2025 has been a year of declutterring and focusing.
The declutterring is the hardest. I may still love that long sleeve shirt with holes in the right elbow. (Why always the right elbow? I’m left handed.) But it’s no longer good for me, and I should have gotten rid of it years ago.
Whether it’s a former friend—a great person who went silent and indifferent—or a newsletter from a company that rejected my 2023 job application and only contacted me afterwards because GDPR required it—the time has come to simplify and focus.
Now just a few hundred LinkedIn newsletters and email subscriptions to go.
I still receive “snail mail” at home. And every time I look at it I get enraged.
In fact, I’m this close to opening most of the pieces of mail, removing the postage-free reply envelope, and returning it to the originator with the following message:
Thank you for contributing to rampant identity theft.
How do companies, possibly including YOUR company, contribute to identity theft? Read on.
Snail mail, a treasure trove of PII
Let me provide an example, heavily redacted, of something that I received in the (snail) mail this week. I won’t reveal the name of the company that sent this to me, other than to say that it is an automobile association that does business in America.
John Bredehoft
[HOME ADDRESS REDACTED]
John Bredehoft…
You and your spouse/partner are each eligible to apply for up to $300,000.00 of Term Life Insurance reserved for members – and with Lower Group Rates ROLLED BACK to 2018!
… SCAN THIS [QR CODE REDACTED] Takes you right to your personalized application
OR GO TO [URL REDACTED] and use this Invitation Code: [CODE REDACTED]
So that’s the first page. The second page includes a Group Term Life Insurance Application with much of the same information.
And there’s the aforementioned return envelope…with my name and address helpfully preprinted on the envelope.
What could go wrong?
Google Gemini.
Dumpster divers
Now obviously the sender hopes that I fill out the form and return it. But there is a very good chance that I will NOT respond to this request, in which case I have to do something with all these papers with personally identifiable information (PII).
Obviously I should shred it.
But what if I don’t?
And some dumpster diver rifles through my trash?
Perhaps the dumpster diver will just capture my name, address, and other PII and be done with it.
Or perhaps the dumpster diver will apply for term life insurance in my name and do who knows what.
Thanks, sender, you just exposed me to identity theft.
But there’s another possible point at which my identity can be stolen.
Mailbox diverters
What if this piece of snail mail never makes it to me?
Maybe someone breaks into my mailbox, steals the mail, and then steals my identity.
Or maybe someone breaks into a mail truck, or anywhere on the path from the sender to the recipient.
Again, I’ve been exposed to identity theft.
All because several pieces of paper are floating around with my PII on it.
Multiply that by every piece of mail sent to every person, and the PII exposure problem is enormous.
Email marketers, you’re not off the hook
Now I’m sure some of you are in a self-congratulatory mood right now.
John, don’t tarnish us with the same brush as junk mailers. We are ecologically responsible and don’t send snail mails any more. We use email, eliminating the chance of pieces of PII-laden paper floating around.
Perhaps I should break the news to you.
Emails are often laden with the same PII that you find in traditional snail mail, via printed text or “easy to use” web links.
Emails can be stolen also.
Google Gemini.
So you’re just as bad as the snail mailers.
What to do?
If you’re a marketer sending PII to your prospects and customers…
Stop it.
Don’t distribute PII all over the place.
Assume that any PII you distribute WILL be stolen.
Because it probably will.
And if you didn’t know this, it won’t make your prospects and customers happy.
Last night I saw a Substack post from one of my subscriptions, but I immediately distrusted the post.
The post was purportedly from Kathy Kristof from SideHusl.com. Now Kristof herself is legitimate, and her SideHusl website evaluates…well, side hustles.
But this message didn’t sound like Kathy, and my spidey sense was aroused.
First part of scam post.
Second part of scam post.
Let me count the ways.
“We.” Normally if an entity suffers a breach, the entity uses its name.
“Your device”…”the firmware level.” Substack posts can be viewed on a variety of devices. So this supposed breach affected all of them?
“If you are receiving this email.” While Substack subscribers can receive emails of posts, they also appear on the Substack website. I happened to be on the Substack website when I saw the post. I was not reading an email.
“Take immediate action…by updating your firmware.” The typical scam sense of urgency, coupled with a non-sensical request (see 2).
“The FBI has been notified.” Such a report should probably go to a different agency.
“support@trezor.io.” Trezor is a legitimate company that secures crypto assets…which has nothing to do with SideHusl or Substack. And by the way…
“Substack” (not). In the same way that the post does not explicitly mention SideHusl, it doesn’t explicitly mention Substack either.
“Access Dashboard button.” The reader is asked to click this button, supposedly to update their firmware (see 2).
I hate to use the overused t word (trust), but in this case it’s justified.
“Scammers are aware that people are more likely to open and read a text message rather than an email The open rates for text messages are more than 90% while the open rates for emails is less than 30%. In addition, many email providers have filters that are able to identify and filter out phishing emails while the filtering capabilities on text messages is much less. Additionally, people tend to trust text messages more than emails. Text message also may prompt a quick response before the targeted victim can critically consider the legitimacy of the text message.”
Sure, I have a template for my current mailing, but it’s adjustable for each prospect. Rather than send it to everyone at once, I bring up the template one-by-one and tweak it to each individual prospect.
I definitely had to perform some tweaking when I started mailing some particular technology prospects.
I initially learned about these prospects via Ryn Bennett in the spring of 2024. These companies provide AI-enhanced proposal response software, and all strive to make the proposal process more efficient while improving accuracy.
But my marketing has evolved since spring 2024, and I make a big push for Bredemarket’s content-proposal-analysis service, or what I call a “CPA” service.
Bredemarket’s “CPA.”
Here’s an excerpt from my August 2025 email template.
Bredemarket has helped over 20 firms solve the content problem:
Compelling content creation: blog posts, case studies and testimonials, LinkedIn articles and posts, white papers. I’ve established firms’ positioning in the market and attracted prospects and sales.
Winning proposal development: managing, writing, and editing services. I’ve won millions of dollars’ worth of proposals as a Bredemarket consultant and employee to several tech firms.
Actionable analysis: Marketing, product, and competitive analyses. I’ve helped firms understand their strengths and weaknesses relative to the market.
But when emailed my spring 2024 proposal firm prospects, I made one slight edit.
My “CPA” became a “C_A,” and I removed the “Winning proposal development” bullet.
Because these prospects are never going to buy proposal services from me.
Not when they have their own AI-enhanced proposal response tools for proposal responses.
But I forgot to alter the logo at the end of the emails. Whoops.
Bredemarket’s “C_A.”
But you don’t need to wait for me to email you. If you are a technology marketer that needs consulting help for content services, or analysis services…or even proposal services, set up a free meeting with Bredemarket.
Marketers, have you ever used someone else’s marketing as an opportunity to market your own solution?
I’ll confess that I’m haunting online conversations about the Kettering Chick-fil-A age assurance issue and adding a technical spin to the conversations.
But I’m not the only one doing this.
I admire the effort of this person who recently emailed me:
“Hi John,
“Your recent post about the 22 types of content product marketers create caught my eye. It echoes what we’ve been seeing with global teams – managing diverse content across borders can be as complex as handling cross-border payroll.”
The emailer then launched into a pitch for his cross-border payroll solution.
While I give the emailer an A+ for effort, the emailer didn’t do his research on his prospect. His prospect, me:
Focuses his business on the U.S. (with one exception that you may have seen me mention).
Is a sole proprietor, and therefore does not handle payroll in any country.
Good effort though, even though I’m not one of the emailer’s hungry people (target audience).
And if you want to know about the 22 types of content product marketers create, NOW ENDORSED BY A CROSS-BORDER PAYROLL EXPERT, read my post here.
Content, proposal, and analysis (“CPA”) marketing and writing services.
But what in the heck does Bredemarket DO?
During the first 21 days of March, my biometric, identity, and technology clients received blog posts, an ebook, emails, a landing page, slides, a press release, a Request for Information (RFI) response, a process, and other things.
Can I help your firm? Let me know on my “CPA” page.
Bredemarket 