In your online and offline life you will have positive and negative relationships. My suggestion, if you can't have a positive relationship online don't have one at all. Whenever I start an online relationship I select the DO NOT SEND ME PROMO EMAILS option (if available). In this way I help my vendor understand what sort of relationship I want to have (don't call me, I'll call you). However this morning, I got an email that appeared to be from Craig Strong at Lensbaby (he makes very cool selective focus lenses). From the subject it appeared to me that he might want me to show off some of the pictures I have taken with my Lensbaby, but as soon as I opened the email I realized it was a 'form email'. Lots of pictures, links and an utter lack of a personal message were my first clue.

Had the email been from Craig to me and been more personal I would have been very interested in participating. How hard would it have been for Craig to write a simple email and send it to people who have purchased his lenses? How many emails can one person handle? Perhaps he should have sent out 100 and waited for the response. What is the response rate for personal email? I suspect it is fairly good, perhaps 20%. Assuming 20 people emailed him and half of those who responded were interested in participating he could easily call them. In less than a day Craig might have engaged 10 fans willing to help promote his product and in the process become even more connected to him and his brand. What if Craig did this sort of relationship building once a week for a year? It is possible that he would have formed a positive and direct relationship with as many as 500 of his customers. Oh and Craig doesn't have to be the only person at Lensbaby building relationships, he could enlist other people to start a direct conversation with customers as well.

But I know, it is much easier to email 10,000 people than it is to call 100 people. But what have you gained? Have you built a positive relationship? Maybe, but I suspect for every positive relationship you form from SPAM, you lose the possibility for forming a relationship with 100 people FOREVER. Just my two cents...