Here’s another installment in what is likely to be a long series of Stupid Marketing Tricks.

I received an email the other day from a marketer, a person I’ve known for years through the National Speakers association. The subject line read: Oops, I made a mistake in the link.”

The message apologized for making a mistake by posting an incorrect link to a product she was selling.

Funny thing was, I don’t recall getting the first message with the bad link.

I am 100 percent convinced she thought she could get more people to open her message with an apology than with any other method.

Well, it worked to the point where I opened the message. But she lost her credibility with me forever with this little ploy.

Before you respond and say, “well maybe you didn’t get the first message,” read on.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a message apologizing for a bad link. It seems like some “smart” marketer stumbled on this ploy and now his followers are adopting the bad example.

I don’t know about you, but I test my links before I send out messages — and yes, there are times when all the testing in the world won’t reveal a bad link. But I’m getting almost as many apology messages as I get messages from Pay Pal saying there’s an error on my account.

Frankly, I would be horrified to send a message to my entire list saying I am such a jerk for not testing my links beforehand.

Have direct marketers sunk so low as to have to pretend to be incompetent just to make a sale?

There are better ways to make a living, and better ways to be able to sleep at night.

I sent her a note asking her if it was truly a mistake or a clever marketing tactic.

It has been a week and I haven’t heard back from her.

If am lucky, maybe I never will!