Yahoo! wants you to have more SPAM!

Thanks!

Submitted by kenkogler on March 29, 2002 - 22:49.

Thanks for the link... saw this on /. too, but they didn't have a link. :-)

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Unsubscribing

Submitted by skamp on March 30, 2002 - 12:35.

What's even worse, is that you can't remove your Yahoo account. I tried, I sent many e-mails to the support service, who told me I had to wait something like 10 weeks... My account was never removed !

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at least..

Submitted by jeduthun on April 1, 2002 - 15:44.

.. they sent out an e-mail with fair warning. When the privacy policy changed, I got an e-mail with a direct link to update my profile, which I promptly did. It took a few seconds but I have yet to receive a single spam from Yahoo since. It saddens me to see Yahoo slipping down to the Dark Side®, but, for pure interface-cleanliness and general reputation, Yahoo is still quite a bit better than most sites that offer similar services.

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Um... not really....

Submitted by aericks on April 2, 2002 - 16:44.

Just today I got a policy change notice from Yahoo. I certainly did not get one before they made this special upgrade of my services. In any event, the default should always, always be 'no'.

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Former Yahoo Marketing Head criticises move in NYT

Submitted by MartinB on April 12, 2002 - 03:29.

The NY Times is quoting former Yahoo marketing veep Seth Godin, in which strongly criticises his former employer:

What Yahoo has done is unconscionable, said Seth Godin, Yahoo's former vice president for direct marketing. It's a bad thing, and it's bad for business. They would be better off sending offers to a million people who said they want to receive a coupon each day than to send them to 10 million people and worry about whether you have offended them by finally going too far.

While at Yahoo, Mr. Godin published "Permission Marketing" (Simon & Schuster, 1999), which argued that marketing messages should be sent only to people who ask to see them.

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Interesting Quote

Submitted by aericks on April 13, 2002 - 11:38.

Thanks for posting that. Pretty unusual stance for a marketing VP. I mean, it makes sense to the rest of us but it seems like many marketers exist in some sort of alternate universe where the great beast of advertising must be fed constantly and at all costs.

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Which marketeers?

Submitted by MartinB on April 13, 2002 - 17:49.

All the good ones, Amanda - anyone who's ever paid any attention in Marketing 101 (sadly that's not very many). The classic line in marketing is I know that 50% of my spend is wasted; I just wish I knew which 50%.

Good direct marketing is 100% based on not wasting money on people who don't want to know - about cost-efficiency. If I'm a marketeer, I don't want to waste my money talking to people who don't care. I only want to talk to the people who are likely to buy what I'm selling. If I mail everyone, then not only do I waste my money, I have little chance of getting to know exactly what motivates the people who genuinely might buy, because I won't know who they are.

With a company with clued marketeers, filling in all the questionnaires will tend to reduce the amount of mailings you get because the more information you get, the more campaigns you disqualify yourself as a target for. And the mailings you do get will be relevant, so won't seem so intrusive, because they'll be based on your needs, wants and permission.

In Direct Marketing, one of the key metrics is the Lifetime Value of a customer (another is cost per customer - see above). That's not how much money you'll get from them in the first transaction, but how much each customer is worth over the time they remain with you. I don't know what Yahoo think the LTV of a customer is, but it's probably going to be in the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. How many genuine potential customers have Yahoo just upset enough to lose as customers? Maybe 100,000? So by a shortsighted move like this, they may have just turned down around between $10m and $100m. (Nice going, guys. I'm glad I'm not an investor)

This is basic marketing stuff - principles I'd expect a marketing intern to know. So why do so many marketeers get it wrong?

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hmmm

Submitted by rockmy11 on February 18, 2007 - 10:34.

sounds interesting

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