I’ve always been a fan of Wimax, back in the day I did some work for Wimax Forum and have always felt that the technology is impressive (as are the people working on it); I’ve been pretty gung-ho to check it out since it become available in Portland. Since I’d been having problems with my Comcast service (endless modems dying) I decided, why not? Well, I’ve learned that lesson.

If only it was just that I couldn’t get much of a signal in my house (despite being in a sea of dark green, supposedly a strong signal area) it would be forgivable, really. However, when I could get a signal, even a strong signal, I was lucky to get speeds of .5 mbps, dramatically different from the 6 mbps they talk about. Okay, no harm, no foul. The technology just isn’t perfect yet. I live in the suburbs not in the city core so it, perhaps, just isn’t an option for me.

Tragic, but hey the sales guys were nice, they thought I was an idiot (I had to break down the cost of paying for a modem vs. leasing it for them as they kept trying to convince me paying $5 a month forever AND signing a 2 year contract was really the better deal than just paying $50 upfront), but nice. I just had to bring the modem back and they’d get me all sorted. At least that’s what they told me. But wait a minute, that’s just what they said when I asked about the return policy, you know, when they wanted to make the sale. The moment I actually tried to return it I was told I had to contact customer care.

Oh, but when I contacted customer care I got a long long run around where they demanded I try and increase the signal, it just must be a problem with where I’m placing the modem (really, I have a laptop, was I supposed to leave it sitting in the bathroom in the hopes of getting .6mbps rather than .5?). I should try tilting it differently in the USB port. Maybe unplug it and replug it. Did I try rebooting? Maybe I have a virus slowing my computer down and that’s why the speed was so slow (um trust me, I don’t). No, I just wanted to cancel! Oh? Well actually I didn’t contact the right department (silly me, following the instructions on their website), I needed to call x, click x at the menu and oh yeah, it’s already past their support hours so I’ll have to call tomorrow. Can I just email them? I mean they don’t even advertise their contact number if you’re logged in as a customer, you have to hunt for it. No, I need to talk to them. Odds on whether or not that’s so another retention specialist can try and talk me into keeping my service?

So are you thinking about trying Clear? Well if you know someone who raves about it, try theirs. Because trying to get rid of yours if it doesn’t work out…well if I ever manage it I’ll let you know.

The sound of those words is both sad and amusing, depending on the situation. “Amusing?” you say, with surprise (okay I’m assuming here). Yes, amusing.

A good percentage of my job is direct customer service and no, I’m not amused by customers having a really bad experience; absolutely not and in no way shape or form! I will bend over backwards to try and make sure people have the best experience possible and end a conversation with me with all their questions answered or sometimes even wanting to buy me a beer. However, another large part of my job is talking to people about best practices and permission. I talk to them about what spam is and why they can’t send to that list where someone supposedly opted in to hear from 3rd parties, they purchased a list or recipients said “sure you can contact me” a decade ago and you’re just now getting in touch. No, no and definitely not! These are the situations that tend to lead to some very passionate discussions about how I’m unreasonable, horrible and how the sender will just go to our competitors rather than live with such draconian rules (don’t I know it’s legal?).

So why is it amusing? Because not only am I trying to do my part to spread some of the great knowledge out there about best practices, rules, and striving for not only permission but engagement, but I also know that so are our competitors. Those customers just have another passionate and likely friendly (and often more patient than they deserve) conversation headed their way. If we all keep it up, hopefully someday these conversations will stop as everyone out there will finally get it. I’m probably just dreaming, but oh what a pleasant dream it is.

If you’d asked me a few weeks ago what the word wax meant to me I probably would have said something about making my car shiny and protecting the paint. Now though, now I could ramble off an ode to wax. I could give you a 1,000 page essay comparing and contrasting the properties of standard dental wax and silicone wax. I could rant and rave about the percentage of my day that’s now spent putting on and taking off wax. It’s my friend, my blessing and my tormentor. I wonder if it’s an addiction, if I could stop putting it on, would I adjust to the agony of braces faster? Or is the application of it all that’s keeping me from pulling out the pliers and ripping these things off myself?

To those contemplating getting braces, really they aren’t that bad. I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end. It’s not some delusion forced upon me by the orthodontic industry. I think. I hope.

Oh, and silicone wax is far better than standard wax, but it takes 3 times as long to put on, so get both.

Recently, I had the privilege to both attend and speak at SXSWi down in Austin. It’s a pretty wild ride and well deserves its reputation as geek spring break. However, despite the number of margaritas I may have imbibed I still kept track of the number of mailing lists I opted in to (2) and the number of business cards I handed out (21). I’m weird like that.

As of March 30th the number of mailing lists I’ve somehow ended up on have totaled 11, only 1 of which is a list I actually subscribed to. How did this happen you ask? Well essentially it’s ignorance of best practices and people going for quantity over quality.

Rather than going into the myriad of missteps taken I’m just going to say a little bit about how it should work:

First, if someone hands you their business card after meeting you, that is not permission to add them to your list. It’s permission to send them an email yourself, and if you want you can say “hey I have this great newsletter, if you’re interested go here to subscribe.” But you can’t just add them based on being handed a card.

Second, if you’re running a competition at your booth, that doesn’t translate to permission to add someone to your newsletter. It’s permission to give them free stuff if they win. You should have an optional sign up form to let people subscribe if they’re interested, don’t just opt them in. Even if you put up a sign “if you enter my competition, I will add you to my list” it still isn’t kosher. How many people really paid attention to that sign in their frenzy to get a free iPad? They need to explicitly ask.

Third, have a sign up form at your booth. Ask people if they want to be added to your mailing list. Then, a few days later, a week at the most, send them a confirmation. Thank them for signing up at the conference, tell them that they’re on your list and this is what they can expect to receive, this is how often they can expect to get it and this is what email address you’ll be sending it from (so they can add you to their address book). They made a mistake or they just don’t want to receive it after all? Give them a link to opt out with no hassles. Or, go one step further and make them click to confirm their subscription (double opt-in is always best!).

Ask. It’s that easy. If you haven’t explicitly asked, you don’t have permission.

And if someone’s business card mentions email marketing, really, don’t add them anyway despite my recommendations. We likely know someone on the abuse desk at the ESP you’re using. I’m more likely to unsubscribe than complain at first email (don’t remove me and it’s another story), but don’t be surprised if you add me to your list without permission and then suddenly get an email from me talking about best practices!

Because I work in the email marketing industry, I spend a lot of my day thinking about spam. It’s not really the happiest topic and it’s also not all penis pills or blatant phishing attempts. A lot of perceived spam out there seems to come down to a genuine disconnect between what we as people explicitly ask to hear about and what they as marketers think we want to hear about.

As someone who stands in the middle I’m often the arbiter of these disputes. I’m the person who puts the brakes on those attempts to send completely irrelevant information out to lists and who has to have those amazingly difficult conversations with people about how they may see it as being relevant and recognizable, but the people on their list may not. It’s tougher than it sounds.

After spending many, many hours looking at the issue and debating with end users over their attempts to send out emails that simply aren’t meaningful to their lists and their subscribers I’m starting to think that part of the problem is that feeling of ownership. If everyone would just take a step back and realize that these aren’t your lists, that these are human beings who may (or in some case may not but that’s another story) have asked to hear from you about a specific topic. That doesn’t give you ownership over that address. It doesn’t mean you can suddenly send them anything you want because they once upon a time expressed interest in your company or your product. You don’t own them.

Maybe it harkens to that distasteful area of list purchase and rental. Where you were “buying” addresses or “renting” their usage for a certain amount of time. Well those addresses certainly didn’t belong to the sellers either. Email addresses are not a commodity to be bartered and sold. Let’s stop thinking about them that way. Don’t think of a list as something you want to blast to. Think of it as having a conversation with people. You want that conversation to be relevant to what they asked for. You aren’t shouting into an empty room just hoping and praying someone, somewhere, is listening to you. Have some respect.