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It all started out as a mere annoyance. Somebody by the name of Jenna, the Affiliate Coordinator for Affilorama.com, submitted a letter to the contact form for my consulting site with the subject, “Hi there :)”.
Just a quick email, I don’t want to take up too much of you time. My name is Jenna Mathews I’m the affiliate coordinator for Affilorama (an affiliate training center). I’ve just been having a look at your website http://www.shawncollinsconsulting.com and it seems to be a) pretty good, and b) pretty complimentary to our site.
Sooo, (and here comes the sales pitch…) I thought you might be interested in joining our affiliate program which in invitation only.
Your code if you want to join is: moneybags (needed to join)
What will we give you?
- We pay 75% commission on every sale you send our way and this is recurring each month! Basically works out to be $20 each month for each person you refer.
- We can custom-make buttons or banners or whatever to suit your site layout and feel.You can sign up or check our available images and other material at http://www.affilorama.com/affiliates/signup.php
If you’ve got any questions, queries, concerns or interesting propositions (hey, you never know what we will say!) you’re very welcome to email me back.
Typos aside, this solicitation was sent to me for my consulting site, which “Jenna” thought was “a) pretty good, and b) pretty complimentary to our site.”
I wrote back and expressed that I wanted to be removed from their list.
No response to that request, but I did get another solicitation at the same site two days later. The only difference was that it didn’t mention my URL.
Another request to be removed. Two days later - another solicitation at the same site. Same copy on the third spam as the second.
Later that day, I heard from “Jenna” about getting on AffiliateSummit.com. Same as the second and third spams, just to a different address of mine.
Another request from me to never, ever hear from her again at either address.
The next day the follow-ups started. Subject was “Hi there!”, but no smiley anymore.
Sorry to pester you again
Just a quick follow up to the email I send you a couple of days ago to see what you think about the Affilorama affiliate program?
Do you have any questions that I can help you answer? Flick me a quick email with your questions/concerns and I can help you out.
Just to remind you this is what we offer our affiliates.
- We pay 75% recurring commission on our monthly membership.
- We can custom-make buttons or banners or whatever to suit your site layout and feel.If you lost the invitation code it’s: moneybags
Hope to hear from you soon
Guess what I did? I asked to be removed from their list, but with a little stronger language this time.
Two more days pass and I get the same follow-up. The next day, I got the follow up another two times.
That brings us to the present day. My frequent correspondent, “Jenna Mathews,” has yet to reply to me.
Hey “Jenna” and the rest of the gang over at Affilorama.com - don’t go away mad (just go away).
9 responses so far ↓
1 coopreme internet marketing // Apr 29, 2007 at 5:00 am
wow…
you should get their phone number and give the head honcho a call… or better yet get there ip’s listed as SPAMMERS!
2 Carsten Cumbrowski // Apr 29, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Hi Shawn,
I
amwas an affiliate of them.You know what the welcome letter states? Here it comes:
Signed… no, not Jenna, Simon.
You might want to contact Simon. He is
fromthe Affilorama.com Sales department at sales AT affilorama.com and also try affiliates AT affilorama.com.I had them listed at my List of Affiliate Program Directories, but now they are gone. I sent an email to affiliates AT affilorama.com with the request to get my affiliate account terminated and deleted. Let’s see how that goes.
3 Carsten Cumbrowski // Apr 29, 2007 at 10:59 pm
They deleted my account already as requested. You maybe want to try that email address
4 Shawn Collins // Apr 29, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I think they’ll probably figure out my problem now that they’re in Google News.
5 Scott Jangro // Apr 29, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I got the exact same messages Shawn.
I’ve been ignoring them, though I though it was funny that she thought that my site was “pretty good”. At least they’re not going overboard with the flattery!
6 Carsten Cumbrowski // Apr 30, 2007 at 12:32 am
They were actually a fit for my site and their directory looks well sorted. I would have listed them, if I would have come across them myself without them telling me. So for me was the email targeted when I got it.
The problem is that they sent it to everybody and his uncle = SPAM and that is something I do not tollerate. I may be reconsider some day in the future and list them again, if they cleaned their act up and learned to play by the rules.
7 Fraser Edwards // Apr 30, 2007 at 7:09 am
Yeah I’ve been getting this spam too. The thing that always amuses me is comments like
“Sorry to pester you again”
When they are clearly not sorry because they just shouldn’t bother! Definitely one that I’ll be ignoring.
8 Mark // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I’m from Affilorama and I can honestly say that we have NEVER spammed or sent an unsolicited email. Whoever wrote to you was not affilorama, and we have never had any body working for us called Jenna. Nor anyone impersonating a Jenna, nor sending such an email.
I only just found this post in the search engines, and can only assume that someone was hired to try and deliberately hurt our business’s reputation.
regards,
Mark
9 Mark // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:55 pm
I’m sorry Shawn, I just found out that one of my staff did use the name Jenna and did email you.
This was over a year ago, so I had completely forgotten about this. I thought at the time that it was a good idea that I get one of my staff members to email people in the clickbank marketplace who have affiliate areas to see if they wanted to affiliate to affilorama, because we could help train their affiliates.
I didn’t realize that we contacted people outside of the cbank marketplace, and I certainly didn’t think that it was spam at the time.
I have received many jv invites myself this way.
After reading your post and seeing the posts of other commenters I owe you a big apology as this was obviously seen as spam by you and others. And I can totally see your point of view looking back on it.
In the past, I always saw spam as buying one of those bulk email lists (I’ve never done that), not contacting relevant people in the industry to affiliate.
Again, I’m sorry for the frustrations that this has caused you and this method of gaining joint venture partners has not been used for a long time by Affilorama (and will not be used in the future).
I am very shocked also to hear that your emails did not receive a reply, nor get you unsubscribed from our newsletter. (I’m assuming you must have subscribed via our website as that is the only way you can get subscribed in the first place)
We pride ourselves on our customer support and we have since since moved our technical support team from offshore to in house (about 6 months ago), and as a result the support quality is much much higher now.
Again, my apologies for everything that happened.
All the best for the future.
Mark
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