TOS and Random Group Invitations question

Those drive me absolutely INSANE!!! It's not bad enough that they break the show up into enough pieces to show more commercial than show? They gotta show commercials *during* the show too? Greedy f'ing bastards.

Anyhow... I absolutely hate unsolicited group invites! If I got one from a merchant after purchasing something, I'd be likely to just ignore it if it was a one-time thing, that's at least understandable if not desirable.

When I get one from some jackass going through the search listing alphabetically or SL Exchange merchant listings and sending them out wholesale to every person they can, I file an AR. Every single time.

Why do I take my own personal time to file an abuse report? Because I hate spam *that much*, and will do everything in my power to fight it here in Second Life. It's already too far out of control in First Life, we simply don't need it getting to that point here

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got a small parcel of land, want a business idea? make a freakin LM and Group store then if someone wants the crap they can go get it. I hate spam in SL and will AR any that I get that I didnt specifically ask for. I will not IM the originator I will simply AR it as spam, which is the way LL likes it. I am not interested in joining groups for stores that end up simply sending more damn spam.


"vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature;"

From that definition its a stretch to call a group invitation spam, but really falls back to Linden Labs. I feel that random group invitations are annoying, not ethical and could possibly be considered spam, I wont AR because of it though, but thats just me. I do not feel a merchant offering a customer a group invitation is considered spam at all, and don't think Linden Labs would ever agree to that either.

There’s no big question at all; it is spam. It’s unsolicited (visiting your store once or even a few times is NOT consent to receive a group invite/advertisements). The fact that many people may have liked the invite and joined doesn’t change the fact that it was unsolicited. As for the T.O.S. description, it’s no stretch at all. The invite, while not an advertisement per se, is a way of advertising/promoting your store.

--Hugsy

The group invite is not an advertisement. Its a request to ask someone to receive advertisements, updates, free gifts, etc. I understand people getting aggravated by completely unrelated group invites out of the blue, even though they don't bother me terribly, i just decline it and 2 seconds later get back to what I was doing.

But it just amazes me that people get so aggravated that a small blue box pops up once on their screen if they visit a store. We are talking about 2 seconds of time to accept or deny it. The vast majority of the notices I send to my group are not advertisements, they are lm's to other cool places and free gifts, and occasionally a set of new product announcements or updated items.

It could be argued that visiting the store and especially buying something opens a business relationship between the store owner and the customer. The American "No Call" list allows this exemption to calls from businesses and people on the list.

Yes, I know the technical difference between an advertisement (i.e., placing a classified or an ad in a magazine) and a group invite. That's why I said it's not an advertisement per se. It *is* a way of promoting your store though.



It's not just you but lots of other people too. It can add up. Admittedly, right now, it's not so bad. *I don't want it to get worse.* I don't want to have to deal with 1,600 group invites, landmarks, notecards, pictures, etc.. a month in a non-spam filtered world.

--Hugsy

Simply visiting the store? No that's not a business relationship.

Actually buying something? Perhaps it's a business relationship at the time of purchase, perhaps longer if there's long term support. Regardless of how the "No Call" list works, in my opinion, sending product updates/notices would be support, not spam, because it would be expected and consent can reasonably be assumed. Sending ads for other products is still spam - just a form of which that may not be so bad.

--Hugsy

Hugsy said it far more concisely than I would.

I went to a store this morning for the first time that was in a nice area with other stores scattered around. (Won't call it a mall, it was much nicer than a mall.) Exhibiting cat-like curiosity, I browsed the other stores. Probably entered 10 or more of them. I even found one that I landmarked to return to later. But do I now have a business relationship with those 10 stores? No way.

If you insist on group-inviting people who make purchases at your store, I will disagree with the practice and still consider it spam, at least I see the rationalization that there's a business relationship in place. You have a reason to think that people actually have an interest in your products, based on a transaction that they made. But just because I come in your door? That's a disincentive to a business relationship ever being established.

Oooh, my favorite topic is back.



I raised this example earlier in the thread - Hugsy's answer to me then was that the no-call list definition (or the CAN-SPAM definition, I can't recall which one I cited precisely) is not the definition he prefers; he'd rather have one that's more protective to customer's inboxes and more restrictive of the types of soliciting businesses can do.

That's a perfectly legitimate answer, although I am not sure I agree with it.

One thing that I don't think has been addressed is the issue that's a little closer to my heart - my place is not a store; it's a place that is completely free to anyone to use as much as they like without giving me a single Linden (though I do have donation bowls there). That raises two distinctions that I think are relevant to the discussion:

(1) inviting people to join my group is not saying "Join to get updates on new reasons to give me your money!" It's saying "Join to get updates on fun things you and your friends can do for free.

(2) In my case, "simply visiting" is the only business relationship there is. I cannot gauge people's interest in my place by looking at what and how much they bought. I have to use return visits as a proxy for that. I think it's reasonable to say that if you come back to my place for a second look, you liked it enough that you might want to be invited to the group.

Now as I said above, in response to the concerns raised in this thread I have, for the time being, stopped sending group invitations. But to those who insist that group signs are good enough: wrong. That's just not so, the "touch to join" signs simply do not capture every person who wants to be in the group. I know this from my experiences sending invitations and (more recently) IM's to my repeat visitors. Lots of people just don't bother to read signs. Unless I make the signs so intrusive as to ruin the charm of my place, they will never capture even a fraction of the people who might have real interest in joining.

if you feel you must 'capture' customers your doing it wrong.... 'capturing' me earns a AR

My faverorite stores, which I visit often, never send me spam and they have been in business for years.

I agree totally and has been my experience as well. The signs just don't do the job. I am thinking of putting a survey up in my store to see peoples opinions and maybe offer some money to get a gauge of the residents opinion on this. I'll put something together and post the results next week.

Maybe I will change my practice of offering group invites to people that visit our store, really in the long run it doesnt help me all that much, because mostly I am giving away gifts to people in my group and not soliciting ads. However for our club I will not change the practice. I agree completely with Madhu in his two points he made. Our beach club and bar is non-profit business and is just a place for people to come relax and are free to use any of the facilities at any time. 100% of donations go towards dj's, performers and contests, and these donations don't even cover half the operating costs, which we provide almost a 1/3 of a sim for.

If people want to AR me for offering a one time group invite to you because you visited, then go ahead, really doesn't bother me if you do. If you don't like it then don't visit and chances are your not the type of person that others would want around. As far as the store i still dont agree but I will let my customers and vistors tell me what they like and go from there.

I appreciate everyones input on this, its nice to see everyones thoughts on both sides of the issue.

As I said along the way, I sent the invitations to residents who has been in my store since the beginning of the year (three months worth at the time) and (emphasis added) who had made purchases. I liken it to shopping in clothing and gadget stores in real life. When I attend at the customer service counter, I am often asked if I would like to be on their mailing list to be notified of new releases, get a catalog, etc. It's an invitation. I accept or decline. I can do that without getting my fins all bunched up. To me invitations are just that. Once I join the group, spam is all the stuff I didn't sign up for.

I'm a growing business and so far the feedback has been positive, with of course the one notable exception. My customers tell me they appreciate the convenience of being reminded now and then of a new release and of course gifts.

For the woman who went ballistic on me and threatened to AR me, that was disturbing for a few days, but it's possible she was having a bad day and chose to take it out on me. Who knows. It happens. The result for her is that I and my partner will no longer give her our business. And of course word of mouth can be a powerful influence as well. And to this point, we are not even using her creations in our designs. So I think in the end, the loss is far greater for her, when she made choices as well as 'decline'.

So much great input and very thought provoking, and so incredibly revealing, lolol. Thank you all!

Yeah, I'm a new user, and I was surprised today when I received a second random group invite from someone that I muted yesterday for the same thing.

So you're telling me there is currently no way to stop this? :/

BTW, the group is: <3 Je t'aime Fashion & Lifestyle <3

BTW, unsolicited group invites are an AR'able offence. A recent case on the blotter:


Why don't you create an incentive for people to join your group? Put out a vendor with some products anyone in your group gets for free or at a reduced price.

This is 100% non-obtrusive and tends to work quite well. Who can withstand a Free Lunch™?

Interesting; I wonder what the history of that case is - how many unsolicited group invites led to the warning?



Because my place is not a store, and to the extent that I have products, they are already free to everyone.

You could always offer something special as a freebie to group members ... and only to them.

Well, I have sympathy with the OP. I used to go through our sales reports once a week and send group invites to everyone who had bought something, figuring that they could just click on "no". For quite a few weeks things went really well, until one person wrote me a very nasty IM and said they had ARed me for it.

While I was doing the invitations, the group's membership went up by over 150 people.

So we decided that we would stop doing the invitations, because we didn't want to annoy our customers, and would put out a "group inviter" notecard giver out for people to click on. I think in the three months since we did that we have had 5 more people join the group, mostly because I walked up to them in the store and personally invited them.

(For those interested, the thread where I brought it up was at http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=238941 )

So, bottom line is that because of this, a lot of our customers that would otherwise have been interested in our product announcements aren't getting them, and the one person that complained about the invites got their way.

Personally, I think that everyone loses out of this sort of thing. I'm not going to start sending out the invites any more, but it is very frustrating to us to try to find a good balance.

lol ive invited a few people who've bought products into the product update groups...only to get similar hateful IMs (people really do go ballistic! - though similarly they get mad when they dont have product updates grrrr!!!) thankfully LL do investigate the ARs sent in, chances are you won't look like the average group invite spammer type..