Open Discussion on Limiting Broadcast Messages

All successful marketing efforts have one thing in common: they're targeted to the proper audience. Tradeloop Broadcasts are no exception. The first step to sending a Broadcast is to select the relevant manufacturer or category list. That way, your Broadcast goes directly to your target market - the list subscribers who have indicated interest in a particular manufacturer or equipment category.

However, we've received complaints about members "spamming" the subscriber lists and sending (for example) a Broadcast offering Cisco routers to every list - from Cisco to IBM to Consumer Electronics. Since many members subscribe to multiple lists, they get the same Broadcast (offering products they aren't interested in) multiple times.

Tradeloop staffers are considering several solutions to the problem, and we'd like to have some feedback from members about the issue.

For instance, we could change how "regular" Broadcasts are managed. About a year ago, we allowed members to send regular Broadcasts to multiple lists at the same time. That saved time for members who wanted to send to multiple lists by eliminating the need to send the same Broadcast over and over.

Unfortunately, that just made it easier to spam all the lists at once.

The simple fix would be to only send "premium" Broadcasts to multiple lists and limit the number of regular Broadcasts allowed per day.

But we understand that this has an impact on Tradeloop members in both financial and marketing ways.

Perhaps this reminder is enough. Sending Broadcasts to the wrong people detracts from your message by irritating other members. It also detracts from Tradeloop's goal of helping our members easily get the best message delivered quickly to the right people. Or perhaps we need to institute formal controls like limiting the number of Broadcasts.

We'd like your input! Please post your comments here on the blog for an open discussion with other members and Tradeloop staffers.