Meet Emma; She’s a Spammer
This is Emma.
She’s not real. She’s a spammer. Hundreds and hundreds of companies use her to spam you. Companies you know and respect. Companies you would open email from, even if you don’t recall asking them to send it to you.
Emma is a spammer. What’s the difference if the United Way or somebody like them sends you an unsolicited email or the company who wants to interest you in Peni$ 3nlargement sends you one? Nothing.
Emma, and others like her, call themselves Email marketers. Emma makes it easy, really easy, for businesses to spam you.
“Email marketers” are spammers.
Emma is a huge spammer located in Nashville, TN and has joined up with a otherwise respectable Plant-it 2020. The organization was founded by John Denver to plant trees in local cities and reforestation.
Those who lie down with dogs wake up with fleas.
Here’s how the spammer framed their PR move:
“By moving their newsletters and campaigns from print to e-mail, our customers are already doing something nice for the environment,” says Suzanne Norman, Emma’s director of community relations. “Now, in addition to sparing trees, they can actually help us plant some, too. Basically, we win, our customers win, and the environment wins. If only there were some sort of phrase to describe a situation in which multiple ‘wins’ occur. Oh well.”
Multiple wins at the expense of every single person with an email account who suffers through spam. Newsletters belong in email. Newsletters are not spam. You subscribe to newsletters. Spam has the capability of slowing the internet to a crawl.
But Emma is a spammer.
Emma supports the ESPC…
The Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) was formed to fight spam while protecting the delivery of legitimate email. The ESPC members have recognized the need for strong spam solutions that ensure the delivery of legitimate email and have been very active in the war against spam.
Emma is a spammer. They send unsolicited email. The ESPC is a nice way of saying lobbyist to keep spam coming.
Emma is a spammer. They belong to the MAAWG…
The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group is a global organization focusing on preserving electronic messaging from online exploits and abuse with the goal of enhancing user trust and confidence, while ensuring the deliverability of legitimate messages. With a broad base of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and network operators representing almost one billion mailboxes, key technology providers and senders, MAAWG works to address messaging abuse by focusing on technology, industry collaboration and public policy initiatives.
(Empasis mine.)
Emma is a spammer. Emma is a huge company and is growing by leaps and bounds. In December alone they added 288 new spammers to the stream.
As usual, the newest members of the Emma community hail from all types of places and do all sorts of interesting things. So welcome aboard, Wisconsin Public Television in Madison and University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville. Greetings, Aristo Media Publicity in Nashville and Lebowitz Gould Design, Inc. in New York. Hi there, Heal the Bay in Santa Monica, Betz Family Winery in Woodinville, WA and College of the Bahamas in Nassau. Salutations to Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, SD, Graves Fowler Creative in Rockville, MD and Siena Hotel Spa Casino in Reno. And a big hello to The Wellness Community in Washington, D.C., Reps in Clarksville, IN, Turner Publishing in Nashville and Stanford University in Stanford, CA.
Each one of those spammers seems like they would be a good corporate citizen. Each one probably fights spam everyday. Each one would rank spam as a main problem with email. But they are spammers because they use Emma.
Emma contributes big money to lobby lawmakers to protect their right to spam.
Spammers are working on a way to send spam to your printer.
Emma is the enema of marketing. Emma sends a rush into the bowels of commerce and nothing but shit results.
What did Emma do to upset you? My company uses them to send quarterly newsletters. Is there something I’m missing?
@allaboutduncan: Emma is a spammer, that doesn’t upset you? If you send your newsletter – and it’s opt-in – and that’s all your send. no prob. But if you send unsolicited emails, that are not newsletters, to your clients. ever. you are a spammer too.
Actually, Emma is an out-sourced service for companies to send their e-newsletters. These typically opt-in newsletters and each company that works with Emma has to agree that it’s NOT spamming anyone via the use of Emma. If spamming is happening, it’s because of the individual companies. Not due to Emma.
I just want to clarify that Emma is a service that spammers abuse. Emma is not at fault.
Emma is like any other mass-mail outsource, including constant contact and lyris lists.
My company uses Emma. Many do. Many legitimate companies do. But, also – some spammers do.
You take the good..
@Teri: Emma is a spammer.
In your context, Emma is an enabler of spam.
Sure companies don’t see their email marketing as spam – they have drunk the Kool-aid.
Yes, my point exactly: lots of otherwise upstanding companies use Emma. And they are spammers – IF they send ANY unsolicited email to clients or prospects.
Blanket statement that I will not retreat from:
Spam is bad, no matter where it originates.
You can’t really call Emma a spammer. It’s not the company that’s responsible for the mail. They provide the machines and the software/hardware, but the company that pays for the service is the spammer. They “send” the mail. Emma doesn’t send anything, the end user logs in and sends it.
In your context, services such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail must be spammers. They provide the same outlet to send the spam (for free – no less), but they aren’t the ones creating the addresses for the spam to go to.
lol.