[ih] "Father of e-Marketing"

[Bill Ricker]

On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 2:11 PM Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 6/1/2019 3:58 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> > i think the spam wasn't quite e-marketing as much as it was just abuse
> > of a mailinglist....
>

It could both be the latter and also be if not the former at least a
fore-runner of the former?

1. Abuse of mail, certainly -- and especially for the rules and mores in
> force at the time -- but it was a hand-generated addressee list into the
> message, not part of a list processor redistribution mechanism.
>

To be fair, we usually do something once manually before automating it, to
see how it works and set the specifications. So while automation is
required for full-blown e-marketing, i wouldn't require it of the patient 0.

> 3. I recently heard that in spite of the community outrage, the campaign
> was actually successful.  It generated a goodly number of purchases for
> what it was promoting.
>

Not at all surprising.
DEC had good product in the day, and the target list was reasonably well
targetted.
And IIRC the outrage stuck to the particular sender, not to the company.

Q. Was not boycotting DEC because of spam because the company disavowed his
trespass quickly or because it was just assumed he was a loose cannon, that
executives wouldn't understand sufficiently to condone and be complicit?

> By this measure, it will might qualify as e-marketing.  alas...
>

Nothing appears initially in fully evolved form.
The DEC spam is at least proto-Spam, proto-e-marketing; as would be
unsolicited offers on TELEX and Fax.

(<pedantic/> It's not "spam" in the narrowest allusive sense of spam spam
spamitty spam repetition ... though it should have been sent repeatedly to
a different 20 at a time instead of all at once ! but blasting to too many
recipients unrequested is also classed under the rubric of Spam today.)

Q. Was up-thread reference to Telegraphic spam via flat rate a reference to
TELEX or to prior art? I would be interested in references to any pre-TELEX
telegraphic (as in dots and dashes, not Baudot) spam. Although using a
PDP-[:digit:] or hardcoded controller to robodial a programmed TELEX spam
list (or list of numbers on second papertape reader, with message on a
loop) would be very interesting too.

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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