A while ago I signed up for a teleseminar and now I receive the standard e-mail reminders for other teleseminars. One arrived today that started out:

Hi Josh,

Do you have 90 minutes and $1 to spare?

Are you blogging yet for your business? Or, if you are, are you getting the results you want with your blog?

The reason I ask is because I know many of you have heard all the hype about blogging and may be wary to jump in because it is the latest marketing fad....

Uh, yeah I blog :-) It's going pretty good so far.

E-mail blasts are a double-edged sword. Yes it's great that you can send out information to your massive opt-in list to inform/promote/sell. Then again you can come across sounding dumb if you don't know your recipients. When I receive an e-mail address from somebody I make it a point to visit their web site (if they have one) and make the necessary notes for future follow-up. When I do a mass e-mail (which is very rare) I make sure that I am not putting my foot in my mouth when talking to people within the industry. (Jeremy Zawodny recounts a recent e-mail/mail-merge snafu he received.)

On a related note, many years ago when I ran a web development firm I was cold-called by a competing web firm. They had hired a group of college students to go through the phone book and call businesses asking them if they were interested in a web site (sounds great doesn't it). Knowing nothing about the firms they were contacting they ending up calling me. In hindsight I should have strung them along, but at the time I was sort of dumbstruck. The person on the line asked, "Do you have a web site?" Yes... "Are you happy with it? We would like to offer you a free web site evaluation..." No thanks.