What do you do with 250 million in new money? Go out and spam someone.
Now before I go off half cocked, the last time I pointed this out to Vonage PR VP, Brooke Schulz, she blamed it on the third party marketing company they had working for them. While I know that’s likely true, one would think that Vonage after being caught once, would take better control of their brand.
But no. Today, in my wine email account, that I don’t use for VoIP matters, I received an offer from Vonage. Now to add insult to injury, I still have a Vonage account so not only is it a SPAM, it’s an email to someone who is already on their account list.
In database marketing, your supposed to do what’s called a merge and purge. This was something Schulz and I also spoke about the last time Vonage spammed me.
But with 250 million in the bank on top of what was already there, maybe they can afford the waste. I mean, every wasted effort only drives up, not down the cost of acquisition. The effort also blows large holes in the idea that some potential investors may have about them being smart marketers.
For Vonage, with all the money they’ve raised, it’s really the law of Large Numbers. In this case, spending money via third party mailers who use non-opt in lists to spam.
I wonder what the FTC (Federal Trade Commision) thinks about this? More importantly, I wonder what would happen to their online marketing by email efforts if I reported Vonage to SpamCop…nah, I’m not that evil–but someone else may be.