Yelp!
This ad dude from Yelp writes:
Eric,
Hope you are having a Happy Holidays? I have been thinking about you lately and how you just can't afford to be involved in Yelp. I ask myself, how can he not afford to be working with Yelp. Your Los Angeles would be a huge magnet to people who are looking for you in the area. Plus, with over 300 people coming to your page every month to decide to spend money in your store, there is a huge opportunity here.
I have to ask, what matters most, price or profit? Eric, which would you rather have? Price only lasts for a moment and profit lasts for a lifetime. I am very confident that Giant Robot would b a huge success on the site. Plus, your success is directly tied to mine, and I wouldn't have made contact with you if I didn't think I could help bring you more profit.
Let me know what I can do to make this work, I know you will have extreme success, we just got to get you involved. What are your thoughts?
-Best
Brent
Isn't this a fucked up email? It's one of the rudest, condescending emails I've seen in a while, and it came from Yelp.
1) has this guy Brent really been thinking about me?
2) can I really afford to work without Yelp? I've done it so far.
3) "Your Los Angeles" Yes, "My" Los Angeles.
4) I get 300 people looking at my page? That's it?
5) Price or profit and he inserts my name there? There's some fucked up shit. What's more important? Neither, it's doing things right. There's more to it, and if this dude had any business experience, he'd be cooler.
6) Giant Robot would "b"?
Pretty uncool Yelp.
Eric,
Hope you are having a Happy Holidays? I have been thinking about you lately and how you just can't afford to be involved in Yelp. I ask myself, how can he not afford to be working with Yelp. Your Los Angeles would be a huge magnet to people who are looking for you in the area. Plus, with over 300 people coming to your page every month to decide to spend money in your store, there is a huge opportunity here.
I have to ask, what matters most, price or profit? Eric, which would you rather have? Price only lasts for a moment and profit lasts for a lifetime. I am very confident that Giant Robot would b a huge success on the site. Plus, your success is directly tied to mine, and I wouldn't have made contact with you if I didn't think I could help bring you more profit.
Let me know what I can do to make this work, I know you will have extreme success, we just got to get you involved. What are your thoughts?
-Best
Brent
Isn't this a fucked up email? It's one of the rudest, condescending emails I've seen in a while, and it came from Yelp.
1) has this guy Brent really been thinking about me?
2) can I really afford to work without Yelp? I've done it so far.
3) "Your Los Angeles" Yes, "My" Los Angeles.
4) I get 300 people looking at my page? That's it?
5) Price or profit and he inserts my name there? There's some fucked up shit. What's more important? Neither, it's doing things right. There's more to it, and if this dude had any business experience, he'd be cooler.
6) Giant Robot would "b"?
Pretty uncool Yelp.
Labels: random musings
posted by gr @ PERMLINK: 9:29 AM
8 Comments:
PR people. Aren't they the worst?
That comes off as a straight-up marketing "cold call" type of email. There's nothing in it that suggests Brent knows anything about GR.
Either that or Yelp has a broken SPAM email generating program based on the piss-poor spelling and grammar.
Bad, but the weird thing is this Brent dude called, he's talked to me on the phone, I've told him, no, we can't afford to advertise there. So he's just relentless, condescending, and I guess just an ass at least at work. I don't know what else to say about the guy. It's not quite spam though.
it's a lame email to be sure.... but why the public airing of a private email?
Good point Rod. It's not completely private, and it's a dickish email that's bordering spam. I don't know this guy except he's called, and if you're going to come at someone like this, and be a dick, you gotta accept the consequences. It's part of being that sleazy ad sales guy. Does he really know me, does he know what I really think? It's like saying, "You like the breathe right? So you should buy my air." I've been very generous so far and really, haven't wrote the true shit it deserves.
Interesting that yelp represents itself as a "community" website of sorts with voices from the community. But obviously profit is very important here. And we all do have to make a living, but hopefully we can find ways to do that in less obnoxious ways than others.
Yelp seems to be positive although it's a user run site, so therefore should be fairly neutral, and ultimately we use it as a source of reviews and information about a place, shop, etc. But it just feels good to use it. So I was a bit surprised that Yelp would represent themselves this way. It's the almightly dollar that does it. How much commission do you think "Brent" makes? His job is to milk every possible avenue. Is it his fault? Is his tact a result of some past success where he conned someone into doing an ad? Maybe he's forced to do it this way. Who knows. I remember him or another rep telling me after I said, "we can't spend on this ad." He came back with, "it's not an expense, it's an investment." Uh, common, so is a $6,000 Rolex, $2,000 pair of Pigeon Dunks, or a $80,000 Mercedes if it gets you somewhere on time, right?
I guarantee that now Giant Robot will start to get bad reviews on Yelp. Yelp seems to use extortion tactics to get ad revenue... hurting businesses that don't buy ads by moving bad reviews to the top of the list. They can do this with their "automated sorting method" which is a "proprietary algorithm" that is supposed to move "most useful" reviews to the top. The arbitrary "Recent + Votes" sort allows Yelp to manipulate which reviews are at the top of the list.
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