An affiliate of the New York Times (print) just spammed me with what appears to be an authorized mailing.
As I've noted in our MarketingSherpa List of Shame repeatedly - print subscription sellers are among the absolute worst as an industry when it comes to allowing spammers to mail their offers. I assume they put out the offer on a CPA basis and then don't care who sends it or what list they send to -- just pay for positive results an figure the bad can't hurt them because the spammers IP server will be shut down or black-listed, not the circulation marketer's.
This reveals an almost complete disconnect between the direct response-driven (genumbers now) headset of mag circulation marketers, and the ultra-image-sensitive headset of the brand marketers who place ads in magazines.
Every time a major CPG or other big consumer brand has shown up on the List of Shame, their agency and often their internal brand managers have been all over us in a matter of minutes to find out where the bad mail came from and stop it.
Only a couple of the magazines who've shown up on our list have fretted over it. From the rest - silence.
