I recently got an email from a service called "Where Christians Meet" promising to help me find my soulmate. Intrigued at how I made it onto this list (considering I am married and not Christian) I checked into it and found that the email had been sent by a company called Harrison Direct. Apparently they are a DM firm that specializes in email marketing, though clearly not in accurate targeting. Their website provides a description of their services:
Whether your objective is to acquire new customers, retain valued existing ones, build brand awareness or increase revenue, Harrison Direct will facilitate direct communications with the best target audience.
Huh? The rest of the five page site offers similarly useless marketing gibberish to describe the company. Didn’t we leave these days of brochure-ware "internet presence" sites behind us? It seems like the main call to action is the "Unsubscribe" page, which presumably gets so much use, they have included it on the main navigation. The really interesting part is that their unsubscribe feature is protected by an "enter the graphics you see" feature to prevent fraud. Their contact us form has the same thing. As if large numbers of spammers where going to their site and entering fraudulent comments.
In any case, I’m now happily unsubscribed, and waiting for their next campaign where I will probably have to do it all again. If only there weren’t so much security on the unsubscribe feature … maybe a malicious hacker would take my email account and unsubscribe me from multiple emails without my knowledge. I should be so lucky.
ADDENDUM (07/10) – Check out some other experiences with Harrison Direct
