Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: Don't be confused!

Three comments on Susan Favro's Healthy As a Horse Non-Ad Advertisement.

 

1.  Healthy As A Horse--unlike Action Rider, Cool Tack, Hought, Long Riders Gear,

     Sportack, Equine Performance Technology, Running Bear--and dozens of other

     reputable vendors of endurance riding equipment--is not one of endurance.net's

     paid advertisers.  endurance.net is a business, too.  All of these paying

     vendors have done a splendid job over the years by contributing to the

     knowledge exchanged on Ridecamp without resorting to bombarding it with

     ads.

 

2.  Susan Favro's Healthy As a Horse maintains an email marketing list for

     her customers.  If you want to hear about her products, she will be glad

     to sign you up.

 

     However, you may want to think a bit before you do.

 

     Susan Favro and Healthy As a Horse uses a web email  marketing firm

     called Constant Contact (see variously www.constantcontact.com, www.roving.com,

      www.email-marketing-101.com ) to maintain her marketing list.

 

     Constant Contact provides "click tracking" as part of its services.

     When you get an email advertisement from Healthy As a Horse,

     via Constant Contact, it includes invisible "web bugs" that report

     to Susan Favro that you have:

 

     a) opened the email

     b) every link within the email that you might have clicked on

 

     Mind, it doesn't tell her that "someone" opened it for overall statistical

     tracking purposes.  The web bug tells her that you opened it.  Constant

     Contact provides her with nicely tabulated reports that show her

     that, for example, you clicked on the bridles link in the email, but

     you ignored the girths link.  See:  http://www.roving.com/email-marketing/email-campaign-reporting/index.jsp

 

Susan Favro of Healthy As A Horse might call this "customer service."  I call it spying

 

3.  Susan Favro may protest to you that hers is a strictly "Opt-In" marketing list--the

     only kind of email marketing list that is allowed under the law; indeed the only

     kind of marketing list that Constant Contact permits its clients (such as Healthy As a

     Horse) to operate using its service.  Alas, Not So.  In November, Susan added

     my email address, without permission, to her Constant Contact-monitored email

     marketing list based on nothing more than the fact that I had CC'd her on an email

     I had sent to another person!

 

     Beware of sending email to Susan and Healthy As a Horse, you might get a lot

     more than you bargained for!

 

To quote returnpath.com, an email marketing "watchdog" service:

"As an email sender, your reputation is your most important asset. And every

 email you send either enhances or detracts from the value of that asset.

 ...And a diminished reputation hurts more than just your pride. It means

you have to spend more and more money to get the same results at the

inbox. A depressing bit of algebra if ever there was one."

Linda Marins