This morning I had a bit of an odd email promoting some charity thing from Vodafone. Although I don’t recall signing up for the emails, I am a customer of the company, so just clicked the unsubscribe link to remove myself from the mailing list.

The process itself was painless, no need to enter my details to confirm anything – just a straightforward removal service.

Then the confirmation message:

They will take a month to remove me from their mailing lists?

Well, no, not quite – I am removed from the “master list”, but they may have copied my details into other mailing lists for one-off emails and I might still get those.

Now, as someone who used to be involved in email marketing, and still occasionally dips into the industry, this is an appalling way to conclude my relationship with the company.

Not only have I never ever dealt with a company that locks down a marketing campaign 28 days before it is sent out, even if a company were to do that – they should refresh the list of email addresses a few hours before the email is sent to ensure ex-customers are not accidentally contacted.

Anything else would be spam – plain and simple.

As it happens, most companies I have dealt with struggle to deliver their marketing emails on the day they are sent, let alone a month in advance.

If Vodafone UK is unable to do something as simple as removing an email address from mailing lists, then something dire is wrong with their IT platform.

Disclaimer

The mailing list I run for this very website removes your details from my database instantly if you were to unsubscribe.

The Victoria & Albert Museum have just sent out their May highlights email which headlines with:

Celebrate Baroque and win a trip to Mexico

I suspect the number of entries to be low, and hence my chance of winning to be high.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/baroque/competition.html

On a more serious note, while I appreciate it can be difficult for large organisations to change marketing emails at the very last minute, you’d have thought they would have pulled that message as this week is not really ideal for promoting Mexico as a tourist destination.

As one of my hobbies is reading the Early Day Motions in the House of Commons (yes, I am that sad), some of which are serious and some can be quite amusing – I came across this one which was actually quite interesting.

I used to do a little bit of lobbying and still fire off letters to unsuspecting victims to express my views on an issue.

The key thing I was taught when doing letter writing though – is never ever send a “copy/paste” letter to your MP. The MP’s office will get hundreds, if not thousands of identical letters from constituents and will promptly realise that the “concerned voter” is actually an organised campaign by a large organisation.

If I do write a letter, based on an organised campaign I will always state that fact – but then explain why I am personally concerned about the issue and only highlight the research from the organiser which is relevent to my comments.

To his credit, my local MP is quite receptive to these sorts of letters.

I was therefore a bit troubled to read this Early Day Motion this morning:

That this House notes that a campaign by Greenpeace sent around 7,000 largely identical emails to hon. Members who had signed an Early Day Motion about Heathrow; observes that this caused some hon. Members’ mailboxes to become unavailable to constituents who wished to discuss this or other issues or personal problems; further notes that a request to discontinue was not accepted unless hon. Members were willing to commit to vote as the organisation wished; and believes that denial of email service by mass spam is an inappropriate and unpersuasive tactic.

I totally agree with the MP (the audience faints in shock) and think this sort of blunderbluss spamming of MP’s email and postbags is frankly just a waste of time. The MPs are going to, understandably treat 30 identical letters as just one complaint – as it is so obviously from just the one originating source.

Having said that I support the point that a DoS style spamming of their email addresses is a bad idea – I am slightly amused by the campaign to ‘cc every email on a specific date to our illustrious Home Secretary to protest against the government plans to keep a record of every single email transaction I engage in.

Incidentally, having a secure link to my email server – which happens to be in the USA – tends to render that law impotent.