We can forgive the innocent B2B marketer for spamming their lists.
Euphemistically, we call it “blasting”– doesn’t sound like fun on the receiving end, does it?
And we can even forgive the aggressive conference badge scanner or telemarketer.
Remind me to never let exhibitors scan my badge either– since the 7 am wake-up calls cramp my style.
But this type of sin is particularly troublesome since it’s done by a company that claims expertise in lead gen:
This person appears to be asking for help, but really they’re using a canned sales message that continues to follow up incessantly.
In fact, their company admits it in their note “Our automated tools allow us to easily scale up your growth”.
They claim “push button” simplicity in lead gen– that we can sit back and watch the leads roll in.
We will get “thousands of highly-targeted leads and a laser-targeted email copy that converts”– their words, not mine.
Marketing is about truly caring for the customer, not viewing them as a wallet for raiding, which happens to have legs.
We’re all so busy and struggling to keep up that it’s tempting to want to resort to spamming shortcuts.
It’s for the same reason that people want to lose weight fast or get rich quickly.
Spam in the form of flyers on your windshield or knives peddled at your doorstep– it’s the same thing.
Be a marketer that attracts people with love, as opposed to carpet bombing cities with propaganda.
The outbound cold-calling and spamming sales approach must give way to authentic inbound marketing.
Today’s marketers are too smart for brute force approaches to work, especially as they educate themselves and bring functions like media buying in-house. The networks such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn are creating training and automation that will cut out middlemen over time.
Incidentally, this gentleman never replied to my email, though he seemed so urgent in wanting to talk to me.
