Marketing emails, part deux

5 years ago

Amazingly it seems, crass, irrelevant – and dare I say it – spammy marketing emails are still going strong and arriving by the couple-of-dozen-plus every day in my inboxes since my last post about the subject (now two years ago!). I’m also seeing more and more where they start off by saying something along the lines of “I researched you on LinkedIn,” but that’s a post for another day.

Yesterday, I got a friggin’ wonderful one about SEO, but first a little levity from my Twitter feed with other examples.

Clueless marketing email subject: "Point me in the right direction"
Me: <doesn't look up, points to the Exit sign>

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 1, 2019

Email: "Hope this email reaches you well."
Me: Well, to be honest it looks a little peaky. Not looking good at all. I'd put it down.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 1, 2019

Email subject: "Office 365 Security Concerns"
Me: Outlook has auto-filed it in my Junk folder, so everything seems to be working just fine here.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 1, 2019

Email subject: "The Email All Professional Engineers Read"
Me: <deletes without reading it, goes back to his programming project>

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 10, 2019

Email: "I propose to connect on a chat or call with our team to evaluate any synergies to work together."
Me: <steps away very slowly, reaching out to the Delete button...>

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 16, 2019

Email: Blah blah, then "please reply to this email, and we will share more details about our company from an official email address."
Me: Wow, talk about scammy behavior.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 18, 2019

Email: "We will share more details about our company and work once you will respond to us."
Me: In a world of crappy marketing emails, this has got to take the biscuit.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 21, 2019

Email: "See how you're peers and tackling the CCPA!"
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me: Nope, I got nuttin'.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) October 24, 2019

Email: "It's been some time since you opened an email from us."
Me: And, yes, there's the URL to a 1-pixel image, with a GUID ref attribute so you can track me. F*** OFF!
Me: <aside> thanks, Outlook, for chucking this in the Junk folder and not downloading the image.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) November 6, 2019

Email: "This email is a follow up for the voicemail I left on October 24th."
Me: you mean the voicemail you had to leave because I looked at the caller id and refused to answer the phone? And now an email that I'm just going to delete without reading past that first sentence? OK

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) November 7, 2019

Email: "My email missed you last week."
Me, Yeah, I ducked.

— Julian M Bucknall (@JMBucknall) November 11, 2019

Phew!

And, now the SEO one. I own several domains, including, obviously, boyet.com, and so every now and then I get those utterly dodgy emails that have a subject like “twofoldlogic.com is about to expire.” Me, I’ve set up reminders so my domains don’t expire without me knowing about it, so it already looks scammy. This one arrived yesterday (November 11). It continues (badly):

Your Domain SEO Listing are shown below set for renewal and need to be processed within the next 48 hours.

Apart from the bad English, it indicates that I have until November 13 to respond. But then it says:

Expire Time:
48 hours from 04/11/2019

So, its SEO listing has already expired then since we’re past November 6? But wait!

This domain seo submission for twofoldlogic.com limited time offer will end in 2days from 06/11/2019.

So, it expired on November 8 then. I’ll just sob quietly that twofoldlogic.com will never be added to this SEO listing, and hence no one will ever find it. Oh well. C’est la vie.

(Aside: I went to check on the domain name that this SEO listing “company” uses. It was created on November 4, 2019. Riiiiight, totes legit. Using a VPN connection to mask my IP address plus Chrome’s Incognito window, I see that visiting the URL redirects to a company called “SEO SCOUT 24” in Panamá. Yeah, right, bye!)