How to win enemies and piss off people using your email list

If a  modern version of the famous Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People were to appear, I am sure it would have a chapter on how to use your email list properly.

Some years ago, when I was still running my restaurant, I used to play the market. It was more or less a hobby, not a big time endeavor, but there was not one single year in which I didn't have some taxable income from that activity. The whole thing really boils down to establishing some kind of system and following it without letting your emotions influence the moves you make. But that's a subject for another post, which I will probably not be writing for a long time.

Anyone who is in the stock market has heard of Jim Cramer, his Mad Money TV show and his web site, 'thestreet.com'. Years ago, this guy used to be a sports coach somewhere and ended up becoming very well known in the Wall Street circles. He is one of today's gurus in stock market investing.

So, I learned about him and became a subscriber to one or two of the services he offers. Then, when I stopped playing the market 3-4 years ago, I canceled my subscriptions. That should have been the end of my receiving his promotional emails, since I was no longer his customer – and that should have happened automatically. But no, now almost 4 years later, those are still taking up room in my mailbox a couple of times a week. I just kept throwing them away, until I got fed up at the end of last year and decided to unsubscribe.

I have been trying all of this year, unsuccessfully. Here is how it works: at the end of the emails, it says " To opt out from receiving any future marketing-related emails from TheStreet.com, please click here". Fine and dandy, except that when you browse to that link, you end up on a list containing 100 links to various articles and several links to free trials of assorted products; the unsubscribe thing is nowhere to be seen. I browsed to several pages on the site, and finally found a link that read 'unsubscribe'. Clicking on it, you end up on the aforementioned list page. It reminds me of what programmers call an 'infinite loop'.

Neither could I find an email address or phone number to contact a human in the organization. There is a street address, to which I sent a letter just before I started writing this – we'll see what happens.

One thing that used to piss me off about thestreet.com was seeing Cramer's mug plastered all over his materials, sometimes 4-5 times on the same page; obviously this guy thinks he's an Adonis I don't know if it's still like that. I know you are supposed to "personalize" your messages, but gimme a break!

When I start fooling around with the market again (it should be soon, this is as good a time as any; there are put options), I will probably want to subscribe to some service to keep current. Guess where I am NOT going for this service.

Maybe I'm just stupid: I don't seem to understand some of the advanced techniques that the gurus use. Here is another example.

I can't figure out the rationale. Do these people think that forcing the public to deal with SPAM is going to give them new friends and prospects? And where is the respect for privacy that they claim to possess?