Constant Contact Constantly Contacting Me

Is there any difference between spamming someone and really just trying to get the most from your customer? Here’s why I ask.

I have a high school football blog, and I decided a weekly e-mail newsletter during the season may be a great way to drive traffic and/or be a useful communications channel to engage those followers who aren’t going to the blog every day.

So I combined advice I got from friends with e-mail newsletters, and looked to see which providers had ready-to-roll WordPress widgets and decided Constant Contact was for me.

Now as an editor and writer for the Chief marketer network, I’m very familiar with spam laws and whatnot. But for those people who are new to the game, Constant Contact does a great job raising red flags. Like for instance, if you want to see who registered but is not confirmed, a pop up warns the user that their subscription can be canceled if they try to contact someone who has not been confirmed.

The web-based software also reminds end-users that you just can’t e-mail people who don’t want to receive communications from you.

But I guess when I clicked the terms and conditions button, I agreed to get all sorts of stuff from Constant Contact.

The sales calls and almost simultaneous e-mails I got on back-to-back days was bad enough (even though I asked the sales person to please stop calling and e-mailing me, and that I would fulfill the obligations of my subscription when I reach the end of my free trial, and those contacts did stop).

But just today I got an e-mail invitation from Constant Contact New England, with the subject line “Learn email marketing best practices.” I went to unsubscribe and found out that based on my address, I’m signed up for occasional e-mails for “New England Seminars & Presentations” and “CT Seminars & Presentations.”

I know it’s not spam, but it’s a little shifty to reach out to your customers in ways they don’t really want to interact. I’m sure there are customers who may be able to benefit from these seminars. But I am not one of them.

So I guess I’ll take advantage of Constant Contact’s “Safeunsubscribe” feature and hope this blog post doesn’t get me permanently banned from using their services.