How not to follow-up to SoCon08

I went to SoCon08 this weekend and had a wonderful time. It was a fantastic gathering of people from a variety of backgrounds that all have an interest in social media. I was able to meet a lot of interesting folks, and see some old contacts, such as Josh Hallet, Dave Coustan and Grayson Daughters.

One person I did not meet, however, sent me a follow-up email yesterday (Wednesday) morning to pitch his services. I knew something was up when it came to my personal gmail address and not the business address on the cards I handed out at the conference. I checked the other recipients of the note (which were not hidden – shame on the sender!), and sure enough I was one of a dozen or so – listed in alphabetical order – whose names had been lifted from the conference registration sheet (which is where my personal address is listed).

Here’s what the email he sent said:

It was good meeting with you at the SoCon08 Conference. The Sales Group is a sales performance agency – focusing on sales recruiting and sales training for businesses. We are sending you separately our latest newsletter, “Driving Profit,” which we hope you will find beneficial. We would like to speak with you if you feel your company would like to increase its sales productivity.

P.S. Please visit our website at COMPANY URL HERE – no link love from me, sorry

Since I hadn’t met him, I sent him the below:

Hello Jack --

Thank you for your note, but I don't believe we talked to each other at SoCon. However, I can appreciate your business outreach effort and would like to reciprocate with an offer to talk with you about my email marketing consulting business and help you avoid future communications that could be construed as spam.

Regards,
Sandi Karchmer Solow
http://isendyouremail.com/default.aspx

Despite his advance warning, he signed me and the other 200+ SoCon08 attendees up for his eNewsletter. I never asked for this message and consider it the dumbest thing he could have done for his brand. I haven’t gotten a response to my email back to him – no surprise.

In the course of writing this post, I found others – Josh and Lance Weatherby (not Lancy) to name two – who have done a great job of taking this man to task. The comments to each of their posts are worth reading.