Definitely not an exclusive club. 🙂

Very effective, Lori. 😉

I hear you Cathy. I rarely see it either in PR pitches.

But, to be fair, I also get an obscene number of pitches / queries from freelancers (writers, designers, etc.), and I don’t recall ever seeing an opt-out there either. And I suspect it’s for the same reason — a combination of honest ignorance and/or mistakenly thinking the rules only apply to traditional email lists.

If nothing else, this whole thing should serve as a good reminder for freelance writers — if you’re sending unsolicited emails to cold pitch / query prospects, you’re also required to have an opt-out option, even if you’re not using an email marketing service. Those rules don’t only apply to larger email blasts.

Cold pitching freelance services counts as commercial emails, so you have to include something like “Reply with X in the subject line if you don’t want to receive future messages.”

I’ve had similar issues, Cathy. PR people I know don’t have opt-outs, either. Marketing folks don’t, you name it.

My tactic is to write to them on their website and mention that if they’re not willing to add an unsubscribe link, then I’m perfectly willing to write to their clients and let them know that their names are being used to spam. Another effective tactic. 😉

Ugh. Pardon the typos. Was trying to deal with this quickly on a day off.

FYI, I heard back from her quickly.

She said she sent me unsubscribe links. I didn’t get them, as I’d already blocked her domains server-level. So I responded telling her to manually remove the two addresses of mine I know she’s hit in the past. I also reminded her removing me is not adequate.

I suggest she focus on building a better-targeted list and making sure she includes unsubscribe links in all future emails. With a valid business reasons, getting our addresses from public sites isn’t enough to report violations, but the lack of easily-accessible unsubscribe links is.

So, if you get further emails from her next week on, keep an eye on that. I’m hoping she’ll take the messages to heart given they’re coming not just from someone she’s pitched but from a colleague well-connected in the PR industry. But time will tell. If she’s actually willing to course-correct, I’m happy with that resolution. But do let me know if you continue to have problems, in which case I’ll make sure you get reporting instructions.

– I wouldn’t worry about the image issue I saw in a previous image. I suspect it was an improperly-loading headshot in this case, not anything malicious. Just be aware that can be the case, so be careful about letting your email service or software load images from unfamiliar addresses.

– This looks like it might be a rare case of an actual PR professional behaving badly. I use that label very loosely though.

– I’ve sent her an email essentially giving her one shot to discard her harvested list and stop her CAN-SPAM ACT violating behavior. I’ve also blocked her at my server level after receiving two more spam messages today. And I’ve let her know how I intend to proceed if I hear from any colleagues that she’s continued this line of spam pitching — reporting CAN-SPAM Act violations, reporting her to her host(s), and reporting her directly to the clients she’s trying to promote through these ill-gotten harvested lists.

So please, if you continue to receive emails from her as of next week (I want to make sure she has time to see the email and course-correct), either post here to let me know or email me if you have my address (don’t want to post it here for further harvesting).

There are still some really sketchy things going on — like three different domain names at play, with the one being used to spam tied to SquareSpace and the others with GoDaddy. I suppose there’s always a chance someone is pretending to be her, but given the style of the pitches themselves, I don’t get that impression.

If I hear from any of you that the emails continue from next week on, I’ll post instructions here on how you can report them. It’s not in her interest to have her email address or domains on spam blocklists, so hopefully she’ll stop. But it’s my understanding she’s been asked to before and has sent even more. I’ll reach out to some PR colleagues next week as well to see if anyone knows her and can approach her directly. But given the behavior I’m seeing, she might have a PR educational background, but built a business around the usual internet marketing spam behavior no one wants or needs. Super disappointing to see anyone who might have had potential go down such an irresponsible path.

If you want to know her name, read between the lines. I altered in a way that if you scroll, you’ll still know her name.