I recently received an invitation from a friend to join the SMS.ac mobile phone text messaging service. My friend said he never knowingly invited me, and digging around I see that blogger Joi Ito is being potentially sued for calling the SMS “address book synchronization” feature spam after they contacted all the people in his hotmail address-book.
If you are going to introduce a viral component to your marketing initiatives, take the time to test it out and get feedback from on lots of people (novice and expert internet users alike) before rolling it out to customers. I receive roughly 15 emails per week from 4 or 5 dating sites, and that’s just too much email. Giving people a compelling reason to visit a service is one thing, badgering with free trials and fake looking models week after week is another. It makes you look desperate and unprofessional. At some point, you lost me as a potential paying customer. Why not ask me why I keep deleting your emails instead of continuing to send them? Email is cheap and easy, but a successful marketing campaign usually isn’t.
