I'm declaring war on spam

Ok. This is war. I’m taking control of my inbox.

I’m officially taking an unsubscribe, or filter approach to all marketing emails. If you still want me to see your marketing materials, then make your stuff so good that a reputable blogger will write about it, and I’ll see it rise as a popular article on twitter, or through one of the blogs I’m following on Google reader + feedly. If you’re a company of interest to me I may tune in to your twitter feed - but only if you’re using it for important news, and not just filling the twitterverse with incessant spam. If your stuff is really interesting, I might just subscribe to your RSS feed directly.

You have permission to send me information I need (like a service I’ve subscribed to is about to expire), but you no longer have permission to use that opt-in to sell me stuff I haven’t asked for.  If I want it - I’ll search for it.  If you send me unsolicited offers intermingled with important stuff - you’re going to lose me as a customer because I’ll have setup a Gmail filter to add your email address to my killfile (a simple filter that checks for email address or domains that I’ve got annoyed with and silently deletes the messages).

As someone in the marketing business myself… I promise to continue to influence my peers to provide choice - so that you can access our content on-demand, and on your own schedule (via blogs, twitter), OR via an email newsletter if that works for you.

Image Creative Commons: freezelight