CityGrid Media (an Orange Soda Investor) Scummy Lead Generation
September 10th, 2010 by
CityGrid Media, who recently invested significantly in Orange Soda (an SEO/PPC firm out of Utah) has chosen to use the favored tactic of Nigerian princes and Offshore Link-Exchangers to drum up business for their new partner Orange Soda.
CityGrid Media (Orange Soda) Form Spam Image
I’m very surprised to see this kind of thing from a company of this stature.
I’m glad to see that the address is in New York and not American Fork Utah as I’m fairly confident the folks I’ve known at Orange Soda wouldn’t condone this behavior.
Full text of email message follows:
Good afternoon, I wanted to reach out to you about your placement in online search. Citygrid is the largest local content and marketing network on the web. I noticed that you are not populating on the major search engines for a few key search terms. Your competition is capitalizing on this and I wanted to discuss how to take some of this market share. We gain placement on Google, Bing, and Yahoo and offer clients 86% of the local web. As part of our SEO, SEM, (Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing) and content network campaigns we provide phone call tracking, stats, and other comprehensive data to directly track ROI. We will optimize your website to come up on the first page of Google, driving people looking for your services to your business. I’d like to set up a time to speak about this and go over your options to determine if this would be a good fit for your business. Please reach out with your availability. Thank you. Best, x-x-x-x Senior Account Executive P: 212-373-7798 F: 213-351-7011 E: x-x-x-x@CityGridMedia.com www.CityGridMedia.com 555 West 18th St. 5th Floor New York, NY 10011 The largest content and marketing network on the web
This is shameful behavior from a reputable company. I expect better of both CityGrid and Orange Soda.
So is this just good old spam email tactics? Sad to see that reputable companies can be dragged into this.
Thanks for catching this, Will. Would you mind forwarding me the email you got so I can take a look at the headers? OrangeSoda isn’t involved in the email marketing for CityGrid but we’ll look into it.
If we ever spammed someone we’d be super classy about it and use paragraph breaks. 😉
Hey Dan,
Thanks for the followup – I’d expect nothing but the best spam from you guys.
Seriously though, I was glad to see this coming out of the NY office since I know Orange Soda to be a class outfit.
Will
If any one will read this do your self a BIG favor STAY A WAY FROM THIS COMPANY as FAR AS YOU CAN.
Terrible and incompetent service, dishonest sales stuff.
I lost $1000.00 and got nothing for it.
I file complain with BBB.
I hope that some on who will red this will benefit from my experience