Viewpoint
Webinar spam
Every day, my Outlook
inbox fills up with invitations to attend a
variety of webinars. Here is a recent
two-day sampling of topics covered by these
online events: disaster recovery, workload
automation, deduplication, aligning ITSM
strategies, improving security, monitoring
user activity, customer identity protection
and IT automation. Who has the time?
Why am I so blessed to
receive so many invitations, perhaps 10 to
15 every day? Simply because I am subscribed
to several technology magazines, a situation
I suspect is similar for a large percentage
of Communications News' audience.
There are a lot of technology-related
magazines out there, as most of you know.
Some, like this one, cover a myriad of
topics important to IT management, and
others focus on vertical segments, such as
security or telephony.
Every time you sign up
for one of these magazines, however, you
also are signing up to receive e-mail
invitations to attend Web seminars or
virtual trade shows.
(Note:
Communications News does not conduct
webinars, so we don't pester our subscribers
with e-mails to attend.) And you don't just
receive one such invitation per event; they
keep coming until you sign up to attend and
even more after the event has been held.
Why are they pushing you
so hard to sign up for these events? First
of all, these are commercial ventures, with
sponsors signed on and participating in the
presentations. These sponsors generally are
guaranteed a certain number of attendees, so
the publications keep bombarding their
subscribers with e-mail promotions until
enough people sign up. The sponsors receive
the list of all attendees and generally
follow up with calls or e-mails to sell
their products or services to what are
considered interested buyers.
I have participated in
several such Web events, including one
virtual trade show. My experiences, however,
have been less than satisfactory. The
webinars I have sampled lacked useful,
hands-on information, often being more
infomercial than educational. Even the
stated interactive benefit of these is
suspect, as you can pose questions to the
presenters, but there is no guarantee an
answer will be given. The process is kind of
like sending a query into a dark room and
hoping a voice responds with a useful
answer.
Not all of these online
events are the same, of course. I've only
sampled a few. The ones I'm now ignoring in
my inbox might be worthwhile, or they could
still be a waste of time. I'll never know,
because now these messages have become spam.
Delete.
kanderberg@comnews.com