I'm surprised that no one has brought this up yet but I have literally received over 300 e-mails from Pictage in the last few days/week. I've received one order .

Not to ruffle feathers or get this whole thing started again but geeezzzzzz! When I get over 300 e-mails in just a few days, I don't know what Spam is. I've had clients e-mail me and complain about it and other photographers too!

I officially signed up for picpick today.

That's so weird. I have a 2nd email account setup and I sign up with Pictage as a "guest" so that I can see what my clients and their friends and family see. Sure I get a couple of promotional emails, more so right now with the holiday season arriving. But WOW at 300! I just checked and I received 2 emails per wedding in the past 2 weeks.

Are these weddings that you have posted on Pictage? Did you change your Campaign Preferences in your account?

hmmm, Im getting no spam from Pictage. Just orders and the wed.night chat.

You know, I've heard this in the past and this is what has steered me away from them. I have a "shall he be named?" other cart. I love it. BUT, that said, I see all these pictage photographers, running all around the country shooting and having blasts on each other's blogs, while I'm at home chained to my computer.

Thinking maybe I should give Pictage the editing and me upload the images. Something to get the "monkey off my back". So, I signed up as a guest on a friend's Pictage wedding. (she's a photographer and agreed) and i've only gotten 2 emails in over a month.

So, the spam thing must be your outlook I'm thinking.

And me?

verdict still out on what I should do. Thinking it's more about control anyhoo.

Alisha,

I've been getting quite a few from Pictage recently:
My Photographer inbox got these:

One for each one of my jobs that they re-released for the holiday season.
One for each one of my jobs that they run specials on

and a handfull into my "other" mailbox that I use to spy on Picatge, and see how many emails they really send out.

Recently though, my "Photographer" mailbox has been full of CC'd announcements for job releases. If you've got over 150 jobs on Pictage that would be "active" this holiday season, and got two emails each, that would be about 300 emails.

Or, have you registered as a Client for a few jobs, and now you're getting spammed for all of those jobs?

I have had 2 spam emails from them recently, just out of the blue. I am not signed up with them, nor have I ever had any clients posted.

I was signed up for a while but never did anything with them. It was a mess and I didn't want to get involved at all so I cancelled.

Exactly. I have 89 events that they have either re-released for the holiday season and/or run specials on. I have been blasted 3x's. so 89 x 3=close to 300!
I also have been getting e-mails from events I've never even heard of or signed up for!

Hi Alisha,

If it matters to you Pictage has been known to spam the hell out of clients, too. My cousin got married two years ago and her photographer used Pictage. So to see her photos I had to give my address, and got lots and lots of emails from them, specials, buy this, buy this for the cousin, ugh. I vowed then never to use them as a photog and from this thread I'm glad I didn't.

Danielle

That is very strange...

The only emails I got from Pictage this last two weeks were notification of my royalty check in the mail, one email about the wednesday conference and one email about how to use gift certificate to increase sales.

In my email account that I have as a guest no emails at all in the last two weeks.

So that is very strange.

Yeah... I'll NEVER look at another gallery on Pictage. I got so irritated by the constant spam. UGH.

I have 37 events and I haven't gotten any email. All my events are re-released, but I must have something checked differently in my preferences, 'cause I have no email from Pictage.

Why? not that I am complaining....

I used Pictage for like three months, never actually used it or uploaded a gallery - and I'm getting spam for OTHER peoples clients. Like - lots of it too. How wacked is that?

I requested information from Pictage then notified them that I was not interested - over four months ago - and I was still getting on average three emails a week from them. I finally got a clue and flagged their email as spam so it's filtered out.

Yes- I signed up to look at pictures from weddings that I shot as a second (the photogs are PU's) and I have gotten sooooo many emails just in the past two days about christmas cards, second set of prints for free etc.... it is a bit annoying.

I am sorry to say his but I don't believe that you got over 300 emails. Sorry, but that is just an exaggeration. And if it were true the most logical conclusion would be that something is wrong and not that was intentionally. No company in the world, not even porn sites, would send that many emails in days... So, why conclude that it was intentional... unless.... well this is getting old.

Did you bother to contact Pictage and find out what happened? It seems to me that this is dead by poisoning...

I have close to 50 events since march and had not even one complaint about anything... No spam whatsoever....

Do Pictage market MY EVENTS??? I sure hope so... After all, that is why I paying them for.

You can opt out if you don't want them to email your clients and your clients can opt out.

What is really funny is that I get more emails from WPPI. PPA a week than from Pictage in a month and no one complains that WPPI or PPA are spamming them.

You know what ... I've been thinking Pictage was NOT for me for a while now. Then I had the big hard drive crash of '07 (that's what I'm calling it for now) and started looking into an online solution for backing up all my photos. When I did the math and checked out all the different web storage options, Pictage was relatively inexpensive for the amount of photos I plan to keep stored on their servers. Soooooo ... I signed up.

In the past two weeks, I've uploaded five galleries and have had more orders from those five galleries than any other galleries this entire year of shooting weddings. The marketing emails ARE super annoying ... but damn it, I think they work. The 2-for-1 prints and the automatic gift cards REALLY do get people to buy stuff. For the people who do get annoyed by it, they'll just mark the emails as spam and never hear from Pictage again. I hate to admit it, but SO FAR Pictage is kicking butt for me.

Seriously? You're just flat out calling Alisha a liar? You are unbelievable. Alisha has been with Pictage for a loooong time and used to be our PUG leader. I think she knows how Pictage works better than the vast majority of us out there.

I am just so taken back that you would reply with this know-it-all tone and unsubstantiated comments.

If she is putting herself down as an owner for every event, she certainly could get that many if she has a lot of weddings up. If not, she should contact Pictage and find out what's going on. I've received a handful of e-mails from events I registered as a guest to view, but that's all.

Pictage offers a set of services no one else yet does. I think the best way to use them is in combination with higher end products that you fulfill yourself.

You can't say for sure if she did or did not get that may e-mails. If they did not come to you how would you know. On October 9th I received 239 from Pictage that were re-releases and holiday promos as CC. Now I just delete it all and ignore it, but don't tell me you know she did not get them. There is just no reason to say that!

i gotta say this david dude cracks me up. not only did alisha used to be the PUG leader in st louis, she applied for a job there and used to love them. i mean her and i first met through pictage! i remember a year and a half ago she was telling me she kinda wanted to work there and loved so many people there. over the past 18-24 months things have just turned south and she's had bad experience after bad experience. we both have and have just become burned out. myself, her, and brady were laughing the other night because we were getting emails to check out galleries of couples that weren't our clients, and of people we never even heard of. don't know the people and they aren't our clients. it was just rather funny, but then all of a sudden alisha's whole laptop just about froze up with emails from pictage. i just hear her on the other side of the office say "holy sh%$, what the he11 just happened?! what is this crap!" i had to see it to believe it, and i just heard her hitting the delete button for the next 15 minutes over and over again.

anyway, david the fact that you'd blantantly call her a liar is sad. if you knew alisha like so many of us, and her history with pictage, you'd realize what a toolbag you look like right now. but you don't, so tool away my man.

I've never met Alisha in person, just come to know her in this forum. I see no reason for her to lie especially about a company with whom she previously had had good things to say, when they were acting in a different mannaer, and I believe her wholeheartedly (as apparently do a lot of people on this thread.

David to call someone a liar without proof is just mean and unless somehow you've been getting cc:s of all her emails, I think you owe her an apology.

You right it was a little bit of an over exaggeration by about 50 e-mails. I tired to find a way I could post all them on the forum in a timely manner but I could not and have to many things to do today. I would be happy to forward them to you however!

I'm not the event owner to any of these but they are all my events and I know I can change my preferences. but......


This is exactly my point.

I requested an info. packet from Pictage in July. I've received at least 5 emails per week (and at times, 3-5 per DAY) and well and repeated phone calls (again, often several calls per DAY). I have repeatedly asked to be removed entirely and permanently from their databases, but to no avail.

If there's any chance that they'd treat my clients like this, then there's no way in HELL I'd ever use this company. It's ridiculous, annoying, totally unprofessional and bordering on harassment. I and my clients deserve FAR better than that.

He never said or implied lying.

I agree. 100%. I'm not getting lots of emails though and I am logged in as a guest to sort of spy on them, no troubles here!

Hi everyone --

Saw this thread and wanted to briefly respond to some of what has been posted:

1) Alisha - please send me your studio id and the email address which got spammed to ian@pictage.com and I will investigate for you. That should not be happening. If you are no longer a Pictage photographer, please still send me the email address so I can find out what happened and make it stop.

2) If anyone has requested information from Pictage and now feel hounded with either emails or phone calls, please again contact me - ian@pictage.com - and I will make sure it stops.

3) I have investigated numerous reports of photographers getting emails from events with which they have no association. So far the problem has always come back to an unfortunate "unintended design consequence" in the Pictage software which automatically adds you to the guest list if you view another photographers event on Pictage. As a result, photographers who participate on the Pictage forums, or who read and follow links on other photographer's websites and blogs find themselves associated with an event that they may have only briefly or unwittingly visited. This only tends to be a problem in the 4th quarter when Pictage runs what we call the "holiday re-release".

4) October and November is the time of year when we reactivate expired events from the past several months and run a short burst of promotions against them. Email volume definitely goes up during this period. The strategy of the "holiday re-release" has been tested over the past two years and generates a tremendous spike in sales for photographers.

5) If you are a photographer signed up as a guest on all your events...let me apologize up front for the amount of email you may receive. But please remember most consumers are guests of only one Pictage event and we have extremely low actual spam complaints with the various ISPs. Most of the events on Pictage represent the happiest day/s in someone's life. Friends and family (based on the dramatic surge in traffic to the website) seem to greatly enjoy the holiday re-release.

6) The new consumer website (rolling out from October through December) collects more specific information about a guest's relationship to an event during registration. We intend to use that information going forward to be more judicious about who receives promotions and when.

-------------
Ian Siegel
VP Product and Technology
Pictage, Inc.

Not to add fuel to the fire here... but...

I counted my emails and I've had 18 so far this month. About half were marketing and half were event-related. One or two emails a day doesn't seem excessive to me. But that's just my experience.

Why does every post about Pictage turn into an airing of grievances? "I've got a lot of problems with you people!"

Use what works for you and move along... Peace out the bean sprout.

Seriously, I get pretty sick of all the Anti-Pictage sentiment. Pictage is great for some people, but it totally doesn't work for others, and that's fine. Thank goodness we have a diverse industry with tons of cool options so that each of us can find something that works for us.

Pictage isn't the best option for everyone, but it IS the best option for some people. Thanks for the perspective, Shane

Amen!

But your problem is... that you concluded that Pictage maliciously did this to you... Instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt you jumped into the conclusion that it was in purpose to mess with you. What does Pictage gain by promoting to you something you don't have anything to do with? Nothing. But you and others wanted to believe that Pictage is this ugly monster trying to destroy little photographers... lol

And your exageration gave the casual reader a unjust and wrong idea about Pictage. I am sure you would not like someone to do that to you. So, why do it to other?Come on, people, be careful... be just... be fair... do unto other as you want it done unto you!

By the way, NATE and DANIELLE ... WASN'T I PROVED RIGHT?!!!!! THE 300 WAS, BY OWN ADMISION, AN EXAGERATION.

Lay off the drugs. Seriously, she said it was annoying - she didn't say Pictage was out to get her or did anything malicious. I swear I don't get the point in calling people names and being a jerk over freaking Pictage. It's like a bunch of elementary school kids fighting over who gets the swings and who gets to play kickball.

+1 very well said. Pictage has been more than fabulous for me and my business. Whatever works for you, use it!