You guys remember this, right?
There are updates to that story. Oh my, are there updates. It’s possible I’m the only person in the world who finds this hilarious, but it’s my blog so you’re going to hear about it anyway.
Just over a month ago, I’m working at Jade Mountain, placating the fiend that is my relentless tapioca pearl addiction, when I get an notice that Grammarly has sent me a $25 gift card from Amazon. “Uhm, what the hell?” says I. And then I start telling the story of the marketing fail I’d mocked six months before and forgotten about. (Well, I hadn’t forgotten, I get a lot of traffic off that post)
I’m not quite half way through the story when I get an email welcoming to Grammarly and letting me know my account is waiting. To which my immediate response is, “What the fuck? Oh, I am so not okay with that.” As soon as I finished my story, I was going to blog a truly scathing update on the Grammarly thing. I’d been quite clear before that Grammarly was not going to get my interest, and auto-signing me up for an account, even after a $25 bribe (I’m still not that cheap), is massively uncool.
But wait, we’re not done yet! A minute later I get a third email. This one from Nick himself, apologizing for the prior contact, checking to make sure I got the gift card, letting me know that I’ve been set up with a free Grammarly account, and oh, he’s interested in my consulting services, I should call him any time, here’s his phone number.
Bwuh?
You’d better believe I called him. Not until after I took a lovely long weekend in Seattle and then caught up with the day job disaster that caused, by which point we were far enough into the holiday season that non-response was pretty reasonable.
Of course, in the mean time I got an email from Grammarly since Nick has been reading my book reviews on my blog and thinks we’d be a great match. I’m now worth $125. Dude, if you’d started there, I might have just taken your money and there’d never have been an issue, nevermind that you’re still suffering some serious bot fail in your prospect targeting.
One of my super powers is my ability to crack joke about how a plot arc is going to end, laugh at what a hilariously bad idea it is, then cry a lot when it turns out I was right, that’s exactly how everything goes. (Sorry about River Song, guys. That one was my fault.) Until now, this super power had not demonstrated any real life applications.
Monday before last I sent Nick a quick email. I’ve got these Grammarly emails hanging out in my inbox reminding me that I need to blog an update on their outreach. I’m not the only blogger they followed up with to try making amends. I think I am the only one to get a phone number and invitation to charge for marketing consultation. You hereby have permission to LAUGH REALLY LOUD at the next person who says being snarky on the internet never accomplishes anything.
This past Monday Nick and I finally got together for a phone chat. There was much discussion on the degrees, varieties, and scope of Grammarly’s marketing fail. They definitely mean well. They’re definitely enthusiastic about what they have to offer with their product and their marketing campaign. They also definitely have some learning to do. But they’ve gotten 44 minutes of my wisdom for free, with an invitation to contact me again any time so long as they also give me an address for where to send my invoice after.
I don’t take back anything I’ve said about Grammarly because it was all true. That said, the comment that came through on the last entry from somebody who didn’t get paid was updated with a notice that she did, eventually, get paid, so if you saw the first comment and not the second, now you know.
For the record, I wouldn’t normally do Anaea’s school of marketing 101 for free for a stranger, but I felt a little bad for poor Nick since if he’d had his original fumble any other week, I probably would have just ignored him. Besides, I spent that $25 gift card he sent me on Christmas presents.
Anaea Lay 