Bad marketing automation, part deux

Back in April I wrote about some poor marketing automation that ended up spamming me with ‘cart abandonment’ emails when the issue was the company’s credit card processing went down. That post has now been scraped by the spammers Moosend and they keep sending me… poorly targeted automated spam.

I’m Virginia from Moosend. I sent you an email three days ago, but I didn’t get any response. I hope you appreciate my professional persistence. I know that time is  hard to find and you’re probably busy with your amazing blog.
<p>We’d love to create some original content with you, either way, if you could get back to us, that would be great!</p>
<p>You can check my previous email below.</p>
<p>Previous Email:</p>
<p>I’m Virginia and I am glad to e-meet you!</p>
<p>I was strolling around the web and came across your blog, especially this one here "When marketing automation goes bad" (<a href=https://wordtothewise.com/2019/04/when-marketing-automation-goes-bad/). It got my January vibes fired up. Your work is top-notch!

My team at Moosend would be thrilled to collaborate with you and contribute an article on your blog.

Here are some topics especially for you: Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Media Listening Email Marketing and Social Media: Do they go hand in hand? Landing Pages: Tips and Tricks to nail them in 2020 I am sure we can create some content that could satisfy even the pickiest reader.

You can check some of our previous work in the following websites:" class=“wp-image-15905” srcset="/2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-450x417.png 450w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-300x278.png 300w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-150x139.png 150w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-343x318.png 343w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-227x210.png 227w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad-178x165.png 178w, /2020/01/bad-marketing-automation-part-deux/marketinautomationgoesbad.png 741w" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"/>

So, yes, Moosend (who are prolific and annoying spammers) are sending me spam about a blog post where I complain about automated spam. And, yes, I nuked the URLs out of the screenshot because no, they don’t get the free advertising.

I’m just waiting for the email, in 6 months time, where Moosend notices I mentioned their name on this post and start spamming me with pitches for this blog post. Because that would be funny. Annoying and still spammy, but at least it would make me laugh.

(Edit: I’ve apparently confused moosend.com and madberry.com, who are actually the prolific spammers that hit me with “hey, we want to write content for your blog” multiple times a week. This is the first set of spam I’ve gotten from moosend. However, they are actively scraping addresses off websites to send mail.)

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