I didn’t ask to be signed up for your email newsletter. I asked you to read a play I’d written, in the hope that you might consider it for your next season or your contest or your development program or your festival—whatever the case may be.
You invited me to share my work via email, so I sent you a PDF, which meant you then had my email address. It was rather audacious of you to add my email address to your newsletter list, though, wasn’t it? Without asking me?
I suppose you might have been assuming that, since I’ve decided I’d like to have an artistic relationship with you, I naturally care about your theater’s work. And it’s true, I might. But if your theater is in, say, Albuquerque, and I live in DC, do you really think I want to get emails about your Annual Benefit Bash or your New Reading Series? Because guess what—I don’t.
If I want to stay abreast of your work, I’ll do so on my own, thank you.
The message you send to me by doing this to my poor, beleaguered inbox, incidentally, is that you really didn’t want to work with me in the first place (especially if the way you declined to work with me was particularly poor). The message is that you just wanted my email address so that I’d listen to you gloat about how great you are. That’s a bad message, I’m sure you’ll agree, to send.
So think twice, I suggest, before you use my email address as a marketing tool (when it’s really about communication, not marketing). Don’t sign me up for anything I didn’t ask for. Because you know why? I”m going to start tweeting the names of companies that have done this to me. I won’t start with any that have done it prior to this warning, but you’ve now all had plenty of advance notice. Sign me up, and you get called out in public. That’s the deal.
Don’t worry, I’ll do it kindly and with the best of intentions—which is, I’m sure, what you’ll say in defense of yourself.
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