[bdc]

I received 15 emails in 10 days when I signed up for Full Contact. Yeah, I wanted to check out your product, so I signed up and tested it out. No, I don't need to be reminded that you exist every sixteen hours.

I had, separately, been discussing one of the less common features at Full Contact with a real person there, and pointed this out to him, forwarding all of the emails back to him as well. He apologized sincerely and helped figure out why this was happening (over email, of course :) ).

It's just an insanely reliable way to turn my opinion from 'this product is intriguing' to 'this product is irritating.'

If you're going to send email spam (and most startups have to, at some point), at least make it pleasant.

[jrabone]

No, don't just make it pleasant, make it easy for me, the customer, to control. Three levels is probably the most you need: 3) Trivia / social spam, 2) Announcements, 1) Security / billing / account maintenance; three little checkboxes, three bits in a "contact status" byte field somewhere in your DB. Do it. It's not the simplest thing that will work, it's the simplest thing that makes your customer feel like they have some control in the trust relationship you're trying to build with them.

And make it possible to actually close and delete an account; LivingSocial I'm looking at you.