Jonathan David, was a VP at Telic Interactive, and is now the CEO of Tapstone. Tapstone, also known as Tapstone Holdings, Tapstone Media, and Tapstone Tech.
Jeff Morgan and Jonathan David tried to create a sheen of respectability. They misrepresented the services of Tapstone and Telic for the purpose of contracting with legitimate agencies and brands even though they knew their junk mail had little or no chance of achieving the business objectives of these agencies and brands.
To see Tapstone listed as Telic Interactive, click here.
To see Telic Interactive listed as a spam operation, click here.
To see Telic on the ROKSO list, click here.
Jonathan David pictured to the left.
How do companies like Tapstone and Telic get the data they sell?
“I started to click through the offers, which kept claiming to be “surveys,” although most seemed to be things like credit card offers and sweepstakes and free trials for various services, all of which wanted personal information from me (including, sometimes, my credit card info).”
You don’t need to be a marketing guru to figure out the business model behind the “free iPad” offer. The end user enters an email address and other personal info in the hopes of winning the “free iPad”. That information is then sold to a media company. The media company then sells that email address, bundled with millions of others gathered in the same manner, to an advertiser.
Take a look at the types of sites used to gather the data that Telic Interactive aka Tapstone would have you market to here, Scamexposer, or here, WOT.
Credit to Technologizer for this tweaked ad which is based on an actual ad from Online Reward Center
“So what’s the deal? I clicked through and found a little fine print about having to complete eight “offers” to receive an iPad.”
The fine print here was at the bottom of the ad
“There was also a lot more fine print at this address. Plus another page which seems to say that you have to have documents notarized as part of the process.”
To understand why you’re probably being sold a bill of goods when you do 3rd party marketing — and to experience the whole, nightmarish registration process mapped out for you, click here, Technologizer.
In addition, some spammers get addresses from are doing really questionable stuff such as “Free Gift Card” SMS messages, where you’re supposed to sign up with your email address and other personal information to get a gift card that never arrives. Those email addresses are then sold as “opt in” for the purposes of sending them spam.
What type of demographic, what quality psychographic, has the desire, the need, the willingness, and the time to go through a registration process for the chance to win a “Free Ipad”? Are these the people who will support your business financially?
We’re not advocating for or against anyone. But we do believe that marketers should have insight so that well informed decisions can be made. You have to hit CPA and LTV targets while scaling and maintaining the quality of the conversions. Do you think companies like the ones described here can do that for you?
We hope this article helps to prepare you to ask the right questions when someone contacts you about 3rd party email and display marketing. There are a few good companies out there with quality data. Only a handful. We’ll leave it for you to decide if Telic Interactive and it’s aka Tapstone Holdings, LLC. should be included in that handful.
For more information:
Click here to read part 1, “Did Tapstone spin off from a spammer?”
Click here to read part 2, “Tapstone is spammer Telic rebranded?”
Click here to read part 3, “Tapstone and Telic. Spam operation?”
For pictures of these paragons of integrity:
Click here, Find the Fraud
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