No, really, with lasers!

Well, I can't say that I've ever actually personally bought something because of an email campaign. I tend to not sign up for many mailings, and those mailings I do sign up for all go to my spam email address, so I look at them all at the same time, once every month or so. Usually I don't spend a lot of time going through stuff--I skim, seeing if there's anything of interest, and then I delete it all.

Well, except for this once. I had signed up some while previous for the ThinkGeek newsletter. For those not in the know, ThinkGeek is the home of the most awesomely amazing toys on the internet: You can get remote control helicopters, screaming monkey slingshots, T shirts that tell you when there's a wifi signal, and stuff designed exclusively to annoy your coworkers. It's a gadget geek's heaven.

So one late one winter, I was going through my spam email address, clearing stuff out, when I hit the ThinkGeek newsletter. I had just recently gotten off the phone with my parents, who were despairing of ever being able to find me a decent Christmas present, when lo and behold, what should I see but a really super-cool looking strategy board game. With lasers. I drooled for a while, read some reviews, saw what other people thought of the game. And I liked what I read. So, I sent a link off to my parents. A month and change later, and what should I discover under the tree but an Egyptian-themed laser-equipped board game?

And that's about the closest I've come to succumbing to email marketing.