So there’s a little twitter conversation with a spamming scumbag happening on Twitter. One Mr. Douglas Karr seems to think that if you’re spamming people on LinkedIn you’re not really spamming. I and many others disagree.
Here’s your forum for debate in more than 140 characters, Douglas. Have at it….
This is absolutely not what was said, nor do I ever advocate spam. The question is one of permission. I did not SPAM LinkedIn. For those people connected with me, I sent an email that offered a double opt-in to communicate with me and my business further. The email was only sent to those who had accepted or offered a connection. The email had an unsubscribe link. The email requested that people double opt-in for future communication.
As well, the email was not soliciting any sales. It was promoting a new newsletter I’m distributing to my network.
Just for the record. The tracking on this campaign:
31.58% open rate, 15.20% CTR, 2.73% bounce, 1.95% Unsub, 0.00% Complaints. 10% Opt-in to new list via double opt-in.
Complaint rate does not include the 1 complaint I received via Twitter from the 1,500 recipients.
The more I debate this with Doug, the more I have a problem with *every* facet of it.
The email says basically, “I’m sending this because we’re linked up on LinkedIn.” But the from is “DK New Media” company, not Doug. WTF is DK New Media? Why do I care?
Doug says it’s a double opt-in. Maybe that’s his intent, but the execution suggests otherwise. There are twenty links in the email. There’s no opt-in button above the fold (or anywhere that I can find, to be honest).
Doug keeps switching between defending his practice and trying to call me out based on what he thinks my employer is or isn’t doing. With 750+ employees, I have no clue what each individual is doing at every given time. But if they were doing what Doug is doing, I’d take issue with them, just like I did with Doug. I’ve been fighting spam for 10+ years and in my current role I regularly terminate spammers. I do work with our marketing folks to keep them on the best path to prospect without spamming. I even reference what we ourselves do when guiding clients on how to do the same.
So then you get past ALL of that — and the email is still spam. An opt-in request email is commercial, it was not generated by an affirmative action on my part, and it was done in bulk. Spam, end of story.
Doug is claiming that the affirmative action on my part was linking up to him on LinkedIn. I disagree — the LinkedIn terms of service (which Doug told me to go read) prohibit spamming your contacts. Nor is CAN-SPAM’s affirmative consent standard is not met here by any means.
20+ people on Twitter have already loudly disagreed with Doug, and more keep coming. I’m not saying that the whole world agrees with ME, but it’s clear that the whole world sure as hell doesn’t agree that what he did was a best practice.
I have to agree with Al, here. I’d really like to make some additional comments, but Al has covered it well enough that I’d only parrot him….
While I’ll give Douglas the benefit of the doubt that he meant nothing malicous, he broke some cardinal rules in his methods as Al so eloquently pointed out above.
The take-away for those that think that LinkedIn absolves them of email marketing best practices should take note of Al’s comments to be sure that they don’t walk into the same bee’s nest.
Mr. Karr, I’ve seen the email, and if I had received such an email from an LI connection of mine…well I would have “un-connected” with them. What you did may have skirted the letter of the law, but it was 100% against the spirit of the law. There are other ways to communicate with your LI connections and let them know that you are creating a new newsletter and securing their opt-in. In my humble opnion you took the connection (“relationship”) for granted. I say to you sir, “Bad form, bad form”.
Douglas,
What you’ve done isn’t appropriate. Using connections in social networks, outlook, bowl full of biz cards, list on a website, etc isn’t permission. Spam is unsolicited email marketing for the most part; some deceptive and some not. Harvesting emails is also bad practice; seems like you’re harvesting from Linkedin.
You’ve pointed out “Opt-in”, “Business”, “Double Opt-in” and a few other terms that relate to email marketing, but I’m not sure you truly understand the terms and the practices behind them.
“Single Opt-in” does not mean we’re Facebook buddies or Linkedin mates for that matter. So, sending your Linkedin list an unsolicited email to confirm “Double Opt-in” isn’t good “business”.
Fortunately for you, enforcement is lax, vast amounts of people aren’t savvy about the rules of email, more people like you exist and SPAM is just as prevalent as legitimate email marketing. Having an “Opt-out” list is great, but that’s not a work around for not appropriately assigning permissions to contacts on your “mailing list”. Linkedin, my friend, isn’t a CRM and it’s damn sure not a subscription center for your email marketing campaigns.
So, my advice is to grow your list with other methods. You seem fairly level headed, a nice enough guy to understand that this type of permission manipulation will not soon go unpunished. To my point, you’ve already disturbed quite a few key players in the email space. Tread carefully.
@Rory – Damn! I wish I’d have said that – and so nicely, too. 🙂
I’ll preface my comments by saying I agree with the majority here that connecting on LinkedIn does not mean you can start sending me marketing or bulk messages.
With that out of the way, I think that the criticism is a bit harsh. I’m not saying the way Doug responded was great or even good, but I think maybe this is a big to do about nothing.
People I connect with on LinkedIn tend to be people I have interacted with through some means (in person, email, twitter…) and by connecting with them, I am saying it’s okay to email me. It’s okay to email me directly 1:1.
I do agree that the method through which Doug seems to have sent the “opt-in” was wonky, I’m saying I would be okay if John, for instance, emailed me directly and asked if I would subscribe to his newsletter/emails. Happens all the time. I’d be surprised if you haven’t gotten one of those. Do you “un-connect” with those people?
In summary, I agree that the method=bad; but sending a request to LinkedIn connections is nothing new and is, in part, what it can be used for.
-Kelly Lorenz
Wow did you choose the wrong people to pick an email argument with Douglas!
Very well said @Rory 🙂
I think everyone agree’s Douglas’ actions were miles away from best practice and very misguided to say the least. So I will not simply repeat what has already been said.
Sufficeth to say Douglas, your actions were NOT good never mind best practice.
That said I think “scumbag” is a little harsh, imho, foolish actions from a seriously misguided individual, but appears to be one who is open to re-education. At least that is my hope.
Happy new year to all!
@Rory BOOM! I especially like the part when you said, “Linkedin, my friend, isn’t a CRM and it’s damn sure not a subscription center for your email marketing campaigns.” Mmm!
I really hope this practice doesn’t catch on–I find LinkedIn’s corporate messages to be annoying enough–I don’t need weekend e-mail marketers sending me junk too.
It’s quite unfortunate that Douglass is not worth his weight in best practices. If that were the case, he could write numerous tutorials on the subject.
@Andrew – okay, I’ll give you “scumbag” as being a bit harsh, but sometimes being nice is mistaken for naive and I don’t want anyone to wonder where I stand…. 🙂
There is no difference between using LinkedIn or a business card to imply opt-in to; announcements, promotions or newsletters… they are both wrong. Simply because I connected with an individual doesn’t imply that they can send me every marketing communication they choose to until I opt-out or complain (Which I did BTW – 0% ha!).
The Argument of DOI is moot at this point – the newsletter was not (as Al pointed out) appropriately executed from the point of the purpose (articles and no clear DOI call to action), and a fully functional “If you no longer want to hear from me – “unsub here” link. At the leastthis implies I need to tell you to stop – defiantly not double opt-in.
I’m sorry but, Good intentions don’t net you a free pass on delivery/permission/execution. Poor execution, even with good intentions, gets you a free lesson from a number of very passionate industry experts – people that have seen this type of spam/non-spam before – and have learned why it’s just bad.
Result – a few less connections on LI/Twitter/etc… and a google history that remembers this conversation forever.
MV – @emailkarma
I think we are crystal clear where you stand JC 🙂 and I love you for it!
… I just hope that Douglas takes something away from this and rethinks his strategies in future
The interesting thing here is that many of you, aside from Al, are arguing this but you don’t know me, you don’t know the communication history I’ve had in the past, you haven’t seen the email, I wasn’t selling anything and you don’t know the nature of my relationship with Al.
I’m not a friend of Al. I’m have no personal connection with Al whatsoever. I think we’ve met on one or two occasions. So… the jest of our relationship is relative to email marketing, deliverability, and marketing technology.
As for ‘harvesting’, this is simply nonsense. I worked with Al’s company and we migrated hundreds of customers data between purchasing systems, CRMs, customer lists, prospect databases, etc… and the first thing we would do is get the list cleansed and then push an email out asking people to opt-in.
I know for a FACT that this was a best practice, because we worked with Al’s team to do it. It’s not SPAM when you already have a relationship with permission to contact the person.
Al’s argument is that I didn’t have permission and that a connection on LinkedIn is not permission. I have read through all the documentation, privacy policy, etc. on LinkedIn and I don’t see this anywhere. When you connect with me on LinkedIn, I am not forcing it. It asks your PERMISSION to be “connected with my professional network”.
What is the intent of a professional network@f3 Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or other social mediums, LinkedIn requires permission to provide access to someone’s data.
I recognize your argument, I simply disagree with it. I’m not trying to skirt the issue – quite the opposite! If I were a spammer, I would have simply dumped everyone into my list and started sending newsletters. Instead, I sent them a DOUBLE OPT-IN to request that permission.
So – I have provided 3 different means:
1. You gave me permission to connect with you on LinkedIn.
2. I sent you an email asking your permission to send you my newsletter.
3. You can unsubscribe, or you could do nothing. Either way, I’m not going to communicate with you any more.
This doesn’t violate CAN-SPAM. This doesn’t violate LinkedIn. This is not unsolicited email – you provided permission for me to contact you. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from me personally, me professionally, my blog, my company… you provided me with access to your contact information for the purpose of DOING BUSINESS.
That’s exactly what I did.
My all-time favorite Al Iverson quote is, “CAN-SPAM is the last gasp of the Permission Challenged”.
But since you brought up the (you) CAN-SPAM Act; the Act addresses “promotional” messages. Nowhere does it say “promotional messages that only sell things”.
Mailing someone not opted-in asking them to opt-in, regardless of double, triple, triple with signed statement and DNA, might make an arguement to call it an “append”, and we all know how I feel about that…. http://redpillemail.com/blog/2010/the-value-of-email-appending-the-saga-continues.html
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or even MyFaceLinkInTwitter isn’t a messaging or MLM platform….
Again, you say “not opted-in”. I argue that Al WAS absolutely opted in. He expressly provided permission through LinkedIn to connect me in his professional network.
Al gave permission. Period. End of story. LinkedIn doesn’t precipitate what type of communication happens within the network… whether it’s a phone call, a direct mail piece, email, using InLink… there’s NO guidance whatsoever.
If Al doesn’t want me to communicate with him, it’s pretty easy… he should have never said that he WANTED TO.
Permission to be in your network, and as Rory said, your network isn’t CRM.
I’m sure if you’d have disclaimed that you used your network as a marketing database Al probably wouldn’t have accepted….
That shouldn’t be too hard to understand.
What? So people aren’t supposed to actually communicate with their network@f4! What the hell is a business network for@f5 You guys are absolutely INSANE!
You just keep throwing out more terms “list”, “harvesting”, “disclaim”, “marketing”…. all bullshit. Now you’re trying to classify or marginalize the relationship and that, somehow, I should have explained it to Al.
Oh… wait a second. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID!!!!! I told people that we were connected on linkedIn, I’m keeping my network up to date with this new, great newsletter… if you’d like to receive it, please SUBSCRIBE.
You guys can gang up, tell me it’s wrong, call me names… whatever you want. Here’s the deal: 0% complaints. Above average open rate. Great conversion rate.
Buh-bye!
You know that when people accept an invitation to “LinkIn” they do so to connect to the people on the other end.
If you stated in your LinkIn invite that accepting your invitation was de facto opting in to your promotional messages, then you would have something more to stand on that a broad definition of “communication”.
I’m curious why LinkedIn would partner with Xobni on an email integration if they thought emailing your LinkedIn network was wrong
http://techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/xobni-gets-even-better-with-linkedin-data-for-your-contacts/
Fascinating stuff… actually emailing your business network… for business. Who would have thunk it?
Actually Spam is an email someone didn’t ask for or opt-in for, and I agree with Rory: Linkedin isn’t your personal CRM. And I don’t need to see the email or receive it to understand the issue.
A single message through Linkedin asking for involvement would have been a better way to go.
Though chances are those would have been ignored. Quoting great stats on the mailing doesn’t alleviate the spam issue.
Just my 2-cents.
Cheers, Chris
Well, it can’t *exactly* be a zero percent complaint rate. Because I know of at least one complaint sent to the ESP. You can keep waggling that big ole stats finger at us, doesn’t mean that it’s true, correct or best practice. Or even legal. It’s a bit like, wow, look at all this money I made from stealing car stereos! The ends do not justify the means.
Doug – you said “Fascinating stuff… actually emailing your business network… for business. Who would have thunk it?” – apparently it isn’t working. Why would businesses hire you on, if this is one of your attempts and getting new business?
Al gave you permission to connect on LinkedIn. That’s it. Full stop. You incorrectly assumed that this gave you permission to do other things, too. That was a faulty assumption.
Some of the best names in the business – many of them the very same folks who, over the last 14 years, have had a hand in formalizing and propagating the same best practices you cite as a defense – are telling you in plain language that you are wrong.
Maybe you should listen to them. Maybe you should entertain the possibility that you are incorrect.
The real issue here is this idea of using your LinkedIn for prospecting your new list just doesn’t scale. If I have 600+ contacts (and I do) and they all sent me even just one opt-in email for their products it would simply ruin LinkedIn for me I’d close my account and change my email address.
Now looking at your network – how many people are you connected to? Do you want newsletters from each one of them? Not likely.
Simply put: Treat others information as you’d have them treat your information.
MV- @emailkarma
(Also, a zero percent complaint rate just means the e-mail filters are working as designed. No one complains about spam that’s already in the junk folder.)
picking into the pedentry here, when you connect on linkedin you are connected to their network on linkedin, so you communicate over linkedin. Same way as you communicate over facebook with your friends and twitter with your followers?
Surely stating that because linkedin don’t specify how you connect with your connections is just looking for a loop hole when you get caught taking a chance on some easy data.
From some angles Douglas, you seem to really think that you have done nothing wrong? While I can empathise with how you came to this conclusion, I like many many other people, don’t agree remotely. I also find your lack of ability or inclination to accept the reasoning provided to you by what appears to be the leading minds of email marketing, slightly concerning.
It is important to realise that, however good the opportunity is, connecting on linkedin is not permission to communciate outside of linkedin without explicit and blatently obvious permission. This excludes small print and not saying something.
To reiterate: “Treat others information as you’d have them treat your information” @emailkarma – 20mins ago
There is one thing that I think you’re missing here Doug.
Permission
People provided permission to connect with you and not your company. Your professional network, not your companies. You send the email from your company and not you. Thus, permission is invalid and the message is spam. Anything after that is just irrelevant because you did not start with permission from your company. It’s an email from your company asking for an action where there was no permission.
Just becuase you get 0 complaints does not mean that it’s wrong.
Ryan nails the LinkedIn argument on the head. A LinkedIn connection means one-to-one connection, not one-to-company connection. That “permission to connect” is limited to the individual, not the companies that individual is associated with.
Citing statistics to back up poor email practices does not help your cause. Think about it: Why is spam so prevalent? Because it works. And any spammer would tell you it works so leave them alone.
I’m pretty sure businesses have connection ability on LinkedIn now. If Al were connected to your business entity, it’s not necessarily spam because you could argue prior relationship. But since he is connected to you and not your business, it is spam.
Thanks Scott.
One correction. My statement “Just becuase you get 0 complaints does not mean that it’s wrong.” was a typo because I should not multi-task sometimes. It should have been
Just because you get 0 complaints does not mean that it’s right.
Thanks to everyone for trying to educate Douglas by sharing your thoughts and opinions.
If Douglas is a smart guy he’ll take a moment from being defensive and realize that he can learn a lot from the comments posted here. While I’m sure that he thinks that we’re all just ganging up on him; the reality is that we’re policing our own industry.
Douglas is a self-proclaimed proponent of “communication”, yet it seems only “communication” by his definition, because, after all, aren’t we just all trying to communicate our point of view to him?
See how much fun parsing words and playing loose with their meaning in context can be kind of fun?
I do feel a little bad for calling him a scumbag. Not because it was harsh – I don’t have a problem with that – but becuase when used with “spammer” it’s just redundant….
Now that you’ve seen the consequences from the industry when you blend social networks and email the wrong way, be sure to check out Al Iverson’s post on doing it the right way –> http://www.spamresource.com/2011/01/linkedin-list-building-opportunity.html
And then be sure to read Laura Atkins suggestion at Word to the Wise –> http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2011/01/social-networks-and-bulk-email/
I’m not in the email biz. I have 360 Linkedin contacts. DK New Media IS basically Doug Karr. It’s his own small business. I don’t mind marketing emails from my connections on Linkedin. It’s way easier to unsubscribe from Linkedin communications than it is email. I smell fear here. Fear from email biz people that think social platforms like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter will render email useless in the next 5 to 10 years. I just say I smell the fear, not that I believe that will be the case. Doug did nothing wrong IMO. Nothing at all. It sounds like we have a bunch of Linkedin connection spammers here. You all must have 500+ connections that are barely real if at all. You probably shouldn’t call them connections if you would be this offended at receiving a message like this from one of them. It’s like someone that went to my high school that I don’t remember or know sending me a friend request on Facebook. To each his own. It takes two to connect. It takes two to friend. Haters.
Interesting thoughts, but I’ve got to be honest with you, this is the kind of stuff that Doug played with me that got him here.
For starters, leading with the, and I’m paraphrasing, “you guys must be scared” isn’t really the approach that you want to take with this group.
What it shows is that you are weak in your position so you make a feeble attempt to switch the conversation from what we’re saying to you to what must be wrong with us.
That might work with some, but it just pisses me off….
I’m going to take a wild guess that you haven’t read anything written on this site, but you might want to start with this one http://redpillemail.com/blog/2009/the-800lb-email-gorilla.html
Supposing that you are as lazy as your arguments, let me sum it up for you – email is the proto social media that pre-dates any sort of web browsing and anything associated it; it is what the internet was built on, and, along with search, is driven by.
I’m not going to argue it with you; it’s fact, look it up, do your own homework. And while you at it, why not check out the RFC specs that FB’s not-email-email-that’s-going-to-rule-the-world is based on.
Eh, I’m feeling generous so will save you the time – it’s built on the same RFC specs that all other email platforms are built on.
While I admire you defending your friend, you may also want to step back from defense and maybe learn a little something from people that really do this for a living.
And I’m sorry, but a year as an “Integration Consultant” (and don’t even get me started on that) and another 1.5 as a Product Manager for an ESP four years ago doeswn’t qualify Doug to carry water for the talent here trying to, as Doug might say, “communicate” a message much more valuable than his inappropriate promotion soliciting newsletter subscriptions.
Am I a hater?
Of spamming and scummy practices, you bet I am and I take that as a compliment and wear it as a badge of honor.
Am I or others in my industry striking out in fear that guys like you using social networks are going to make us all dinosaurs?
The way I’m in your face should prove otherwise.
Personally I wouldn’t violate the trust of my connections by spamming them through a social network, but I respect my connections and know that they didn’t connect with me to be marketed to. They connected with me, not my business.
So, let’s see; Doug’s “OMG I’m so offended that you would talk to me like that” victim card didn’t play.
Your “you all must be afraid” attempt to switch the conversation about what’s wrong with your methods to how mean we all are didn’t play out so well.
And since I appreciate you realizing that I am a hater of spamming and slimy email practices, where are you going to go now?
Tell you what; do a little home work, put your big girl panties on, and then come back and show me where we’re wrong instead of trying to intimidate anyone into backing off, ’cause that ain’t gonna happen…. 🙂
I posted this on Magill’s blog but it is equally valid here:
“Connecting with someone on LinkedIn is not an invitation to be added to someone else’s marketing mailing list. If anyone on my contact list did that, I’d be removing the connection post-haste as it shows both a lack of manners and a total lack of understanding of the target audience – me! It is just plain not ok. I don’t connect with people on LinkedIn to be sent advertising. Maybe some of you guys do?”
Letter of law: not violated, perhaps. Spirit? In shreds.
This man is a poster child for how to not be a connection of mine. Not that he cares, of course, but there it is.
I came across this discussion in trying to get insight into how to market to my LinkedIn network. I’ve been thoroughly educated and thoroughly amused. 🙂