Have you been receiving email from a startup called “To Let” recently? Do you recall signing up for such emails? If you answered yes and no (in that order) to those questions, you’re not alone. You, I, and as many other people as I can think of have been receiving unsolicited email recommendations — also known as SPAM — from ToLet.com.ng, the rental startup that is among the first batch of the newly announced SPARK group of companies.
To get a sense of just how bad this is, I took a quick vox pop of people in the Co-Creation Hub, and it turns out that each one to the last man has received email from ToLet.com.ng. None of them signed up. How and why is this happening?
Very elementary. This is a great example of how the SPARK hive mind works. The idea is that they share office space, electricity costs, internet, HR, legal and accounting…
And email subscription lists.
I have a very good idea that ToLet is simply leveraging off what must be the considerably hefty email subscription data from the older Iroko Partners companies, and auto-opting people in. Subscribe to one, and you just might be subscribed to all.
Clever, yes, very much so from a customer acquisition perspective. Cool? Er…not so much. It’d be unpleasant to start waking up to email from 13 different SPARK companies. Unlikely scenario, but very possible.
To their credit, there is an unsubscribe link. In fact, if you’re one of the unwilling subscribers in their recommendations basket, I’ve put the link here for your benefit. You can unsubscribe right away! Not that it’ll amount to much, but hey…
I’ve contacted ToLet…still waiting on them for comment.
