Zinio: Winter Sale! Warm up Now with Playboy's Hot Special Editions at up to 50% Off.

Emailing Company:	Zinio
Subject:	Winter Sale! Warm up Now with Playboy's Hot Special Editions at up to 50% Off.
Date Sent:	December 13, 2008

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Problem #1: Topic and Audience. This company seems to think I want soft-core porn sent to me. I subscribed to one of their magazines (Esquire?) -- it was free I believe -- and I think I gave up on their "Reader" program after a few times... too slow, and did weird things to my machine. I would still like to read a digital magazine, but probably from somewhere else.

Now that they have used my personal information for a "real" magazine, they are pushing this garbage to me. It's embarrassing to have this stuff pop up on your screen at work! They abused their "opt in" rights by sending this!

Problem #2: Construction and Technical. The mail was missing their company logo and a number of other key images. I confirmed that the image links were not working by checking the image locations. Luckily (or not!) all the nice little magazine covers showed up. If I really wanted these magazines, however, there are way too many images and the message really goes on for too long IMO.

Summary: They risk losing people quickly. After I hit "unsubscribe" I will ask to be removed forever. If they had asked what I might want to receive (in other words, content I might like???) the idea of sending some magazine offers might be OK. But to be spammed with near-porn is an example of a Really Bad Email.

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