Fax marketing aka Fax-a-spam Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 15:48, in Labels: fax marketing, seth godin, sustainability

In the hustle and bustle of the office, the fax machine beeps and whirrs. A fax has arrived. And also, it seems, a full-fledged marketing effort. Are you kidding me?

My office receives a couple of feebly targeted faxed marketing messages every quarter. Unsurprisingly, they mainly come from companies promoting their own fax marketing service. The latest I noticed on the trash bin was from yesterday. I was baffled. Fax marketing, it’s not an urban legend?

Similar to email marketing, fax marketers praise their low cost (only 3.5 eurocents per sent fax!), huge reach (fax numb.. *cough* contact details of over 100 000 companies!) and ability to target specific segments. Give me a break.

In the era of email.. ah nevermind, since the era of dinosaurs only few decision-makers have had their own fax numbers. Most companies, my clients for example, easily survive with one faceless company fax number which is monitored by an assistant/lobby clerk/other non-decision maker. With this in mind, how can these firms claim to have any ability to reach anyone their customers seek? In essence their business could be sending emails to companies’ info@company.com mail address. Granted, someone could actually read their fax, but if I was contemplating fax marketing I wouldn’t risk irritating my customer.

And talk about wasting resources. First of all, printing consumes electricity and paper and wears the machine. And a fax marketer isn’t consuming anyone’s paper (without permission!) He’s consuming his customer’s paper (1.5 eurocents a piece thankyouverymuch). Seth Godin would have a stroke. I’m having a stroke, between laughs. Fax marketing really isn’t 21st Century and it sure isn’t a part of any aspiration to sustainability.

So next time you receive a faxed, undesired marketing message, please remember to recycle the paper.