{"id":585,"date":"2013-12-15T14:53:27","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T22:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/?p=585"},"modified":"2013-12-15T14:53:27","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T22:53:27","slug":"the-opposite-of-spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/15\/the-opposite-of-spam\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opposite of Spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got the most astonishing email the other day. I can only describe it as the opposite of spam, in two different ways. I’ll get to just what the ways were in a minute. First, the back-story.<\/p>\n

It seems it must be a year since I bought John Resig’s Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja<\/cite><\/a>. (I highly recommend it, by the way.) Manning Publications gave me a PDF, shipped me a book, and since then, they’ve periodically sent me other emails for things like half-off sales.<\/p>\n

But then they sent me one titled “We hate to see you go”, that said: “According to our records, it’s been over a year since your last purchase from manning.com. We want to confirm your interest in hearing about news and special offers from Manning.”<\/p>\n

So, the first way this email was unlike spam: It was based on a pre-existing business relationship. Even among the most ardent spam-haters, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone claim this isn’t a valid communiqué.<\/p>\n

But the second way it was unlike spam is that, despite that pre-existing business relationship, it didn’t assume I’d be interested<\/em> in receiving their emails and simply offer me a teensy unsubscribe link in case that were wrong. No, instead, this email explicitly said: “To continue receiving email from us, please click the link below<\/strong> or reply to this message<\/strong>…. If you do not confirm your interest, you will no longer receive any promotional emails from us<\/strong>.” (emphasis in original)<\/p>\n

Wow! The default action is “we’ll stop sending you marketing crap<\/strong>, even though you’ve already bought something from us before.”<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I’ve already clicked on their “keep me subscribed” link. This is the kind of company I do<\/em> want to keep hearing from.<\/p>\n

Marketers, take note: This is how to do it right<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got the most astonishing email the other day. I can only describe it as the opposite of spam, in two different ways. I’ll get to just what the ways were in a minute. First, the back-story. It seems it must be a year since I bought John Resig’s Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja. (I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,152,151,114],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}