First let me say that I am all for the concept of contacting potential customers via email. I do it on a daily basis. But what I don’t do is put people I have no relationship with onto a weekly marketing email list and send canned emails touting our services.

SMS marketing has clearly suffered from the email SPAM epidemic, and we work really hard to keep it honest and respectable.

What really gets to me is receiving unsolicited emails from SMS vendors all over the world that are clearly not directed to me personally. If you want me to consider your services, at least find out my name and email, and send me a note. Don’t throw our INFO email address on your list and start the spam stream!

This morning I finally got fed up with one that has been sending endless marketing messages. When I sent back a message asking them to stop, this is the reply I got:

Please fill the form below

If you dont wish to recieve such advertising emails from Routesms Solution Limited ,kindly click on the below link and enter your email-id
Remove My email id from your list
Regards
Namrata Surti
Marketing Manager
———————————
RouteSms Solutions Limited
Office No. 401, 4th Floor, Evershine Mall, Mind Space,New Link Road, Malad (W), Mumbai – 400 064, India
Tel : +91-22-40337676-99 Ext: 618
Mobile: +91-9324725522
Fax: +91-22-40337650
emal-id : namrata.surti@routesms.com
web: www.routesms.com
MSN_ID : namrata.surti@routesms.com
Yahoo-ID: namratas_routesms@yahoo.com
Skype-ID: namratas_routesms
Gtalk: namrata.routesms@gmail.com

You’re kidding me right? You want me to fill out a form and opt-out from something I never opt-in for in the first place? And this is a vendor selling SMS? I wonder what their unsolicited SMS policy is?

So I responded with a note that I am not filling out any forms, please remove me.

And I get back:

what are you talking about ??? i said if you dont want our mails you can click  on the link given below and fill the form thats it

If you dont wish to recieve such advertising emails from Routesms Solution Limited ,kindly click on the below link and enter your email-id
Remove My email id from your list
Regards
Namrata Surti
Marketing Manager

Now this is a respectable organization that I want to do business with. I think I’ll move all our short codes over to them.

Well I for one am proud to say that yesterday we got our first real complaints from 2 people about receiving SMS messages they did not opt in for. We jumped all over it and put it to rest. Not bad after 18 months of service.

(by the way, I just did a spell check and all the errors where in the quoted email from Namrata Surti. I left them in )

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under Mobile Marketing, SMS. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.