Bloggers Use Filtering to Fight Back Against PR Spam

In brief:

• Email filtering is now starting to be used by bloggers to block and delete PR spam before it even reaches the intended recipient

There really haven’t been many consequences to spamming journalists with unwanted PR pitches — until now.

In what is sure to be the beginning of a trend, a blogger has posted the code needed to block and delete PR spam from Gmail accounts. All a blogger or journalist has to do is follow the simple instructions and PR pitches from the agencies on the blocked list won’t even hit their inboxes.

Note that for right now, this only applies to journalists and bloggers using Gmail as their main public email account. But it’s only a matter of time before this technique is adapted and spreads to other types of email accounts.

Before agencies on the list scream “unfair,” consider what got you on the list: inane PR pitches that have zero chance of being relevant to 99.9% of recipients. That’s spam, and to get cynical about it, the only reason agencies send that stuff out is to justify their existence by claiming that they “pitched” their client’s story to “hundreds of journalists.”

To avoid landing on such lists, agencies are just going to have to start targeting their pitches a whole lot better — and fast. Well-targeted pitches aren’t spam, they have value to the media, and journalists and bloggers will continue to provide valid email addresses so you can reach them useful information.