Father of Email Marketing: Spammer or Genius?

Was this spam or genius based on the East Coast? Digital Equipment Corp. Wanted to generate sales and challenge the current west coast industry leader with their newest product release. Keep in mind this is the time before the Internet and everything online was run on a secure precursor called arpanet. Marketing Manager Gary Third proposed an idea that he called emarketing. Instead of manually sending out generic invitations to the launch event, he decided to use a mass email to promote their product launch specifically to west coast residents. It's unclear how he got his hands on a complete copy of arpanet users email addresses, but he segmented all the west coast addresses as recipients of a single targeted email. He sent the first mass email on record to about 400 people just hoping to get attention. It worked, with some unintended consequences. The campaign eventually generated $14 million in sales, but with an at the time, overwhelmingly negative response to the invasive cold emails. He's labeled as the father of spam mail. A rep from ARPANET personally called him to ask him never to do that again. While we can't condone spamming, there are some lessons to learn here. Break your audience up into relevant groups for better targeting. Stork wasted no time letting his recipients know why they were receiving his email. Make sure to get potential email recipients to opt into your campaign. This means they're aware that you're adding them to your list and agree to receive mass emails from you. For more email marketing insights and case studies, subscribe to the HubSpot marketing channel.