Yesterday (Sept 10th) I received the deck, without any forewarning of which I was aware. Interestingly, it was tagged as postage due ($.35), which was odd, given that it was clearly meter stamped. I'm more likely to suspect a mistake on my Post Office's part than on their part, but who knows?
Inside the package, one deck and one lanyard and nothing else.
Did a search through my Inbox (nothing), spam folder (nothing), and my deleted folder (3 found) on the name "firehost". The three e-mails I found all had a subject line announcing a Webinar concerning "business continuity." I receive a lot of spam e-mail that my spam filter doesn't catch regarding various business webinars, so I just delete them on site without even thinking about it.
Also: I typically set up special e-mail boxes whenever I give out my e-mail address so that I can get a general (or specific) idea of how I end up on spam lists. In this case, the three e-mails in question were definitely the result of signing up on this deck promotion list.
Later, an e-mail that had been sent last Saturday showed up in my deleted folder; this was the "show us your poker face" e-mail. Again, I must have manually deleted it without thinking about it, as it resembled other junk e-mail that I get on a regular basis.
Nothing about this should surprise anybody; it certainly doesn't surprise me. I was willing to take the risk, and so far, the e-mails they've sent have been innocuous enough. There is an "unsubscribe" link, which I suppose I'll eventually click to see if it works (I suspect it will). I have no beef with the company for sending these e-mails -- that was the unspoken deal, after all: we'll give you our marketing swag cards in exchange for you letting us send you some other marketing materials as well. Fair enough.
The lanyard is nice enough, and I would use it if only it had a break-away feature like the one I currently use for work. (My employer is currently showing some concern for our safety, so the break-away lanyards are easy to come by.)
This deck is an interesting promotion on their part. I'll be curious to know how successfully it accomplishes their marketing objectives. That said... hey, I got a nice deck in the mail.
(edited to fix a typo)