Ethical marketing?

    If you are like me, and everyone else in the world with an internet connection, then you must get daily emails asking you to buy things that you don’t want? It’s called marketing.

    I have to admit, in these days of everything online, I am prone to use the internet as a marketing tool too. Social networking very often isn’t social anymore, when your so-called friends are constantly trying to sell you their wares. It is unethical and, in some cases smacks of desperation. We all know that, but still we cannot resist from time to time,

    But here is another method that I utilise; that of junk mail reply.

    I remember reading an article a few years ago, advising people how to deal with junk mail through your letter box. It advised us to pick up all the mail, stick it in the pre-paid envelope that arrives with it, and post it back from whence it came. Because a pre-paid envelope is only paid for when it is used! So by sending the mail back, the culprit who sent it to you, ends up paying twice for postage. Simply genius!

    I have now adopted the same approach to junk emails, becuase I too have a product to sell; that of a series of children’s books, along with my profile and brand as an author. 

    My mission is simple: the more people see my name, the more I will be remembered! And eventually, some of it might stick. I want people to say: ‘Who is this guy, Andy Frazier? He crops up all over the place!’

    So, starting this month, I pick up all the emails from my junk bin and open them; being sure to virus-check them first. If there is a reply address, I add it to my marketing mailing list and if not, I visit the website of whatever product they are trying to sell me, and get an address from that. Then, each week, I mail out my latest book flier to the whole list with the words emblazoned in the subject line:

WHY NOT BUY A GREAT CHILDRENS BOOK FROM FAMOUS AUTHOR – ANDY FRAZIER?

Do you think it will catch on? Or will my name be confined to the realms of the junk bin for all eternity? Even if I become famous for being a junk-mail outlaw, at least someone will have heard of me, surely!