Fraudulent Adult PR Emails
As you might imagine, I get dozens of PR emails a week from people who want me to promote their adult sites (usually sex toy sales sites). And most of them I ignore, because they all look the same after enough years in the business.
However, there’s a difference between ignoring a PR effort (which leaves open the possibility that I’ll notice or care about the next, more creative effort) and deleting it with extreme prejudice and a derisive mental annotation. And that’s what you get when your PR is fraudulent on its face.
Latest example: I got an email (actually I got about four of these at different email addresses, so I know it was a marketing blast) that went like this, with my comments in [brackets] and alterations (to protect the guilty from the attention they desire) in {curly brackets}:
Hello, my name is Elizabeth , [note the extra space left as a consequence of the “writer” not filling in the last name on their email-spam-generating software’s template] I’m the admin for www.{site}.com. We’re a female friendly, Canadian source for Adult [ooh! Capitalized so you know it’s good!] toys and information. We’ve just finished posting a new Vibrator Guide [ooh! ooh!] on our site and would love to share it with your viewers.
Herewith a digression, in the nature of Bacchus’s suggested alternative Vibrator Guide: “Batteries go in one end. Other end goes on or near her/your clit. Cheap ones burn out fast. Most won’t survive in the bathtub. Get a rechargeable if you use them a lot. Gold standard for lots of sensation is the Hitachi Magic Wand. Next question?”
I’ll betcha a tube of lube mine is more “female friendly” than the one I got spammed in connection with.
Moving on. The spammy PR email I quoted above is mildly risible, but not, as promised, fraudulent on its face. So, what am I bitching about?
Note that it claims to come from “Elizabeth … the admin” for the promoted site. Guess what email it came from?
{malename} <admin@{site}.com>
As you might imagine, I’ve got some advice for {malename}.
1) It’s possible for a male to publish and market a “female friendly” website. You don’t need a fake Elizabeth as a front-woman.
2) If you do decide to gin up a fake Elizabeth as the public face of your company, you might consider getting “her” her own damned email address. But, you’ll still be a moron, because:
3) In the twenty-first century, a new business venture founded on deception is doomed to failure. The internet slashes through and exposes most lies, and, as people’s bullshit meters grow more sensitive, they learn to avoid obvious bullshit (especially empty commercial bullshit with no point to it or need behind it.)
In fairness to {malename}, I need to point out that “his” name is, technically, gender-ambiguous. But, it still ain’t “Elizabeth” or any variation thereof. So, if “he” is a girl, why create a false Elizabeth? The deception, in this case, solidifies my otherwise-necessarily-tentative gender identification.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=3553
Ooooo I got this one too.
Except that mine started with “First off, great site. Love the info.”
That means they actually read me. Right? Right? :)
Yeah. And they are gonna send you a pony.
Hi,
Well, I do feel as though I must respond. My name IS in fact Elizabeth, Elizabeth Allen. The email account at hand was created by my husband, Chris. He is the ‘tech guy’ for the site, clearly soon to be fired. Though I will accept and confess to us being a sex toy site, and do agree that what you received was in fact 95% a canned email, I do take issue with you considering it spam. We’re a new site, and yes, we sent out the same email to a number of sites like yours (we found those sites from the links on yours). We were merely sharing the information I wrote, with sites we felt might be interested in it.
I personally apologize if I’ve offended you in anyway; it was never my intention to disrupt your day nor was it to spam anyone.
You mentioned that you had received my email multiple times, could you please confirm which email accounts you received it at so that I may remove them from receiving future article links.
Best Regards,
Liz Allen (P.S: It’s actually Elizabeth Shaw for another week, we’re getting married July 4th hence why a last name was omitted as I plan on taking his)
Liz, unfortunately there’s no way for me to confirm what you say here; if you really were Chris Allen operating as a woman named Elizabeth, your comment would doubtless be much the same. That said, I don’t really disbelieve you, and I didn’t take offense. I’m just tired of marketers wanting free advertising, and spamming in an attempt to get it. Your “taking issue” with me considering it spam is just icing on the cake.
What you do not seem to understand is that there have been two or three hundred (or thousand) emails just like yours in my email box in the last year alone. When you send “the same” unsolicited “95% canned” emails out to a bunch of people who don’t know you, that is spam. It’s the quintessential definition of spam. You aren’t motivated by “sharing the information” you wrote, you’re motivated by a desire for free traffic, free advertising, something for nothing. And you are (now, if not previously) lying about it when you pretend you’re trying to share information.
Next time, why not just click the little “advertise on ErosBlog” button in the sidebar? I already know the answer; because you want it for free, and you think generic mass emails are the way to get it. Like it or not, that makes you a spammer.
There are ways to write non-spam marketing emails, but they are tricky, labor-intensive, difficult, time-consuming, and hand-crafted. You can’t do it with a templated email macro.
Bacchus,
I do understand that you, no doubt, receive a tremendous amount of similar emails. I too have operated popular sites in the past and understand how frustrating, and time consuming spam can be. For my contribution, I apologize and assure you that it was never my intention to cause additional work for you.
As mentioned above, it was a canned email, sent to about 15 sites that I felt might be interested in what I had to say. Was I searching for free exposure? Yup. I won’t lie about it. I was hoping you would find the article of interest and share it. It is no obvious that this was not the case. Again, my apologise.
I am not trying to defend the fact that I am a woman, nor am I trying to defend that Chris is in fact going to be my husband. I’m simply providing you with an explanation. The fact of the matter is that Chris has operated sites in the past (nothing similar to mine) and he’s been a huge help to me getting things going. I would imagine, with the million and 1 things going on around the house (new site, marriage, new job to name a few), he either forgot or didn’t think of changing the name in outlook (our super spam generator).
At any rate, I do apologize for the inconvenience, and can at least rest assured that your viewers managed to get a laugh at my expense.
Liz
wow, I should have run that through Word. LOL
They didn’t (yet) send me a pony, but they did send me a copy of the message posted above.
I think this means that they email-spammed and comment-spammed all in one fell swoop.
Awesome!
No aag,
I sent the email to you initially, thinking you were the owner of the site. You send me the link to this thread, so I only assumed it was your site. After realizing it was not, I posted it here.
I assure you, this whole mess will not happen again. I’ve deleted all 15 of the email addresses I had and shall take a much different approach when posting articles in the future.
I think now is the perfect time for a good long post on how, exactly, you do successfully manage that tricky, labor-intensive, difficult, time-consuming process to come out with something hand-crafted that speaks to somebody.
I’m curious, and I think that could potentially help a lot of eager folks like Liz who are a bit clueless and automatically think that a generic e-mail is the way to go.
I mean, not to let the spammers get a better way to hassle you, Bacchus, but to promote a better business model, perhaps.
Oh, and P.S., while I do like Vibrator Guides and learned a lot from them, I still thought this was hilarious:
“Batteries go in one end. Other end goes on or near her/your clit. Cheap ones burn out fast. Most won’t survive in the bathtub. Get a rechargeable if you use them a lot. Gold standard for lots of sensation is the Hitachi Magic Wand. Next question?”
Bacchus, first off, I agree with you over the cookie-cutter emails, the canned responses, and the over glorified spam, right down to the can key taped on the bottom. One thing that is interesting is the fact that she not only opened up a dialog to you, she did it publicly in the form of comments, and took the chastisement in stride, not only from you, but from the potential chastisement of the rest of the readers. That right there sets her above most, who either don’t care, or decide to do the whole email war behind the scenes.
Liz, kudos to you for allowing yourself to be openly flamed for a grievance. Either you are genuinely concerned about your reputation, or you are harboring some deep submissive BDSM tendencies. ;) In either case Chris will be happy! Congrats on the marriage, and GL with that.
One way you could probably have helped would have been to add a little humor, even with a generic email address on the return receipt. Would be better to have it as staff@{website}.com and them make a mention that the pun was intended. That would be one way to personalize the message instead of offering a canned response that doesn’t even have a flip-top and loaded with amber, bubbly liquid. I hope your product succeeds, and that you pull something from this experience. Best of luck to you.
The other day I got an unrelated but similar-in-nature message about my non-adult site. It, too, had the tell-tale space after the name. The fact is, even if it is a legitimate company – even a good one, at that – the canned e-mail approach is sloppy and rude. I completely agree. That -is- the definition of spam.