I'm gonna chat with him tomorrow about it but I also invited him to join the conversation online because although I certainly have my thoughts I do things like this for the community and I think it's very good of WPPI to respond.
So... again my grief WAS NOT that they send promotional email. There is nothing wrong with that. My problem was that some of the vendors were breaking the Can-Spam laws by not offering the ability to Opt-out.
So it's time for solutions people. How can WPPI monitor and control this or how should they respond to vendors who violate their agreement with WPPI and the law? Post up here b/c they are listening and hopefully they will join the conversation.
7 comments:
I've never been to WPPI - I was all excited to go next year, but I don't want to just enter an arena of advertisers and spam. I think WPPI should have a reporting policy where you can send them the names of the companies that are spamming without the opt-out option, then they should fine those companies. If they put something like that in their agreement, companies wouldn't do it for fear of the fine. WPPI has a reputation to uphold, and I'm sure they would not want to tarnish it because of a few unruly vendors.
All email marketing should come directly from WPPI with the ability to opt out 1 time. Just my two cents.
Even if each of these companies give you the ability to opt out i don't have enough hours in my day to go from email to email opting out of junk mail.
Cris...
Companies that don't have the opt out get penalized somehow the next year. Seems like that would help :)
I think if I let a company scan my badge at the tradeshow, I should know I will get an email and would except to be able to opt-out if I choose to do so. But what about companies whose booth I didn't visit and likewise didn't allow to scan my badge? And what about all the promotional mail coming to my mailbox? What a major pain to write or contact every company to get taken off the mailing list when I never asked to be on it. I would rather delete emails than throw such much mail away. But in summary, I do agree, getting so many *unsolicited* emails post WPPI is annoying.
Seems to me that a list controlled by WPPI would work. Vendors can post to the list and it is in turn forwarded to the registered users. If the user wants out they could be removed from the overall list or if a vendor is abusing the list WPPI could block them from posting.
Might be overly simple though, what if I want mail from some vendors and not from others...still its a though.
It's funny i got a ton of spam - junk-e-mail this year, even though i didn't attend WPPI. It's an interesting premise for WPPI to control the list. It may even be a revenue stream for them. But, they likely profit well form the show itself. I've also found that i've repeatedly Opted out from many vendors but still receive their spam junk-e-mail. So it seems that my name is being sold or transfered without my knowing. Maybe there should be an opt out from WPPI. As in a Privacy of Our Information. That seems a better overall. What do you think?
Hey Guys,
Thanks for the input. We are doing our best to fix the problem and hopefully will have something in place soon. In the meantime, please forward me any emails you feel are spam from WPPI. If you want to call me, that works too. My contact info is below:
George Varanakis
Group Publisher/Executive Vice President
Rangefinder/After Capture//WPPI
310-846-4770 x324
310-897-5602 CELL
george@rfpublishing.com
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