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Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#51

Post by insanitybit »

This seems like it isn't DD specific. I've had my fare share of experiences with overly aggressive sales people. It feels like it's just the incentive.

If a sales person makes one sale it doesn't matter if the organization's reputation is overall negatively impacted, they got paid and reputation is something that takes years to really see large impact from. Given that sales people work on commission, or at least largely so, and may not even work at a company for more than a few years, it makes sense to aggressively pursue every potential lead. You'll remember "DD has aggressive sales" and not "that one sales person is super aggressive".

I'm not sure how companies should fix this other than increasing base pay and decreasing commission payouts, but obviously that has its own incentive issues.

I guess a company wide policy of "never contact someone more than X times per Y timeframe" and "never ever ever contact someone via cell phone wtf" would help.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#52

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

> Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

I mean... Yes? Spamming and calling people is what Datadog is known for; you might as well ask if people have been shaken down by Oracle, seen Google discontinue a product, or had Microsoft force their laptop to reboot at an inconvenient time. That's their whole thing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#53

Post by dhr »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #50

[Self-plug] After building poachme.dev with a friend, I have personally found that a lot of people who spam really do it because it's low cost and wasting your time costs them nothing so I personally grab the standard reply message template and hit them with a "Great. Please book a slot on my calendar and we can chat more about this: https://bk.poachme.dev/Lazaro " I know they didn't "read my profile" or "find me to…

ha this is really cool - has anyone paid the $100 for a call with you, with regard to recruiting or sales spam?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#54

Post by CSDude »

I have a catch-all on our domain. Occasionally someone at Datadog enumarates mails with names on Linkedin but some fails. So its not just their CRM.

But when I apply to startup program through AWS activate, almost radio silence. So, there goes their priorities.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#55

Post by pfoof »

The only spam from Datadog I get in my company are alerts and alert digests and that's in a span of a year. Much more often I get promotional emails from companies we considered but did not fully sign up for but that's far from aggressive.

For statistics: small-mid company <50 employees.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#57

Post by richardknop »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32

As an owner of a couple of companies, I get almost constant unsolicited spam, SMS, and calls. I generally ignore most. Occasionally, if I feel confident it will be honored, I unsub. I just feel that it is corrosive, professionally, to complain about/attack others in a professional fora. For example, LinkedIn often has stuff posted that could be used as a powerful emetic. I just ignore it. I may take note of the autho…

I agree, this is pretty normal across the industry. Sales people just trying to do their job and sell their product. Sometimes they are quite persistent but why complain, if you are not interested in the product they are selling, just ignore their emails.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#58

Post by OJFord »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #52

> Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam? I mean... Yes? Spamming and calling people is what Datadog is known for; you might as well ask if people have been shaken down by Oracle, seen Google discontinue a product, or had Microsoft force their laptop to reboot at an inconvenient time. That's their whole thing .

Ha, I know that now I suppose. Honestly wasn't aware of that reputation before this thread. I thought it was a fairly nice-looking well-regarded service that I hadn't used; was surprised and turned off by the emails.

There goes my hope someone there would see the thread and get them to knock it off, I suppose, if it's so ingrained.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#59

Post by hnbad »

Dayshine wrote: post #10
gingerlime wrote: post #8

If you’re in Europe (or a citizen living outside) you can make a GDPR subject access request to get a copy of your data. Try to specifically ask for a record of how your data was obtained. And you can also ask to be deleted permanently. It might or might not work but it’s what you are entitled to under the GDPR. edit: check out https://yourdigitalrights.org/ which might give you some templates and check whether you’r…

The argument they make is that it's OK because they got your details from a "public" data source, plus guesswork. E.g. LinkedIn plus your company domain. They're still supposed to notify you when your info was transferred to them though. The problem is that this is in breach of LinkedIn terms and conditions, which means I immediately write off the company: if they can't lawfully find marketing leads, which should I t…

Whether PII is publicly available or not doesn't matter, they are still processing and storing it without consent. This works differently from "expectation of privacy" in the US, for example, where often anything is fair game as long as you can trace it back to a public space.

You could literally staple your business card to your building's front door and they can't use it without explicit consent. Heck, the other day I called my legal insurance and the lawyer they referred me to initiated the conversation with reading out a GDPR disclosure because he needed my insurance number and needed to sync it with the insurance company (a third party), which meant transferring PII.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else receiving unsolicited Datadog marketing spam?

#60

Post by deezleguy »

richardknop wrote: post #57
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32

As an owner of a couple of companies, I get almost constant unsolicited spam, SMS, and calls. I generally ignore most. Occasionally, if I feel confident it will be honored, I unsub. I just feel that it is corrosive, professionally, to complain about/attack others in a professional fora. For example, LinkedIn often has stuff posted that could be used as a powerful emetic. I just ignore it. I may take note of the autho…

I agree, this is pretty normal across the industry. Sales people just trying to do their job and sell their product. Sometimes they are quite persistent but why complain, if you are not interested in the product they are selling, just ignore their emails.

I wish you could just ignore emails. If you don’t respond they’ll call your personal cellphone.
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