The Brucinator, Defender of inBoxes far & wide, has taken my bull by the horns and stepped into the Stop The Spam Madness ring. In a surprisingly spare statement, ARTA CEO, Bruce Bishins, serves up the ham about spam e-blasts to travel agents. Are some blasters overcooking the pork?
Dear Ivanna:
Your comments, as usual, are spot on regarding the overgrown SPAM e-marketing quotient hitting Canadian travel agencies literally hourly. From 11:00AM until 12:00 Noon today alone, we counted 12 supplier marketing messages, all coming from a single source. In fact, two completely identical messages came within 10 minutes of each other. By the end of the day, we will have received an average of 20-30 messages if not more.
Our members tell us that this avalanche of SPAM is not only getting out-of-hand, but that agents are simply ignoring the messages. Most often, the messages from the same supplier are not unique and have the same exact content day-in and day-out. It has become so routine that hitting the delete key is the only way to unclutter one's mailbox in order to get to the really important messages vital to the conduct of one's agency business.
What is surprising is that suppliers seem oblivious to not only the annoyance to agents of excessive e-mailing, but also that there appears to be no tracking offered by the e-marketing provider to determine whether the messages are being opened at all.
It's time to resolve the excessive drain on supplier resources and agent time by coming up with some standards; perhaps even an e-marketing code of conduct.
From questionable contests, annual awards, to picture posting, all veiled as nothing more than a vehicle to harvest even more travel agent e-mail addresses, unless we do something soon, agencies will simply unsubscribe from these lists.
Suppliers have important information to share with us. Let's hope we can resolve a way to reach us reasonably and effectively.
Best regards,
Bruce Bishins, CTC
President and
Chief Executive Officer
Association of Retail Travel Agents - Canada
ARTA Canada
www.artacanada.ca
Personally, Pumpkins, I tend to weigh my own selfish interests – which are great – against what serves travel agents. Now, it would not be fair to expect everyone to live up to such high moral standards as mine, however, I suggest to you that there is a point at which taking money to make agents' lives miserable is just, well, piggish?
