I’m accustomed to receiving email spam, but internet marketing pitches are a new breed because they arrive in my inbox, not my spam folder.
The good ones are personable and hard to tell if generic text. The bad ones, like the email I copy below, include spelling errors and attribute me to the wrong website.
Hi
My name is Molly Hall. I’ve just visited your website futurelearn.co.za
and I was wondering if you’d be interested in exchanging links with my
website. I can offer you a HOME PAGE link back from my SEO and Web
Design website which is http://www.saftapp.com/
As mentioned, your link would be placed on the site home page, not on
any “links” pages which may be buried in the site somewhere. I’m sure
this exchange would be benefitial for both of our sites, helping
towards increasing our visibility in search engines.
If you are interested, please add the following information to your
website and kindly let me know when it’s ready. I’ll do the same for
you in less than 24 hours, otherwise you can delete my link from your
site.
Title: Hosted Desktop
URL: http://www.managednetworks.co.uk/
Description: Hosted desktop support services from Managed Networks.
I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time.
Best regards;
Molly Hall
Web Marketing Consultant
I love James Cridland’s response to the spam he received, which I might tailor for Molly.
One more thing, check out what appeared after Molly’s title:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A SPAM OR AUTOMATED EMAIL, IT’S ONLY A REQUEST FOR A LINK EXCHANGE. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS NOT BEEN ADDED TO ANY LISTS, AND YOU WILL NOT BE CONTACTED AGAIN.IF YOU’D LIKE TO MAKE SURE WE DON’T CONTACT YOU AGAIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM: HTTP://WWW.NOMOREMAILS.COM; OR WRITE AN EMAIL TO STOP@NOMOREMAILS.COM. PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR CONTACTING YOU.
Yeah right. If you visit that website, you are asked to fill out a form which I can guess gives you opt-in permission to receive more spam. At least I’m not alone receiving it.
