Everywhere you turn, there is another marketer asking for your e-mail address so he can sell you something. Now you need to provide an e-mail address before you can even find out what he’s actually selling.
Today, I received an e-mail which was promoting a new product. This was a physical product that could be ordered through Amazon, but it also came with a bonus for those who purchased it.
When I went to the site, I was greeted by a squeeze page — a page designed to get your name and e-mail address. No problem, I filled out the form and it redirected me to a page asking for my Amazon order number. Again, no problem, until I get to what I expected to be a download page and was greeted by yet another squeeze page; This time I wouldn’t be subscribed to just one more list, I would be subscribed to 15.
Sure, you could uncheck each of them (which I did), but I nearly missed it. It’s easy to overlook if you’re not paying attention because half of the list was below the fold. Finally, when I thought I was home free, it redirected to a sales letter for another product and informed me that my free download link was in my e-mail. (For the curious, I instantly closed the page when I saw my bonus was in the e-mail.)
Thankfully, I’ve been around the block a time or two, so I subscribe using a fake name with a throw away e-mail account at Yahoo! or Gmail, confirm my subscription so I can get the download link and click the unsubscribe link immediately. When the e-mail address becomes too laced with spam, I junk it and get a new one.
That seems like a lot of trouble to go through, but marketers who abuse the name squeeze technique with infinite loops of squeeze page upon squeeze page followed by a sales pitch have made it necessary. It’s those same marketers who don’t deserve my money or my e-mail address. I suspect, as this technique proliferates, others will start finding workarounds and these e-mail lists will become useless.
[...] The Dowser - requires you to provide your name and e-mail to download, but there’s always a work around. There’s a pro version which isn’t free, but I don’t use it enough to warrant spending the money. [...]
[ February 4th, 2007 at 5:21 pm] [ #Link ]