you.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:34 pm
It’s not “gaul” — it’s “gall”… also “loophole” is one word…. that’s just the start of it. I will serve as a one-person test market to prove the rule that some people are totally turned off by typos and grammatical errors in deciding which blogs and e-mails they’re choosing to read and trust.
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Thanks Keeks for this. I know that I often have some typos of grammatical errors due to the rush to get out the thoughts all week long. That I why I blog, to get it out of my head. In the case that I was to actually publish any of these I do send them past our internal PR and Marketing team to digest and correct.
I have made those corrections and do truly appreciate you thinking enough of me to let me know.
As per trust, yuck, why would you trust me……
I tried to email you directly at your email address, but it seems you filled out the form with a bad email. Too bad. (Al is that you?)
Cheers.