In the last few moments, my doorbell rang and I got an email. I was a Carol Merrill gesturing to a third door and the stench of live ostrich away from a real-life Monty Hall problem. A happy day for a mathematician. And, for me. So, door or Inbox?
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A lot of things rush through your head when you’re presented with a choice. Even one as banal as this.
For me, one of those things was a recent LinkedIn post from Judy Shapiro. She had asked people if they thought it was creepy to get a cold email after visiting a site. A little over half the people, “Don’t like it.” About a third found it, “Not great, but there weren’t bothered.” The rest didn’t think it was a problem.
That got me wondering what site(s) I had visited recently. It was midday so mostly LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tech Crunch. Yeah, I’m that boring. The first two have my email and don’t spam me when I visit. The third doesn’t have my email. No harm.
A doorbell in the afternoon usually means Amazon is dropping off some useless household item I cared about so little I didn’t even leave the house to shop for it.
I wasn’t any further ahead. Spinning the random number generator in my head came up, “too lazy to walk to the door.” So, I chose email.
Ugh, cold marketing email. You know how this goes.
It was from a firm offering to build a website. It started, “Hey Charles.” They knew my name. Apparently, they came across my website this morning. The women whose name is attached to email, Amanda, asked if she can send over the 5-minute video explainer video she created. Fortunately, she was kind enough to let me know that I could reply, “No” and her marketing system would remove me from her list.
Well, there is no one named Amanda who works for this company. In fact, the company that offers to build websites doesn’t have a website. How’s that for irony.
Now, like you, I get many of these emails every day. Like the people who responded to Judy’s survey, a third of the time, I simply ignore them. Half the time, I move them to junk. The rest of the time, I just hit delete. This time… this time… was special.
I replied. But with this…
Judy asked if responsive marketing creeps me out. Honestly, I’m meh. It creeps me out much more when I get a cold email based on garbage a bunch of bots found around the web and arbitrarily and inaccurately ascribed to me. That’s way worse than getting a cold email from a site I visited. I have come to expect that level of laziness from people who think “sophisticated marketing ad-like responsive technology” is S.M.A.R.T.. It’s not.
Tired and more than a little fed up, I went to the door. And, found a hand-written note on my stoop. It was crumpled and dirty and started, “Dear Neighbour…” It’s fine. That’s how Canadians spell it. I could call Alison for a free quote. They had a website and everything.
I tossed it in the garbage.
I had railed against automated spam marketing. And, then, against seemingly earnest personal marketing. Which makes me a duplicitous heir to the Massengill fortune. Then, feeling bad, I fished it out, snapped a pic, wrote this, and, to atone, I sent a note about my friend’s band playing a gig to a bunch of friends.
All of which is fair and brings me to the third stanza of this story. The Monty Hall problem. At the end of Let’s Make a Deal, two players get to choose one of three doors. Monty, now, Wayne Brady, shows the non-grand prize to one of the contestants. The remaining contestant can choose to change to the unpicked door or stick with the original choice.
What do you do? Door or inbox? The answer is: You always switch to the third option. That gives you the best chance to win. I forgot that and it cost me. I should have chosen neither. Because I truly hate all marketing. Non-mathematician mistake. Won’t happen again.
