Rok: But isn't the attitude dependent on the actual person doing the marketing or publishing, especially if they send content people did not request?

John: Of course it is.

Let me clarify what I said since there seems to be some confusion. Email marketing engenders a certain attitude in the people that use it - being pushy is as good a way to describe it. Whether or not you are pushy by nature or not, email marketing makes you that way, some more than others. And pushy people tend to gravitate to email marketing.

Using direct-to-desktop marketing or direct-to-desktop publishing means a shift to a pull mentality. Being pushy dose not really work very well here.

In email marketing, the subscriber does not have much control/ Direct-to-desktop publishing and marketing puts the subscriber in control because it is very easy for them to "unsubscribe" unlike email, where the publisher controls the unsubscribe process. He can make the subscriber jump through as many hoops as he wishes, depending on how ethical he chooses to be.

So, the more ethical a person is, the more willing they are to REALLY put their subscribers in control, the more likely they are to switch to direct-to-desktop marketing.

But, which ever delivery system you use will affect your attitude to some extent based on your attitude at the time you select your delivery system. Using email will make you more pushy in order to compete against the more pushy. And direct-to-desktop will take that pushiness out of you to some degree, depending on how pushy you are when you switch.