FC: Response from etoy.com

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

***********

I wrote yesterday:

> One politech member wrote in to say that he supports etoys.com, but it's a
> slim preference since etoy.com/toywar.com has been spamming to get its
> views out.

I meant to say, of course, that the politech member supports *etoy.com*. My
mistake. In any case, my message got forwarded to them. This is their
response (which sounds reasonable to me).

-Declan

**********

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 09:54:04 +0100
From: zai <press.speaker () toybomb com>
Reply-To: press.speaker () toybomb com
To: declan () well com
Subject: does etoy spam ? 
:
:
:

hi declan.

i think we met at ars electronica this year...

what's going on here?

> declan (who is a reporter for WIRED and TIME magazines) is saying you
> people are spamming to get your message iut.
> i doubt you're doing that--so if you aren't, you should let him know
> this.  a lot of people read his stuff.


we do not spam.

we have a address database with about 5000 addresses.
collected over 5 years by more then 10 members (the seven
known etoy guys /agents and some very close freelancers).

over time we cleaned this addresses again and again.
since a year i do the "address list work" personally because we had an
internal fight about the politics of this list.

i did three things :

-i tried to minimize the out going messages to about 6 per year.
(at the moment we had to drop this because we lost our domain
its the only way to communicate in a direct way) ...but we
dindt send out more then 4 since we lost our domain.
-i apologize every time and offer human (!) help to people who have
problems  with unsubscribtion (there are many problems which can cause
confusion: old addresses, forwards, maybe even scripts on our side
whatever... nothing in this world is 100% reliable) that's why i respond

personally since i took over the management of this. the automatic
responds caused agression... if they dont match the customer request :-)

-we collect a total restricted unsubscribe list... all the people who
tell us that they don't wane be mailed are piped into this list.
before we do a send out this list is crosschecked by our software.


i know that every list has its problems and sometime people
get involved without their permission. i try to avoid such things by
telling my partners to ask people if they really wane be part of the
list
and i remind the other etoy guys to be careful with the list.

sometimes people give us their addresses on paper or card and
we submit them. it can happen that people are entered who don't asked
for
this... i cant controll it 100%  (but this limited to a few people a
year)

we do not buy or grab addresses.

in the past our promotion person (he left more then 1,5
years ago because of disputes about such things) sometimes submitted
lists he collected online: press people. that's a point which is
difficult
to discuss... but i think its not that corrupt or bad (at least not a
reason to
say and write that we spam the whole world). and we stoped such things
long time ago...

its just not correct to call us spamers... we don't have that many
addresses...
and most of them  are really clean! its a question of the relationship
between those who
want to know what's going on and those who feel bordered. and about the
style of the
answers we give people who complain. i would say i get about 30
unsubscribe  mails per
send out (it depends on the mail) and about 5 really aggressive people
who tell me that
they tried to unsubscribe but couldn't...

i try to manage this with a lot of time and energy.

who is doing this in a spam company? is there no difference?


what else can i do ? trashing the whole database because maybe 3%of
the people feel pissed off because they don't remember how they
entered this list... or because they were subscribed by an idiot who
used
their address or by a etoy person how mixed up cards in his poket ?

i know that there are better ways to manage mailing lists... but we
try to do our best... and we think we don't do irresponsible things.
we do have limited resources and we do not make money with this shit.

we do not talk about 500000 pissed of people here. right?
we talk about 5 ! per mailing...

that's a different thing.

and of course : our mails look like spam. that's sometimes a problem.
the style is spam style... pseudo business information. but its part of
our
art work. and most people learned to understand the difference over the
years... its the etoy.STYLE... it is all about this internet marketing
ecommerce
style...

but believe me i care about this problem!

please give me a feedback!

zai




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