Welcome to the many faces of spam series by Tom, the hater of all things spam.

Today’s spam series revolves around a rather sinister form of spam (not that there are any non-sinister forms), Walking Spam.  Walking spam is the guy selling framed artwork in your office building that feels the need to walk into your office and then proceed to check with EVERY ONE of your employees to see if they happen to be in the market for a Bob Marley or Velvet Elvis framed piece of art.

Then there is John the Job Seeker. John walks in asking where he can find the actual suite he is supposed to be in for his big interview, and then just kind of asks if  we happen to be hiring. John just so happens to have a resume handy and has actually seen a web site before, so clearly he is qualified to build web sites. Job Seeker Spam.

Let’s not forget Click and Clack from the office supply store peddling huge discounts if we buy a pack of pens from them today , but it HAS TO BE TODAY. Right Now, this second, you need to buy the freaking pens or NO DISCOUNT FOR YOU.

How about Clint the Copy guy?  He probably hasn’t sold a copier in about 2 years, but hasn’t really caught on that no one buys a copier anymore, you NEED a copier today, he’s going to make your life easier, he’s going to interrupt your ENTIRE OFFICE FLOW just to try and prove it.

Unsolicited information in any way, shape or form is in essence SPAM. As much as I feel for Art the Art Peddler, Joe The Job Seeker, Click & Click the office supply spam duo and their quest to survive in this economy, interrupting hard working people by barging in to their office thinking that you are going to convince them to drop everything and buy your junk, or hire you, or discover that, hey, yeah, I could really use a new copier today is SPAM.

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I was speaking with a prospect this afternoon, everything was going along just fine, I was asking questions, he was answering, we were have a grand ole time. UNTIL…. He asked me if I know how to send out 10 million emails monthly soliciting business to an un-targeted email list. Wow. He went on to say he knows someone who can set up the spam cycle on multiple servers with multiple addresses at free email account type places. WOW. I couldn’t believe me ears, here was the best part…. He exclaimed to me “I have quite a background in marketing and this mass emailing, faxing and telemarketing is just a numbers game….” 

I can’t believe I actually heard all of this. My ears are still burning.  Seriously? Send out 10 million emails a month and cross your fingers you get one poor bored oblivious sap to fill out your contact form? AND then, there is the ‘can you close this lead’ dilemma.  

Isn’t the point of marketing reaching out to YOUR prospects? Reaching out and engaging the people who are interested in your products and services? People looking to buy? I assume it’s not bigtalker83@aol.com.  I think his name is John Smith and he wants to here from you because he happens to be shopping for your product. Teach John more about you and your organization and MAYBE John will be compelled to enlist your services.

Minutes after the conversation and my very direct rather blunt explanation of what true marketing is, I received my Seth Godin blog subscription (which I OPTED in for) in my inbox: It speaks the truth and rang a resounding confirmation. Check out Seth’s article here.

One of my biggest pet peeves (yes, there are many…) are broadcast faxers.  Broadcast faxes are stupid.  Plain and simple.  I get solicited for health care (which I don’t think my employees would appreciate if I started picking health care plans based on un-solicited faxes), accounting services, toner ink refills (even though they are WASTING my toner by faxing me), but the fax I received today took the cake and the putz of the week award. 

Here is the title: GET PAID FOR FAXES! By filling out a simple form including my contact name, my business name, address, email address, etc., I can get paid $0.50 per EACH fax that I receive and submit back to the Get Paid For Faxes folks.  As with EVERY get rich quick scheme, there are rules, including, the fax you submit cannot be a stock or investment fax which happens to be 90% of the faxes I get.  It’s all very structured and looks so legit on that faxed sheet of paper.

Here’s my favorite part.  The last line: To submit your faxes for payment, simply write your name and phone number on the received fax and fax it (the fax number listed).  So, wait, without a 1099 or anything, you’re just going to to send me a check for $0.50 if I fax you all of the garbage that was faxed to me? 

Here’s the scam: they get your contact name, they get your email address, they get your business address, etc. and verify your fax number.  The sole purpose… to send you more garbage. Give it up! The worst part of all of this: people must fall for it or they wouldn’t still be doing this right? Scary.

I got a phone call from one of our vendors today, a vendor that we do quite a bit of business with in the domain name registration game… They called to thank me for being such a valuable client to them and to introduce me to their internet marketing products.  I of course informed her that we are an internet marketing firm and we really didn’t need their help with internet marketing products.  She was not understanding me…. She asked then if we ‘sub’ our internet marketing or SEO work out… Nope. All in house, it’s what we do, all day, everyday. 

Here’s the point to the rant: If I am indeed such a valuable client to you, perhaps you should get to know our company a bit better and offer me enchanced domain name registration features, etc. 

Before you go out and try and promote your products or services, isn’t it important to know who that audience is? Are you selling t-shirts to 20 somethings? Are you selling professional consulting services to CFO’s? Take the time to learn your market, who they are, what they look like, what they are interested in and further, what they DON’T like. 

Got a phone call tonight from 806-576-0589 and heard an amateur recording about my Google listing. This company represented itself as ‘Google’ and asked me to hit 1 to verify my Google local business listing.  I of course did a bit of homework as I was on the phone and stumbled upon this brilliant tidbit explaining other people’s experiences with these folks.

Any SEO company that needs to telemarket businesses that are on the Do Not Call Registry, especially to another SEO company shouldn’t be in business!

Wouldn’t you think that an SEO company should be found organically in search engine results? If they can do it for themselves, can’t they do it for you?

Got this garbage email today and thought I would share: Note the bold portion below ……

Hi,

I came across your website and was wondering if you would consider a link exchange with me. In return for just one link from you I am willing to place a link to your site on our PR5 site here: http://www.LINKREMOVEDONPURPOSE.com (PR5). I can put your link in the perfect category to match your site. We can manually set your link to make sure it always appears on that page and it will never drop off.

I understand that you probably get 100’s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing, but I am a real person and not a spam bot.

If this is of interest to you simply reply to this email and I will put your link live first. (Please send me your link details along with a short description of your site)

Title: site hosting

URL: http://www.REMOVEDONPURPOSE.net

Description: FREE Online e-commerce website builder trial for 10 days, activate your site for as little as $19.95/month. Free domain name with activation. 100′s of web site templates and loads of features.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kind regards

This email is not spam. We are genuine SEO company seeking a reciprocal link exchange with you. However if you do not want to be contacted by us again please unsubscribe by replying to this email.

Is your website a hit? We can guarantee to get your site in the top 10 positions in Google for your chosen keywords! See our proven results on this page of our website: http://www.LINKREMOVEDONPURPOSE/customers.htm Over 4 pages full of top 10 results for as little as $200/£100 per month!

Be cautious if you receive these… They wanted to give me a link on their adult literacy website in exchange for me linking them on our PR6 site. How would a web design and search engine optimization company benefit from adult literacy links? Still scratching my head on that one. Bottom line: doesn’t work, doesn’t make sense, isn’t like content.