Professional marketer here, all of the unsub rates in this thread look nominal (0.1-0.2%).

Also, when we run third party distribution campaigns, a large amount of people, I can look at their hotjar journey and watch in real time their mouse movements as they download a whitepaper, then we call them and they say they never downloaded it.

It’s a mix of lying to the annoying marketing company (I get it), and just plain forgetting you did it.

I switched from Hearthstone Deck Tracker to Firestone Deck Tracker yesterday, I’m not entirely sure if I checked to see I wasn’t signing up for marketing emails, it’s that easy.

Not to mention, I can buy just about any non-EU email address i want on demand.

Also, when we run third party distribution campaigns, a large amount of people, I can look at their hotjar journey and watch in real time their mouse movements as they download a whitepaper, then we call them and they say they never downloaded it.

Can you elaborate a bit on this?

If I’m understanding you correctly, you send out marketing stuff via email, and then you call the ones who clicked through to the landing page did whatever?

yes. Some of the data is anonymized but there are ways around it (i.e. someone downloaded something at 2am and they were the only user, I can work out it’s you from the time stamps)

But I can watch your mouse move around the screen as if I was filming you with my phone (obviously only your mouse pointer, I can’t see your other windows or into your bedroom etc)

I understand how it works, I’m really just surprised that you’re talking about it the way you are - like this is some amazing skill set employed by “professional marketers”.

I can watch your mouse move around the screen as if I was filming you with my phone

Not my mouse obviously because hotjar will obey “do not track” flags from browsers, but ublock will prevent the hotjar script from loading, and prevent sending any telemetry.

I dont know what you mean by “the way i’m talking about it” I’m just describing the function to someone who was unfamiliar with the technology.

Yes, if you deliberately block a piece of software it doesn’t work. I was using “I can see your” to mean “I can see any given person’s” with the caveat of that person not deliberately blocking it, I figured that was taken as read.

There’s more to building out this kind of functionality, including dynamic IDs on clickable elements, A/B testing colors, CTA text, dynamic personalization, client mini-sites, first- and last- click attribution, full funnel attribution, lead scoring and so on…

None of it is crazy if you know how to do it, same with fixing a car, building a cabinet, coding an app or cooking a meal.

However, it’s interesting to me that you scorn how obvious this technology is and easy to use, and then close that most people don’t know about email pixels, cookies (or cookieless server side tracking), and lead scoring. But to call it “scammy” like I’m doing something that literally every business does, including mom and pop stores and amateur dramatic societies, is a little unfair.

Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just talking about what happens in general terms.

Most businesses do not spam potential customers. Any business that provides actual value to its customers doesn’t need to do this.

Honestly it’s infuriating that you think these shady sales tactics are normal or appropriate.

As an aside, marketing involves augmenting products and services so they’re better embraced by various markets.

Sending emails is something else.

Most businesses do not spam potential customers

Depends on how you define spam. A few personalised emails (maybe they were missed? happened to me) with an opt out button, an opt in button and a personalised landing page are nothing crazy.

However it becomes crazy when you track mouse movements, send twelve mails in six weeks, employ ‘dark’ surveillance marketing tactics and relentlessly bite the leg of anyone who remotely looks like they can be pressured into a contract.

So sending a few emails is fine in a business context, but @[email protected]’s company is way overdoing it.

Everyone’s jumping on this “12 times in 2 weeks” thing. I think you should count the number of emails you get from certain companies and I think you’ll find that any sufficiently large company has emailed you more than 12 times.

Amazon emailed me 15 times this week alone. LinkedIn Emailed me 50 times in August.

Amazon emailed me 15 times this week alone.

But you’re already a customer. They didn’t cold mail you and they respect opt outs. I suspect your company doesn’t have a simple ‘I don’t want these emails’ link.

LinkedIn Emailed me 50 times in August.

Because you enabled notifications. Again, they didn’t mail you without having a prior relationship with you and you can easily opt out.

Don’t act like you’re better than those two companies just because you send mails just like them. I don’t think that cold calling or mailing people is wrong, just predatory practices like you described.

Don’t be discouraged to discuss this further though. Just because people have a different opinion than you doesn’t mean that either party is right or wrong.

I suspect you don’t have opt out.

well you are wrong, I do have that, its at the top and bottom of evrry email as well as a link to our privacy policy, as it’s mandated by CAN-SPAM amongst others, and we have further options if the company is flagged as needing HIPAA, GDPR, GLB, CCPA etc - which also trigger different email headers and footers.

I even have a weekly automated pass of replies to emails to check for common phrases indicating they want out like “unsub” “do not” “please stop”

I once had to pull a(n old, different) company out of email blacklists by working very technically with SPF/DKIM/DMARC engineers and issue whole new security certificates across a wide range of web domains so I know full well the impact of non compliance