I’m still pretty new to this whole blogging thing but over the past few months I have gotten a couple of e-mail messages from marketing people asking me to write something for their product or service. Most of these communications seemed very much like form letters and I know many other bloggers also receive such correspondence.

I was never inspired to write anything in response to these letters neither here or to the marketer directly—until yesterday. I received an e-mail from Karen at PickPackGo letting me know that I could enter a contest to win a portable DVD player. I participated in a blog blast back in September sponsored by PBN and PickPackGo. The prize for that blog blast was indeed a portable DVD player.

So what made me want to respond to this particular e-mail? Two things really. 1) The e-mail itself wasn’t overly marketing heavy, more like “Hey, we have this contest. You should enter it and maybe tell your friends if you want.” 2) and this is the important part, the last paragraph she added a comment about my post yesterday.

Adding a comment specifically about the post I wrote yesterday showed me that she had actually looked at my blog and didn’t just send out a blanket form letter to a list of bloggers. Now I understand that this particular instance is unique in that I’m sure she had a short list of bloggers that participated in the September blog blast. But still, that little extra effort compelled me to enter the contest and write about it here so you too can go enter. While you’re there, look around and book yourself a vacation home for next year. I’m planning to look into using PickPackGo for our annual beach trip next year. I might even get a jump on the planning thanks to Karen. :)