I don't know about you, but I get tired of ads all the time and
sometimes long for some real human interraction. We try so hard
to pursue that never ending rainbow looking for the pot of gold.
But are we really going to be rewarded by sending out more ads
to  people who are already sick of seeing ads?

Look..people filter their emails so that ads go into the trash. Right?

They also filter their personal emails to go to their inbox, isn't that true?

So isn't it reasonable to assume that they will be more receptive to
you if you're a friend than just another advertser?

So do you think that  maybe a friendly email would do more to build  your contact list than ads will?

I'd love to hear your comments on this.

Becky

Hi Becky,

Thanks for your post, and I agree with your point!
I do get tired of reading ads, but after all is said and done, that's what Adland was created for...advertising.
You've probably noticed by now, that I'm advertising this and that, but I'm also conversing with others, and my #101 motivational central forum forbids advertising (just to give people a break and a chance to read something positive, uplifting, or helpful)
Mind you sometimes, I find something positive in the ads I read, if it's just that I can swipe a good hook, turn of phrase, or format.
So I read tons of ads all the time.
What I don't like is when I meet someone (as in new friends here) and the first thing I get is an ad. It sure doesn't make for a good impression.
Still..I understand the motivation behind it all..and it's sad in a way. I know that desperation to try and get some response to an marketing pitch. PLEASE!! ANYONE!! Buy my new product! It's really really good! (and I'm almost broke advertising it)
I make regular contact with my close friends here, and enjoy sharing new ideas, and checking out theirs. I've found mutual benefit as have they.
Those friendly emails you speak of I save mostly for forum posts (in other people's forums) and private messages. The community contacts and new forums I use for advertising.

Regards,

 That's me too. There's a time and a place for everything.

What got me to thinking about this was an ebook, you might have seen it or read it..by Mike Filsaime called The Death of Internet Marketing.
and I'm not trying to sell it or pitch it, but I did sign up out of curiosity as I do most of his products. I've never bought one thing from him, but this made me think of the time when I was running a safelist and had to verify member's accounts with a link, and Mike was pitching "Don't Touch My Ads" at the time. It made me absolutely FURIOUS every time I opened an email thinking it was from a safelist admin for me to verify my email address and it was from one of Mike's affiliates with the subject line "Verify", or "Confirm" and I had set up filters to catch those emails into a specific folder, and since they had that in the subject they went right where Mike wanted them to go.

This fury led me to write an ad of my own. The subject was "Don't touch my Mike Filsaime Unsubscribe links!" Hehe..anyway, I've gotten more mature now and I realize that even though this tactic was a bit
underhanded and caused a lot of problems for us safelist owners, it was very effective.

To make a long story short, I realized that this could work in the reverse as well as it does for catching emails you DON'T want, it will also catch the ones  you do want, like emails from friends, or emails
from personal contacts.

So if we can capitalize on these filters and write our "ads" in a manner that makes them use some of the words that people use in their filters for emails they WANT, they will be more likely to land in their inbox and not in their trash box.

And if we avoid using words that people use to filter emails OUT we might also be more successful with email marketing.

Does anyone have a list of words like this that we might use?
I'm sure that someone smarter than me has already done this.

Becky

Hey Becky, I agree with you 100%. The internet can be a very unfriendly place but its good to have real people to exchange messages with, Bob

Hi Tim I couldn't agree more. As a new member, I have been turned off by the number of invitations I've had on the lines of 'Hi,I'm Bill, here are 7 opportunities I want you to look at.' It's so much more effective if the first contact is just a friendly greeting. If someone comes across as friendly,I'm more inclined to look at what they have to offer. Cheers Rich PS Anyone using Firefox? Great, free browser with tabbed browsing. Useful for traffic exchanges. I just downloaded the latest version and it flagged up the typos in my post.