Visit Our Blog
Sloan Seymour, President of Ziff Davis, Spammer Extraordinaire
How many complaints does the FTC have to get before they file a suit against Ziff Davis?
In February, Jeffrey asked “Does Ziff Davis’s Spam Damage its Brand?” Both Jeffrey and I could not get off of Ziff Davis’s email list, no matter how many times we tried to remove ourselves. Thankfully, a reader (James) left a comment on June 10th about how he solved this problem:
Hi all,
I found a solution to Ziff Davis SPAM. I spent an hour searching every Ziff Davis email on google and come up with the following list.
info@ziffdavis.com, phil_kramer@ziffdavis.com, kelli_turtz@ziffdavis.com, sandra_gibson@ziffdavis.com, Sloan_Seymour@ziffdavis.com, Martha_Schwartz@ziffdavis.com, Stephen_Veith@ziffdavis.com, Phil_Kramer@ziffdavis.com, angelo_mandarano@ziffdavis.com, lfreeman@ziffdavis.com, chris_maginn@ziffdavis.com, baseline@ziffdavis.com, appscout@ziffdavis.com, larryseltzer@ziffdavis.com, matthew_graven@ziffdavis.com, randy_zane@ziffdavis.com, events@ziffdavis.com, chris_primesberger@ziffdavis.com, opportunities@ziffdavis.com, eWEEK@ziffdavis.com, Debra_Olchick@ziffdavis.com, jeffrey_burt@ziffdavis.com, dennis_barker@ziffdavis.com, mary_hart@ziffdavis.com, gearlog@ziffdavis.com, Sheena_Mohan@ziffdavis.com, askloyd@ziffdavis.com, kristin_holmes@ziffdavis.com, ppereira@ziffdavis.com, debra_donston@ziffdavis.com, Matthew_rothenberg@ziffdavis.com, Evan_Schuman@ziffdavis.com, elda_vale@ziffdavis.com, eric_lundquist@ziffdavis.com, jason_freidenfelds@ziffdavis.com, Mary_behr@ziffdavis.com, john_mccormick@ziffdavis.com, aimee_levine@ziffdavis.com, stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com, Nicholas_mokhoff@ziffdavis.com, dennis_fisher@ziffdavis.com, garcia@ziffdavis.com, darryl_taft@ziffdavis.com, caton@ziffdavis.com, Karl_Elken@ziffdavis.com, barry_ harrigan@ziffdavis.com, andrew_garcia@ziffdavis.com, cameron_sturdevant@ziffdavis.com, chris_maginn@ziffdavis.com, joe_wilcox@ziffdavis.com, peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com, kristin_holmes@ziffdavis.com
This list includes CEO’s, GM’s Managers, Executives and staff thoughout thier SPAM empire.
Send an email to all these people with an email subject similer to:
Violation of Federal CAN-SPAM act of 2003: Request to stop receiving unsolicited emails from ALL Ziff Davis related publications, subsidiaries and websites.
However, don’t be rude or abusive just politily tell them that thier “unsubscribe” links have not stopped thier spam and that they are in voilation of the above Federal Legislation.
I sent off this email with a read receipt, and received no reponsce from anyone apart from:
Sloan Seymour
President, Enterprise Group
Ziff Davis Media
Office: 212.503.4850
Mobile: 917.273.2774
Sloan_Seymour@ziffdavis.comShe apologised, and advisde me I would be removed from all mailing lists. I have happily never received SPAM since
I’m sure you could just email Sloan and help would help you, but the extra emails in the CC feild might add a bit more weight.
Hope this helps other people out there stop the madness.
I followed this advice and was personally contacted by Sloan Seymour.
An Open Letter To Sloan Seymour
Sloan,
Thank you for keeping me off your email list, till now.
How bad are things at Ziff Davis? Desperate enough that you have to insist on sending emails to people who have so angrily opted out?
I suggest you invest a few bucks and buy a few copies of this book for your staff. Make it a requirement to actually read it and practice permission marketing.
By the way, if things are so bad at Ziff Davis, let me know — I’ll happily purchase a handful of copies and send it to you, as long as you never email me again.
You can see from the comments on our post that this is a common complaint. I’m sure you are aware. Please let us know what you plan to do?
Pissed off in the blogosphere,
Bryan
P.S. Below is the previous email thread to remind you of our correspondence.
About the author
Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books Call to Action, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark and Always Be Testing. Bryan is available as a professional speaker. You can friend him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter (@TheGrok).
More articles from Bryan Eisenberg
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
For More, Subscribe To Grok!
- Capterra: The Conference Sept 13-15, Wash., DC
- "Recession Marketing: From Pre-click to Post-click" (webinar) Sept 16, 12pm EDT / 9am PDT
- "Securing the Sale: Turn Your Site's Browsers Into Buyers" (webinar) Sept 17, 2pm EDT / 11am PDT
- Excellence and Innovation conference Sept 28-30, Orlando
- The SEM Conference
Sept 23-24, Oslo, Norway - eConsultancy Peer Summit Oct 8, New York City
- The Bolo Conference Oct 12-14, Scotsdale, AZ
- Google GAAC/WOAC annual meetings
Oct 13-16, Googleplex California - eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Oct 19-23, Wash., DC
November 7th, 2007
12:37 pm
Thanks for the tip. And, companies should also note – DO NOT have the “yes I want to receive” (e-letters, special offers, blah-blahh, blahhh) box automatically checked if I’m sending you an email inquiry or question. (And, really, don’t force people to give everything, including fax number, snail mail address and type of company before you’ll even let the email go through your “customer service” contact system. Grrr.)
Oh dear. I feel another blog post coming on.
November 7th, 2007
4:53 pm
[...] Ziff-Davis picked the wrong people to spam. Why, oh why is it so hard to understand? People DO NOT want to be at the end of a cold email blast. [...]
November 10th, 2007
12:09 am
Thanks for the great information that kind of mail may help as well with other spammers!?
November 12th, 2007
9:04 pm
I sent e-mails to their abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses stating that I had unsubscribed via the link provided in their messages, and that the spam continued. I promptly received a letter from their “Online Audience Development Team” apologizing for the inconvenience, and that the messages would stop within 10 business days.
I just found your article above. Seems I am in good company, eh?
November 12th, 2007
9:06 pm
I forgot to mention; the spam continues.
November 12th, 2007
11:58 pm
I wish I could have had this info several months ago. It seems the spam has stopped now, but unsubscribe links definitely weren’t working until recently.
November 18th, 2007
8:02 pm
For the record, I notice I’m on your list … Only I haven’t been at Ziff since May 2006!
Oh, and Sloan Seymour is a he, not a she.
Matthew Rothenberg
VP/Editorial Director
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.
November 19th, 2007
5:51 am
Matthew,
Thank you for the correction. However, I am quoting James’ comment from a previous post and I don’t think it would be appropriate to change his words. He made up this list by looking all over the web for any ZD email addresses (I guess past and current). I am sure things are better at HFM US.
January 7th, 2008
3:54 pm
[...] I reported here, here, and here, Ziff Davis spams people. Fortunately, I found this page. It looks like it was the [...]
October 10th, 2008
3:06 pm
Hello all Spam recipients from Ziff Davis. Does Ziff Davis sell your email address? I too sent a very polite email to Ziff Davis and the spam stopped temporarily. Now suddenly I am getting blasted again full force! I let them know it was back and very quickly received many more ZD trash seminar emails. And have noticed many other spam emails suddenly increase. Perhaps the only way to deal with this situation is to contact their partners who are involved in their seminars + inform them that Ziff Davis causes pain and suffering to IT professionals by their shameless use of email spam and email address piracy. I wonder if that would curtail their unwanted spamming?
December 8th, 2008
12:57 pm
Please, everyone, report them via spamcop and razor. Let’s vote with the best tools we can so we can keep most of these from getting to our inbox.
January 27th, 2009
2:51 pm
I’m one of the addresses on this message and am unusual in that I write for both companies. I’m a freelancer so I’m ont an employee and I have no idea how to stop the newsletters.
But you should know that most of the complaints I receive are for newsletters from Ziff Davis Enterprise, publishers of eWEEK, Basline, CIO Insight, etc. Their domain is ziffdavisenterprise.com
The e-mail list you have above is all ziffdavis.com addresses. This is the domain for Ziff Davis Media, publishers of PCMag, EGM, 1Up, etc. Completely differnent company, completely differnt newsletter staffs, in other words your e-mails are definitely going to the wrong people,
To make matters worse, this address list appears to have been constructed before ZDE was split off, so many of the people in it are actually ZDE employees, but their ziffdavis.com addresses don’t work anymore, So those never get delivered. Plus I can see at least 8 people who just don’t work there anymore, and I’m sure there are more.
Just click the damn unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message. You won’t do any better than that.
April 20th, 2009
1:00 pm
[...] or lead confirmation, autoresponders, etc. Make sure the dates are correct, unsubscribe links work (you don’t want to end up like this company), review what is being said, etc. Make sure to plan for more intelligent, dynamically generated [...]