Anne Mitchell of ISIPP posts “How the Email Deliverability Accreditation and Reputation Industry is Eating Itself Alive” a screed about how some in the space are dissing the competition to make sales.
While some negatives are inevitable in comparison shopping materials provided by sales types, this type of thing reminds me of something a boss of mine once said: Referring at the time to the small amount of money we had to divvy up among the various departments under his control, he quipped ‘when the water runs out, the animals around the watering hole look at one another differently’.
Quite so. I have to wonder if such desperate tactics are brought about by a monetary compression at a given firm, or if they speak to portended industry health. Actually, I tend towards the former explanation rather than the latter; I don’t think email has anything to fear, indeed, it is probably a growth area in a receding market. While all indicators for the over-all economy may be downwards trending, as the cost of travel increases, and face-to-face becomes ever more dear, surely the ability to communicate from afar will become ever more valuable.
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I find the whole thing pretty funny. As much as I agree that bashing the competition isn't a good policy, I wouldn't let it upset me this much. It's going to happen. Customers can decide for themselves what kind of company they want to work with.
And I find that laughing it off is the best response to those kinds of negative tactics. Being defensive makes you look guilty. Being confident and unaffected makes you look, well, confident and unaffected.
At the same time, I often see competitors make ridiculous claims and when a prospective customer asks me to match their claim, I'm left with few alternatives than to politely explain that the competitor's claim is false.