Opinions & Advice

Jim Ziegler threatens to sue fellow industry blogger Paul Rushing

Jeff Kershner
Posted onJul 28, 2008 at 12:08 AM
Updated onUpdated on Dec 31, 2008 at 12:34 PM

Old_phone

FOODFIGHT!!!

Alright, we’ve had our fun. I was up late last night deleting the swarm of comments that had come in attacking individuals, including myself (which is ok). This post has gotten out of hand and that was not it’s intent. This isn’t Hollywood and it’s not what our industry is about.

I know some will be pissed at me and say I was weak for un-publishing this post and others will say it was the right thing to do. In one of my comments, I wrote “Is this history in the making for our industry or will this blow over and will no one think about it 2 months from now? ” I don’t think it’s history in the making and I hope for Paul and Jim’s sake they figure this out and it does blow over.

If we get anything out of this, I hope every one of us; dealers, vendors, sales people and myself,  think twice before hitting the SEND button and ask ourselves a few questions.

  • Am I CAN-SPAM
    Compliant    ?
  • Did I legally obtain everyone’s email address?
  • Does my marketing email provide a way for recipients to unsubscribe? (Opt-Out)
  • Am I using good emailing practices? Have I been honest and truthful?

Humans learns from their mistakes or by the example of others mistakes. My advise to Jim Ziegler; be sure you know the game before you step on the field, especially if you’re viewed as a coach. What you did was wrong and you got caught. Just because “everyone does it” doesn’t make it right!

I should have stuck with my gut instinct when I said “It’s disturbing to see something like this happen and maybe I shouldn’t be posting about it and possibly bringing to more to light to an awful situation”. My mistake!

This is an awful situation and could have been solved with a simple phone call. When something like this happens, PICK UP THE PHONE and talk about it. You’ll often be surprised with the outcome.

I hope we can all agree that nothing positive was coming out of this post and after time we might have looked back and said..”maybe I shouldn’t have been a part of this discussion”.

So lets call it a day and move on. I’ll get to crunching on some “informative” posts.

And NO I was not contacted my Jim or Paul to remove this post. I made my own decision.

The comments are open.

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
K
This just in - Dealer Refresh is bought out by Ziegler Enterprises for 1.3 million dollars! Kidding of course - I think the referenced thread served its purpose, in fact I am already reviewing our current email templates and fine tuning them to ensure that they are not only fully CAN-SPAM compliant, but CLEARLY compliant. I know that this previous thread kept you incredibly busy with moderation Jeff, all of us appreciate your hard work.
M
Jeff

Thanks for highlighting the issue and for the sensitivity shown to all the parties involved and commenting on the email marketing activities.

When you and your readers focus on the challenges we face everyday, it creates incredible value for every sales professional in the industry. We continually need to conduct ourselves in a professional manner and work hard to exceed expectations.

Again thanks for taking the high road on this issue.


P
Thanks Jeff for doing what you do. I too have made some edits and realized where to draw some lines in the sand.

It has been a learning experience for me as well and helped me revisit the purpose of creating my blog in the first place.

Thanks for you support, keep up the good work.

R
Jeff,

Well, at the very least there was one positive outcome... We changed the member profile set up and email display policies at www.AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com so that now members have the option to display an email address, or not, and the one they display can be different than the one system admins, alerts and announcements are sent to.

I am uneasy about one thing related to you taking down your entire post. There was a lot of very good, well thought out and well written comments that were added onto it, and being that we are in America, and the whole freedom of speech thing and all, well I sincerely hope that you delted what you did for the right reasons.

I have never edited, deleted or suppressed any comments on the ADM site, except for my own, and I will be the first to admit that my own content that i have removed was taken down due to political pressure from companies such as Google and GM. I am not proud of it, but sometimes we all need to engage in self-preservation acts.

Hopefully, you have not been forced into the same corner I have personally visited and have also been forced to say that you are doing this at your own free will... Either way, i am fully supportive and appreciate the time, energy and efforts you put into this blog.
R