With Marcia Pledger

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- People call the White House a lot of things -- but "spammer" usually isn't high on the list.

Until this week anyway. That's when the White House e-mailed dozens of Northeast Ohio businesses inviting them to meet with President Obama next week in Cleveland. In several cases, the e-mails went straight to the businesses' spam folders.

And why wouldn't they? They came from the Office of Public Engagement -- identified as FN-WHO-OPERSVP. The subject line read: "IMPORTANT RSVP Information for Small Business Forum."

Even when the e-mail made it past spam filters, some businesses assumed it was junk. It began "Dear Friend" and asked for information including a Social Security number.

Jodi Berg, president of Vitamix Corp. in Olmsted Township, believes her Outlook program filed the message as spam. She received a call from the White House on Thursday asking why she had not RSVP'd for a business-focused forum Tuesday at Cleveland State University.

When Gladys Benitez-Reilly received her invitation, her high school-aged son told her it had to be spam.

"The White House would have sent you a registered letter," he told his mother, the president of Viva Spanish!, a service that teaches Spanish at schools and businesses.

The Obama administration invited 100 to 120 businesses to the forum, which will include discussion sessions with cabinet members. Local economic development groups provided the names.

At PartsSource in Aurora, the invitation got labeled as spam, but Chief Executive A. Ray Dalton said he probably would have trashed it anyway, considering the unfamiliar sender and the generic greeting. An economic development group followed up with him by phone.

"Inevitably, when you're e-mailing a large group, there will be some glitches," Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, explained in an e-mail to The Plain Dealer.

"But we know it's not every day you get an invitation to meet with the president of the United States . . . which is exactly why we always follow up by phone."