When weak-ass blog or event pitches find their way to my e-mail inbox, I generally delete them without much thought.

But occasionally, a combination of snarkiness and curiosity takes over, and I find the need to fire back with a message of my own to the lazy/clueless e-mailer about his or her brain-dead pitch.

Yesterday was one of those times. Here’s part of the exchange:

Me:

Not sure why you’re sending me this. I’m not attending this event nor have I ever indicated to anyone I would be. You’re either working from the wrong list or spamming me. Hope it’s the former.

Lazy PR person:

Nope not spamming you Sorry for being vague…. I sent out an earlier invite to event and you may have missed it. For some background, here’s a link to the event as well as the invite I had sent out earlier. Let me know if this is of interest to you and if you’d like to speak with [client name removed] or [client name removed] about their use of [product name removed] and this event. If not, have a great day and sorry for the confusion

Me:

But here’s the thing: Your second e-mail presupposed that I had read the first e-mail and was actually coming to the event. At no time did I ever indicate to anyone that I was. So, yeah, you were essentially spamming me.

Just read this great post by marketer Seth Godin this morning about spammers:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/catchers-and-th.html Give it a read, and you’ll see that Forbes.com spams, too!

[My advice:] You should consider a targeted blogger outreach program next time, and that includes getting at least a decent understanding of the blogger you’re sending a message to and personalizing the message.

I wonder what’s coming next.

(Flickr photo by 2757)

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