Please Think Before You Send Emails or Call

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I don’t know what happened but this year starting in January, I was bombarded with email news releases that had absolutely nothing to do with topics that I would even consider writing about.

I was very busy in the fall writing for Get Creative/USA Today Gannett and I was not reading spam emails or deleting emails. My inbox was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

My inbox had a total of 10,362 emails in it. When I decided to clean up the mess I saw some interesting trends.

  1. Previously PR reps would send one follow-up. Now I’m seeing three or more follow ups on the same topic.
  2. One purchase at QVC generated a flood of daily emails.
  3. Amazon sends emails about stuff I purchased four years ago with questions I can’t answer.
  4. Ebay sends emails when things I don’t want are sold.
  5. My email addresses are being added to lists, I never signed up for.
  6. Not all news pitch emails have a unsubscribe link.

The deluge of emails I receive daily makes it harder for me to do my job. Therefore, I unsubscribed from any list I no longer read. On a daily basis I remove my email address from lists that I don’t read. If I get something that I don’t cover, I send a unsubscribe remove message back which appears to be more work at first, but keeps things cleaner for reading.

I hereby ask public relations professionals and marketing people to please have a unsubscribe link on your pitches. Sending IoT pitches for Baby monitors to someone who covers automotive really doesn’t make sense, does it?

There is AI bot for salespeople that found that customers buying cars needed five email interacts to buy a car. PR people please don’t think that I need that many. I’m an editor I know a good story when I see one.

Because of the constant flood of emails on September 1, 2016, I missed an email offering me a writing an assignment. If you have a writing assignment for me, you are welcome to phone me at 626 921-NEWS. That is the best way to reach me when you want an immediate response.

In my inbox clean up, I realized that I had received hundred of emails a year from a freelance writing website, trying to sell me services. To remove myself from the list, I was required to login. My saved password didn’t work. I tried several times to login to no avail. There was a phone number listed to call Pauline to login. I called and left a message which was much easier than trying to continually login. Thank you, Pauline.