Companies Encouraged to Mine Your Email Messages for Marketing Information.
July 16, 2001 6:34 PM   Subscribe

Companies Encouraged to Mine Your Email Messages for Marketing Information. DoubleClick redux only now with e-mail? "Companies should be adding code" to your HTML-based e-mail messages, recommends an analyst from Jupiter, in order to track what products you're recommending to your friends and lovers. You may have missed this one due to CNET's marketing-happy headline. P.S. Here's the original press release from Jupiter.
posted by leo (9 comments total)
 
well, that's just evil. and another reason to turn off html email.

"...only 7 percent of companies, according to Jupiter, can accurately identify "viral influencers.""

so, if they track me and identify me as a viral influencer, what do I get? coupons?

ice cream?

a pony?
posted by rebeccablood at 7:04 PM on July 16, 2001


if they track me and identify me as a viral influencer, what do I get?

More advertising!
posted by kindall at 7:07 PM on July 16, 2001


Not only that. We should weigh the consequences of NOT being identified as a viral influencer -- I mean, will they just chuck out our mail?

On a more serious note, if marketing is fair game why not what people are doing tonight or who they're meeting? How about their tastes in other things? I bet someone could make a buck analyzing that.

It's the absence of any sense of reflection that maybe this isn't the greatest idea in the world that struck me the most.
posted by leo at 7:27 PM on July 16, 2001


The funny thing is, all they can tell is that the advertised company/product is being talked about. I could be sending it around to 100 friends saying that the product sucks and they'd send me a pony because I'm a "viral influencer"...

Marketers are Idiots...
posted by fooljay at 7:55 PM on July 16, 2001


Speaking of marketing nastiness, I just read this article [NY Times] discussing a Manhattan marketing agencies new tactic of sending out twenty something hipsters to bars to rave loudly about a certain corporate sponsors product [in this article's case its a brand of flavored water]. Absolutely disgusting...
posted by buddha9090 at 9:02 PM on July 16, 2001


if they track me and identify me as a viral influencer, what do I get?

Antibiotics.
posted by zempf at 9:32 PM on July 16, 2001


That would be just like them... Giving antibiotics for a viral influence...
posted by whatnotever at 10:00 PM on July 16, 2001


so, if they track me and identify me as a viral influencer, what do I get? coupons?

Mouldy spam?
posted by davehat at 10:17 PM on July 16, 2001


Right, because we all litter our email to friends with references to specific brand-names. Uh-huh.

I wish Outlook let you turn off HTML rendering as well as composition. Maybe it's time to write a procmail script to filter it out at the server...

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 9:37 AM on July 17, 2001


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