I have made it clear on countless occasions that unsolicited e-mails from PR flaks are the bane of my existence. I hate them. They are evil and terrible and they also suck. I have the phrase “for immediate release” in my auto delete filter and also blanket bans on a handful of domains that I know belong to PR companies. Still sometimes they find a way to get through. If any one of these people did 10 seconds of research they would know that sending me this crap is a very bad idea and not likely to result in anything positive for their clients. So when they do, I know for a fact that they are just pulling my name off some list. I just received an e-mail from:
Maryam Zarkesh
mzarkesh@murphyobrien.com
Murphy O’Brien Public Relations
Senior Account Executive
1630 Stewart Street, Suite 140
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Direct: (310) 586-7150
www.murphyobrien.com
Filled with bad puns, BOLD text, a formated text menu and 5, count them F I V E attachments. It was addressed to me like we were buddies. Additionally, she sent the exact same e-mail to the general Metblogs support e-mail, minus the personal greeting. Really stupid move.
People, if you hire a PR firm to rep you, make sure they know what the hell they are doing online and with bloggers because if not you are just paying them to piss people off. So yeah, I’m making a list.
Anyway, how’s your day been?
Oh god. At least you can set auto delete labels. I fucking hate Microsoft Entourage because their auto delete labels NEVER WORK. Spam regularly shows up in my basic inbox.
PR people are the fucking worst, especially because I’m not even the right person for 99% of the shit they send me. They just find any email on the site and binge email them.
Sigh.
Graspr is on my craplist right now.
Iv found this very very interesting, and I am actually in PR myself. I’m just starting out and am only into it by accident however I do Love it. But I find this whole ’send to all’ business inpersonal and also it pisses people off!! Exactly what your saying! However we do have a job to do, SO how do you suggest it goes across to you, and do you ever read anything that comes along?
L.x
Right, but my point is that blanket mailing things to people who don’t want them isn’t really accomplishing anything for your job. You’d be much more effective developing relationships with people who write about things you general promote so you would be able to send personalized notes to people who you know are interested.
No, generally I don’t read anything sent to me with very few exceptions from people I know already.