I suppose I like the PR emails, then again I’m only getting them from one source.

If PR peeps do their jobs right and respect our time, we’ll do ours right in checking our e-mails with more attention. Time’s too precious these days to consider each e-mail. Yes, there are days when I’m free to check the first line of some PR spam, but those days are rare, and on days when the e-mail box is flooded? No chance, amigo.

Oh, and minus a bazillion points for anyone who titles their PR mail “URGENT!”

I know that spam is in conflict with the web 2.0 mindset, but I think it is helpful to consider the difference between a web 2.0 style business model and the types of business models used by most spammers.

Most spammers run business models that are not sensitive to customer perception. They are there to exploit an opportunity that will only exist for a short time, and when its gone, they will be on to the next project.

Makes sense to me. I’m not directly involved with content creation, but I work at a news outlet. (Yeah, in “old media.”) I’ve seen it many times where something would be completely ignored until a physical fax or otherwise came through only for the producer to discover an e-mail had been sent to the newsroom e-mail account on the subject hours ago.

-Adam

my question is to the companies that *hire* PR firms who handle outreach like this…

I try to think of it this way. Do I read e-mail blasts that are sent to me personally? 99.9% of the time: No. So why on earth would I want to inflict something I find so annoying on other people that I want to build good working relationships with? It amazes me…

There is a perspective in this post I didn’t understand in your original tweet. Were you referring to all forms of email marketing in all contexts, or just in the case of “Bloggers, Veronica & Friends, get spammed by people who want product reviews or media attention.”?

What is “PR Spam”?

Email is a powerful, cost effective tool.

I advocate the use of targeted, opt-in email marketing, but that’s not blog spam is it…

-J

Otherwise I’ll usually at least glance at the subject line and first sentence, then delete if it’s not of interest. Most reps send one follow-up (which I also delete) and then leave me alone. Any moderately savvy PR person understands that no answer is the answer, because no one has time to reply “no” to every unsolicited message.

That’s not to say I haven’t blocked some especially annoying senders, but overall I think of unsolicited PR messages as just a hazard of the job. It takes less than five minutes a day to glance through them and hit the delete key, and sometimes I do find something cool that’s worth writing about.

Great products don’t need spamming. We’ll know about them soon or later, because they are great products. Friends will talk about it, you’ll read about it and you’ll see tweets about it.

I think we’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. Personally I cannot stand it when someone wastes trees by sending me physical releases. It actually angers me a bit. First off, I’m a blogger, I work in the digital realm, why send me information on a dead standard like ink on paper? If I read it I’m just going to pull the information I need and then recycle it. The whole thing is a complete waste – paper, ink, postage, time, etc. I wish companies would stop sending out hardcopy releases, and fortunately it seems most have.

For physical products, I’d prefer a company check with me first to see if I want to receive their product before they send me one. It is just wasteful if they send me something I don’t care about, or don’t have time to review. And it feels a bit like they’re trying to guilt trip me into looking at their product. “We sent you one, now you have to review it.” Which is actually more likely to hurt my opinion than help it. I like it when they contact me via email and ask if I’d be interested – and don’t push it on me if I decline.

(PS. Hi Dave! )

For companies and products I actively cover I do read all of their emails. There are some I know I have no interest in, and if they blast me I just delete them. In between are the emails I skim to see if they warrant a deeper reading. I can usually tell pretty quickly if I have any interest in something. It also depends on my day. If I’m busy then I have less patience for a random email, but if I’m having a slow day then I’m more open to checking out new things.

On the other side of the coin I’m the ‘Blogger Liaison’ for Sling Media. Well, officially I’m a Beta Program Manager, but when the person who had been handling blogger relations (Dave Zatz) moved on earlier this year I took over the role to help out. So I inherited an established contact list and from time to time someone sends me new contact info with instructions to add them to my list.

I’m working on updating things over time and I’m hoping to break things down into multiple lists for our different product areas. As Sling is growing I want to give bloggers more options on what announcements and news to receive – so, say, a Mac site doesn’t get emails on a new Windows release. Because that’s the kind of thing I like to see as a blogger myself. It’s something I’m working on as I find time.

I think that email updates are a great tool – but like all tools they can be misused. I resist sending out updates to bloggers for every little thing, trying to reserve it for real news like a product launch. I want our messages to be welcomed, not reviled. So I try to treat bloggers the same way I prefer to be treated as a blogger.