Note: This site is currently "Under construction". I'm migrating to a new version of my site building software. Lots of things are in a state of disrepair as a result (for example, footnote links aren't working). It's all part of the process of building in public. Most things should still be readable though.

Tricks get you the kill file

From time to time, I get individual emails (not bulk spam) from people trying to sell me a product or service. It's a part of the gig and I don't mind taking a look to see if it's something we might be interested in. Occasionally, the people sending these notes get a little tricky in their quest to get their pitch in front of me. I recently got an email from a person I didn't recognize, but the subject line had "follow up on questions". An interesting tactic. It makes it sound like I've been in contact with the person before and event asked them something. Psychology of marketing would suggest this makes me much more likely to open the email and then see their pitch. Unfortunately, there is one big flaw with this tactic. While I like the psychologically theory behinds this from an academic perspective, tricks like this piss me off when used in the real world. So, I didn't even read the sales pitch and I've added the entire company to my email kill file which sends anything any of their employees sends me straight to spam hell.