OK, Summer is only about a week old, but the doldrums have set in. Not a lot parking going on that warrants comment. However something did happen today that has no relationship to parking, but is important, nevertheless.
We got a call from a customer incensed that his company was ‘left out’ of our lighting issue. Hey, its not as if we didn’t want his money. He just didn’t know about it. He didn’t know about the weekly emails we sent him for two months telling him about the feature. He didn’t know about the weekly newsletters we sent out screaming about the features. Why, one might posit?
Because, he said, “all that stuff goes into his spam filter.”
I can understand Viagra ads and requests from Nigeria going into the spam filter, but you are a business, and spam filters aren’t perfect. I have railed on this before. It takes about 10 seconds an hour to run down your email account and delete those of no interest. Why relay on a computer to make business decisions for you? Are you so troubled in getting junk mail that you can very easily and simply throw away that you risk missing important messages? I know that I have found important messages from my family and friends in the spam filter (yes I check it a couple of times a day before I delete the stuff in there.) FYI I get about 1000 messages of on type or another a day. Of those 90% are of no interest. but I glance at them anyway before I “delete.”
My spam filter is set on the lowest possible level. Only the most blatant spam is filtered out. And even then, sometimes a perfectly innocent message it caught in the net.
We are in business, sports fans. When we set traps for incoming information, we risk missing important info, quite possibly info that will mean business for us.
I know of a consultant that requires you to fight through a filter just to send him a message. Screw it, if he already considers me spam, before he gets my email, then I can find someone else to take my money. We need to make it easy for people to get in touch, not more difficult.
And besides, maybe I could use a few million from Nigeria.
JVH
