Email Marketing: What Not to Do

This has happened to me twice in the past few weeks. Someone sends me an email marketing message asking me to buy into something, promote something on my site, something like that. It’s not something I’m interested in. Since I get a lot of these emails, I don’t respond with a “not interested.” I just don’t respond at all.

Then, a few days later, I get another email. “Hey, I didn’t hear back from you about the email I sent earlier. Just wanted to see if you’d be interested in…”

Is this a new trend in email marketing—that if someone doesn’t respond to your solicitation, it’s an invitation to keep emailing them until they do? Generally, if I email message someone with some kind of promotional intent and they don’t respond, I assume they’re not interested. I might email them again in six months, in case things change—but I won’t expect their not being interested to be some kind of basis for a relationship-building exchange.

And it goes the other way, too. If I don’t respond, I’m not interested. And I get a lot of emails like this, so having to respond with a “sorry, not interested” every time I get one would take time out of my day that I don’t need to spend. And if I do respond to you with a “not interested,” it might be taken as a pretext for you to get back in touch and try to convince me, which I’d rather you didn’t do.

Do you take this tactic with email marketing? Do you have any luck with it?