Working for a company that offers, among other things, email marketing software, I have above-average knowledge of and strong opinions about what good email marketing is. The number one rule is relevance. Even your crappiest email service provider can provide you with basic tools to send a personalized (read: team-specific) message to your subscriber, and not doing so is a message to your reader that you don’t give a shit about them beyond the cash you can suck our of their wallet.

Case in point, I received this email from MLB yesterday:

I’ll refrain from my soapbox speech about how MLB’s monopoly has made it a deformed, twisted freak of a business that would never survive in a free market, and instead get to the point about this email. I’m enraged at MLB for picking favorites in this contest where they should be impartial. I’m enraged that none of the guys getting this free promotion is from my team. I’m enraged to have this one-size-fits-all piece of spam crapped out into my inbox.

And I’m also terrified that if I don’t use this POS tool, I won’t be able to counteract the fact that other people will. MLB is counting on the fact that weak-minded are easily encouraged to support Albert-frigging-Pujols.

But my righteous indignation need not go unsatisfied! We can stick it to MLB and their amateurish marketing techniques by showing them that All-Star means who WE want voted in, not who THEY want voted in.

Remember, you get 25 votes per email address. Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail are your partners in making your voice heard.

I am willing to Vote Votto for you. Send me a message from your email address to give me permission to vote on your behalf, and let me know if you want the Votto-only ballot or the all-Reds package deal. I promise not to send you any unsolicited email–I can’t promise MLB won’t though.

The updated counts are out for the All-Star voting, and at long last our hero appears in the top 5! Joey Votto pulled down no fewer that 170,128 votes this week (and it was probably quite a lot more than that) to bump James Loney from the fourth spot, and he has you–the voting fan–to thank.

The bad news is that Albert Pujols still has more than four times as many votes, and in fact received more votes just last week than Votto has total.

But people, this challenge should just inspire you! This week has shown us that we can make a difference, and with three weeks of voting left, we can leave the Prissy Prince Albert questioning his sense of entitlement in July.

Remember, you get 25 votes per email address. Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail let you set up multiple free accounts. Then you can give the email addresses to creepy people you don’t actually want to talk to.

Don’t have time to vote yourself? Suffering from carpal tunnel? Afraid you’ll like voting a little too much? I am willing to Vote Votto for you. Send me a message from your email address to give me permission to vote on your behalf, and let me know if you want the Votto-only ballot or the all-Reds package deal.

Everyone is head over heels for Joey Votto. Don’t you think now is a good time for you to Vote Votto too?

Remember, you get 25 votes per email address. Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail are your friends.

4-for-5 tonight with a triple and a homer, and coming right off an ailment that had him out for almost a week. You saw the game. You don’t need me to say more.

Remember, you get 25 votes per email address. Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail are your friends.

This is the happiest news I’ve heard all day: Joey Votto is back in the lineup! May his return keep away the Redbird-favoring rains and the crappy bullpen.