One morning back in March, I hit ‘Check Mail' on my email client and was horrified to see more than 300 emails downloading.
When all was said and done, about 20 of those emails were valid.
285 of them however were all the same – see the screenshot below.
The email came from an adult dating site affiliate program manager who was trying to get affiliates to sign up for his program.
Spamming potential affiliates is bad enough, but worse than that… the email had been sent to hordes of people, all of whom had their email addresses visible because they'd been CC'd, rather than BCC'd.
I immediately assumed that it wouldn't be long until I started receiving spam program invitations from other affiliate program managers and I was right – the first one came in just a couple of hours later from a program that I'm already affiliated with.
I sent a reply to the 2nd spammer to express my dismay and intent to drop his program.
His reply?
I will look forward to having you back on board after you realize we are the best converting dating site on the internet. Best of luck testing our competition!
Duh!
No apology – just a stupid pitch.
He did NOT reply again after I sent him a link to my “Art of Wooing Affiliates” article published on the Revenue Magazine site.
That wasn't the only affiliate program that I ditched that day, however.
If you read the article linked above, under “Affiliate Tip” you'll see how I found out which affiliate program was responsible for selling the email address to the original spammer. It's a practice I employ with all independent programs.