Email At Work

If you read any of what I write, you will be aware that I don’t talk about work a great deal. This is supposed to be an outlet separate from anything to do with my working life, but today I wanted to solicit your opinion on a trend I am seeing emerging at work.

Like all companies, we deal almost daily with new customers, prospects, or organisations related to our business. Often we will have meetings and presentations and start to build – what we hope will be – a good business relationship. Like most people who meet others in their sphere of work, I hand out business cards to new contacts.

Three or four times in the past month, I have found that a few days after meeting somebody new, my email address will be subscribed to their company mailshot/newsletter, etc. I know this is a reaction to the new UK spam rules, where there has to be some kind of business relationship before you can receive arbitrary messages from a company, but I don’t like the trend. When you’re on the lookout for new business, it’s a little hard to say ‘stop this’. Perhaps we should start doing something similar.

On this day…