E-Mail Civil War

Note to the trade journals, vendors, bloggers, commenters, subscribers, and practitioners who are engaged in e-mail civil war this week.

1. Maybe it is time to stop labeling many of us marketers as being "stupid".
2. Maybe it is time to stop labeling vendors/bloggers as "stupid".
3. Maybe it is time to consider not throwing trade journalists under the bus for unverified trade journal business strategies without verifying facts first.
4. Maybe it is time to better understand all company practices ahead of time so that vendors/bloggers aren't throwing folks under the bus..

These discussions are good for trade journal and blog readership, and result in a lot of comments on a blog ... an "engaged" social media audience, if you will.

These discussions do not make my clients one penny of profit. In our current economic climate, clients seem very interested in increasing sales and profits.

Let's try to focus on helping people use e-mail marketing to increase sales and profit. We can constructively point out strategic opportunities without malice. The e-mail channel is being chewed-up by RSS and Social Media. We don't need the e-mail community cannibalizing itself. We need the e-mail community to generate sales and profit, to make customers happy, to voluntarily help clients, to point out fewer faults.