Advertiser PM Spam?

S

SWJ12

Long time lurker here. I just registered for ET and received a "friendly email" from Advanced Futures President & Founder Mark Hyman. He was "welcoming me to the board" but it was obvious the email was just spam trying to get my attention and maybe, potentially, possible use Advanced Futures if I needed a futures broker.

My question is- does MarkHyman have a script that constantly checks for the newest member to spam? Or is this a built-in advertising "feature" that ET allows and endorses?
 
Just signed up to check it out.... Within 5 minutes I was SPAMMED by this auto-generated PM.
Is this ethical from a president of a brokerage yet alone an advertisor on this forum?


Welcome to Elite Trader!
I was just on elitetrader.com and noticed that you recently became a member (new members are shown briefly in the top right hand corner of the home page).

My name is Mark and I just wanted to introduce myself. I am an active e-mini trader and make numerous post daily to the discussion threads. If you ever want to discuss the market or have questions regarding the e-minis, drop me a line. I look forward to your participation on elitetrader.com.

It was a pleasure to meet you.

Best regards,
Mark Hyman
Screen name: MarkHyman
 
Originally posted by cheeks
I personally don't care.

Advertising pays for the site. Not me.:)
More...
Good point. But... general web netiquette is to advertise via banner ads and other visual media. Email advertising is usually frowned upon, except for cases of opt-in lists.

What happens if there are 10 vendors that all send PM's to users who sign up? And then regular PM's every month? I'm all for advertising dollars to support the sight, but general netiquette should be followed IMHO.
 
I personally would not have a problem with receiving the occasional advert via the Elitetrader Private Messaging system, as long as such messages do not count towards the memory space taken by my private messages...

However, I would have a big problem with receiving unsolicited advertising via Elitetrader which is sent to my personal email address...

A differentiation for advertising must be made between our personal email addresses and the Elitetrader private messaging system; once again advert private messages should not count towards used memory space...

If advertising approved by Baron sent via the private messaging helps to generate revenues which can be used to maintain Elitetrader as our trading forum of choice, I would have no problem with that...
 
what ticks me off about the PM advertising is that it is sneaky and appears to be something that it is not. this form of marketing is deceitful and offensive, those who engage in it are not helping their cause.

best,

surf:(
 
Originally posted by marketsurfer
what ticks me off about the PM advertising is that it is sneaky and appears to be something that it is not. this form of marketing is deceitful and offensive, those who engage in it are not helping their cause.

best,

surf:(
More...

I suppose legitimate adverts could be certified with a special message marker that advertisers can only get access to through payment to Baron..
 
I didn't intend to make a "big deal" out of unsolicited PM I received upon registering, but thought it was an issue worth bringing up in this "Feedback" section.

I wasn't trying to draw attention to the specific PM I received, but rather to the topic of unsolicited advertising via PM's. This is an important issue for many websites, not just ET. The big question is always "where do you draw the line" based on needs to raise money for a great forum and standard web/advertising etiquette.

To make a very simple example- suppose that Yahoo or AOL sent unsolicited advertising-based IM's to users. Surely there would be a huge uproar against that. Unsolicited emails from Yahoo or Hotmail to free email accounts is usually ok if the user authorized it. Same goes for "opt-in" mailing lists.

Also, what happens if another vendor decides to write a script that checks ET every second to see if a new user registered and sent that user a PM?

Sorry if I came across as totally condensing the particular PM that I received. I wanted to discuss the topic in general.

Steve
 
candle,

how about a disclaimer that the PM is from a marketer with a vested interest in promoting and not not just from "someone" who wants to help. isn't a disclaimer required by SEC regulations anyway from a "broker" ??

best,

surf
 
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