Spammer Chapter 3
By Bailey Armadale
(These spammer stories are getting a great response. I have to put in a few words here asking you all for a hand. If you can e-mail folks about this blog, link it from you site, or otherwise help promote it, I would be most appreciative. I will continue to put a-lot of work into the content rather than promotion, and that's why I need your help. Thanks, KLJ.
PS: Send in your work stories.)
2002 was a remarkable year for the Email Marketing Industry. Revenues were going through the roof for every company in the industry. New email companies were popping up left and right and most were no further than five minutes away from our office. Many people in the business joked that you could solve the world’s spam problem simply by dropping a bomb over a few blocks in Boca Raton, FL. The biggest event of 2002 though was the sale of the country’s biggest email marketing company to a legitimate company whose management had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
The biggest source of spam in South Florida was a company I’ll call Spamabunch. They were the first organized email marketing company in the country and over the years had developed a reputation that put them in a category reserved for Hitler, Satan, and the music of Michael Bolton. In an effort to hide their identity they would often buy small e-mail marketing companies and then assume the name of the smaller company. This simple process allowed them to legally purchase new email records, but more importantly it helped them to temporarily fly under the radar of anti-spammer groups. Eventually they caught the attention of a large acquisition company that does credit checks and reports as well as teaching credit management. From an outsider’s perspective Spamabunch was a well run company that was turning a profit. If you could look past the reputation they had carved out for themselves they could potentially be a good acquisition for the right company. After doing a little research the acquisition company thought they were the right company.
The reasoning for the acquisition company buying Spamabunch was logical. If they owned Spamabunch they would have access to over 125 million postal and email addresses. With that information they would have new ways of contacting existing clients and would be able to create new clients as well. At the same time they would own a company that was supposedly earning tens of millions of dollars each year. So after some heavy negotiating and light research, the acquisition company purchased Spamabunch for 134 million dollars. Less than a year later it would be a decision The acquisition company would regret, but in the meantime the entire industry was turned upside-down at the news.
Once Spamabunch was sold, the owner of our company saw dollar signs. At first he was quite bitter, as he was one of the original founders of Spamabunch along with two other men. Being unable to get along with them though, he accepted a buyout from them for a little over a million dollars. Had he stayed, he would have made significantly more than that. However upon learning that the acquisition company was still buying other smaller email companies in order to get their hands on as much data as possible, he made it his goal to sell his business, the Evil Email Company.
During this time I also received my final promotion that put me into the management level of the Evil Email Company. Originally I was hired as a sales assistant, and while I was an excellent assistant it was becoming painfully obvious that I was a terrible salesperson. This was primarily due to the fact that I had a conscience and always had a difficult time trying to convince other companies that they should advertise with spam. However, I was very good over the phone and very personable so it was decided I would be the Director of Customer Relations. As a member of management I was now getting a much bigger paycheck, and perks like access to the company stash if I so desired.
The job entailed of two things. First I would assist any sales person who was having a difficult time with an unhappy client. This was not an uncommon problem because at the time email was very easy to sell, and anyone of ambiguous morals who could pick up a phone and say his name without stuttering too badly could become a salesperson. Unfortunately this filled our office with many inexperienced salespeople. Often times these salespeople would not know how to handle an unhappy client, so it would be my job to get on the phone and smooth out the problem. I actually enjoyed this part of the job. By doing my job right the client would praise me as a hero and thank me for taking care of the matter, and the salesperson would buy me a round of drinks for saving their client. The second part of the job however, was a much more miserable experience.
In an effort to generate more revenue and look more attractive to a prospective buyer the Evil Email Company began pumping out twice as much email to increase campaign success. As a rule whenever we mailed out an email ad to our member base we would double the amount of mail sent. If a client paid for a campaign of a million records, we would mail out two million records. By doing this, the click-thru rates and purchase rates looked much more impressive, and a client would be more likely to have a successful campaign and thus more likely to spend more money with us.
Now we were quadrupling that number. A client paying for one million records would actually have four million mailed out. Campaign results were going through the roof, but in the process we were burning out our lists and creating a very unhappy member base. In addition we also began buying other companies’ email lists without even running a permission pass on them. What ended up happening was a nearly endless stream of member complaints. And who got to handle all of these complaints? The new Director of Customer Relations.
Each morning when I got to the office I would have at least 100 emails awaiting me. Some were polite simply asking to be removed from the list and never mailed to again. My favorite came from a very nice woman who wrote an email in prose insisting that she did not need Viagra. Others were a bit more aggressive. One disgruntled gentleman threatened to drive his pick-up truck through our office. The most violent of all threatened to kill several of us and wished that we had been on the 22nd floor of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The phone calls were the worst though. The CAN-SPAM Act now requires contact information to be included on all emails so that if someone receives an email and wants to be removed they will not have a hard time in getting this request fulfilled. In mid-2002 though, the CAN-SPAM Act was still over a year away from being implemented and we made sure that there was as little contact information in our emails as possible. That still did not stop everyone from finding us though, and after jumping through all the hoops necessary to find our phone number, most callers were not happy.
All the calls would start out angry, often with a good bit of profanity, but most of the time they would calm down after the caller realized he had found an actual human being to talk to and would finally be removed from the list. There were plenty of exceptions to this though. One man named Mike berated me over the phone for 10 minutes threatening to burn down the office and cause me bodily harm. For some reason, at the end of his call he refused to give me his email address though, so he was never removed from the database. Another man claiming to be a lawyer gave his life story to me and how it was his goal to wipe slime like me off the planet. Some were angry while others were just exasperated. I once took a call from a woman who was in tears, and repeatedly told me she could not get off the lists no matter what she did.
I could understand the frustration these people felt, but I could never relate to why some people got so emotional over it. Unwanted email is an inconvenience, but if a couple dozen unwanted email is the worst thing that will happen to you, I will happily switch lives with you. It was this thought that helped me to rationalize what the company was doing no matter how frustrated I got with the situation. Still at the end of the day I was having a hard time feeling good about myself. The company bar tab was coming in real handy around this time.
While I was inconvenienced by it to say the least, the aggressive mailing did pay off, at least in the short term. 2002 ended up being the most profitable year the Evil Email Company ever had, increasing profits by over a million dollars from the previous year. In December we were preparing to be the next big buy-out for the acquisition company, as their accountants were in our office once a week going over our records. Our Christmas party was held on a yacht that sailed up and down the coast while all of the employees drank, danced, and smoked whatever they could get their hands on. No one doubted that 2003 would be an even better year. Unfortunately as good as 2002 was, 2003 would be the exact opposite and it would be the year that the fortunes of entire industry would start to disappear.
Read Chapter 1 HERE or Chapter 2 HERE.
Check back soon for Chapter 4
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE.
Or Check out Becca Costello's madcap adventure with dolphins in Gay Hawaii HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
(These spammer stories are getting a great response. I have to put in a few words here asking you all for a hand. If you can e-mail folks about this blog, link it from you site, or otherwise help promote it, I would be most appreciative. I will continue to put a-lot of work into the content rather than promotion, and that's why I need your help. Thanks, KLJ.
PS: Send in your work stories.)
2002 was a remarkable year for the Email Marketing Industry. Revenues were going through the roof for every company in the industry. New email companies were popping up left and right and most were no further than five minutes away from our office. Many people in the business joked that you could solve the world’s spam problem simply by dropping a bomb over a few blocks in Boca Raton, FL. The biggest event of 2002 though was the sale of the country’s biggest email marketing company to a legitimate company whose management had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
The biggest source of spam in South Florida was a company I’ll call Spamabunch. They were the first organized email marketing company in the country and over the years had developed a reputation that put them in a category reserved for Hitler, Satan, and the music of Michael Bolton. In an effort to hide their identity they would often buy small e-mail marketing companies and then assume the name of the smaller company. This simple process allowed them to legally purchase new email records, but more importantly it helped them to temporarily fly under the radar of anti-spammer groups. Eventually they caught the attention of a large acquisition company that does credit checks and reports as well as teaching credit management. From an outsider’s perspective Spamabunch was a well run company that was turning a profit. If you could look past the reputation they had carved out for themselves they could potentially be a good acquisition for the right company. After doing a little research the acquisition company thought they were the right company.
The reasoning for the acquisition company buying Spamabunch was logical. If they owned Spamabunch they would have access to over 125 million postal and email addresses. With that information they would have new ways of contacting existing clients and would be able to create new clients as well. At the same time they would own a company that was supposedly earning tens of millions of dollars each year. So after some heavy negotiating and light research, the acquisition company purchased Spamabunch for 134 million dollars. Less than a year later it would be a decision The acquisition company would regret, but in the meantime the entire industry was turned upside-down at the news.
Once Spamabunch was sold, the owner of our company saw dollar signs. At first he was quite bitter, as he was one of the original founders of Spamabunch along with two other men. Being unable to get along with them though, he accepted a buyout from them for a little over a million dollars. Had he stayed, he would have made significantly more than that. However upon learning that the acquisition company was still buying other smaller email companies in order to get their hands on as much data as possible, he made it his goal to sell his business, the Evil Email Company.
During this time I also received my final promotion that put me into the management level of the Evil Email Company. Originally I was hired as a sales assistant, and while I was an excellent assistant it was becoming painfully obvious that I was a terrible salesperson. This was primarily due to the fact that I had a conscience and always had a difficult time trying to convince other companies that they should advertise with spam. However, I was very good over the phone and very personable so it was decided I would be the Director of Customer Relations. As a member of management I was now getting a much bigger paycheck, and perks like access to the company stash if I so desired.
The job entailed of two things. First I would assist any sales person who was having a difficult time with an unhappy client. This was not an uncommon problem because at the time email was very easy to sell, and anyone of ambiguous morals who could pick up a phone and say his name without stuttering too badly could become a salesperson. Unfortunately this filled our office with many inexperienced salespeople. Often times these salespeople would not know how to handle an unhappy client, so it would be my job to get on the phone and smooth out the problem. I actually enjoyed this part of the job. By doing my job right the client would praise me as a hero and thank me for taking care of the matter, and the salesperson would buy me a round of drinks for saving their client. The second part of the job however, was a much more miserable experience.
In an effort to generate more revenue and look more attractive to a prospective buyer the Evil Email Company began pumping out twice as much email to increase campaign success. As a rule whenever we mailed out an email ad to our member base we would double the amount of mail sent. If a client paid for a campaign of a million records, we would mail out two million records. By doing this, the click-thru rates and purchase rates looked much more impressive, and a client would be more likely to have a successful campaign and thus more likely to spend more money with us.
Now we were quadrupling that number. A client paying for one million records would actually have four million mailed out. Campaign results were going through the roof, but in the process we were burning out our lists and creating a very unhappy member base. In addition we also began buying other companies’ email lists without even running a permission pass on them. What ended up happening was a nearly endless stream of member complaints. And who got to handle all of these complaints? The new Director of Customer Relations.
Each morning when I got to the office I would have at least 100 emails awaiting me. Some were polite simply asking to be removed from the list and never mailed to again. My favorite came from a very nice woman who wrote an email in prose insisting that she did not need Viagra. Others were a bit more aggressive. One disgruntled gentleman threatened to drive his pick-up truck through our office. The most violent of all threatened to kill several of us and wished that we had been on the 22nd floor of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The phone calls were the worst though. The CAN-SPAM Act now requires contact information to be included on all emails so that if someone receives an email and wants to be removed they will not have a hard time in getting this request fulfilled. In mid-2002 though, the CAN-SPAM Act was still over a year away from being implemented and we made sure that there was as little contact information in our emails as possible. That still did not stop everyone from finding us though, and after jumping through all the hoops necessary to find our phone number, most callers were not happy.
All the calls would start out angry, often with a good bit of profanity, but most of the time they would calm down after the caller realized he had found an actual human being to talk to and would finally be removed from the list. There were plenty of exceptions to this though. One man named Mike berated me over the phone for 10 minutes threatening to burn down the office and cause me bodily harm. For some reason, at the end of his call he refused to give me his email address though, so he was never removed from the database. Another man claiming to be a lawyer gave his life story to me and how it was his goal to wipe slime like me off the planet. Some were angry while others were just exasperated. I once took a call from a woman who was in tears, and repeatedly told me she could not get off the lists no matter what she did.
I could understand the frustration these people felt, but I could never relate to why some people got so emotional over it. Unwanted email is an inconvenience, but if a couple dozen unwanted email is the worst thing that will happen to you, I will happily switch lives with you. It was this thought that helped me to rationalize what the company was doing no matter how frustrated I got with the situation. Still at the end of the day I was having a hard time feeling good about myself. The company bar tab was coming in real handy around this time.
While I was inconvenienced by it to say the least, the aggressive mailing did pay off, at least in the short term. 2002 ended up being the most profitable year the Evil Email Company ever had, increasing profits by over a million dollars from the previous year. In December we were preparing to be the next big buy-out for the acquisition company, as their accountants were in our office once a week going over our records. Our Christmas party was held on a yacht that sailed up and down the coast while all of the employees drank, danced, and smoked whatever they could get their hands on. No one doubted that 2003 would be an even better year. Unfortunately as good as 2002 was, 2003 would be the exact opposite and it would be the year that the fortunes of entire industry would start to disappear.
Read Chapter 1 HERE or Chapter 2 HERE.
Check back soon for Chapter 4
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE.
Or Check out Becca Costello's madcap adventure with dolphins in Gay Hawaii HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
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