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When Doing PR For Anti-Spam Firm... Don't Spam

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-you-can't-make-up dept.

netbuzz writes "Rule #1 when doing PR for an antispam vendor: Don't spam. This isn't exactly brain surgery, yet the fellow at a PR agency called Rocket Science managed to violate Rule #1 while attempting to drum up publicity for Singlefin, which provides e-mail, IM and Web filtering services to the likes of Juno and NetZero. He also violated Rules #2 and #3." Given the hundreds of press releases I get in my inbox on a weekly basis, PR folks in general need to learn that lesson regardless of their clients.

2 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Screw ups by linvir · · Score: 5, Informative

    By the looks of things, only 116 actual mails were sent. In fact... the whole thing is actually just a big chain of fuckups.

      1. Someone at Rocket Science somehow didn't know who they were meant to email, so they just sent it to all the addresses they could find.
      2. They didn't think to BCC, so all the To: addresses were visible.
      3. Obviously, with a big single mail like this, they couldn't address it properly
      4. They forgot to stroke the ego of the nobody editor of some website
    2. Mr. Egomaniac Editor then wrote a very sensationalised blog entry about the incident, incorrectly referring to it as 'spam'.
    3. And submitted it to Slashdot
    4. Taco accepted the submission

    When will someone step up and be the hero in this story?

  2. Re:Perfect Marketing by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think Network World's complaint is completely overblown. They guy sent 11 messages to various writers at a publication that is completely on-target.
    OK, maybe he could have done some research as to whom at that publication might write about their product, but heck, it's completely related to their business.

    And 11 messages is completely different than sending out 4.8 million ads for V1agrka.

    FWIW, I read about Singlefin.com some time ago, I signed up (free, forever, up to 10 mailboxes) to test it for clients, (but never did).

    One thing interesting: On signing up on their site, I clicked submit for my registration, and almost immediately the phone rang. Allan from Singlefin. I have to say they are right on top of their business, and even though I haven't yet tried it I think it's very nice of them offering free service for a small number of mailboxes. The way it works is you redirect your MX to them, they filter the mail and send it on to your mailserver. Pretty nice. If you have the guts to let someone else be your MX, that is.

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