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By Carl Weiss
For more than a decade
email marketing has gotten a bad reputation due to spamming. But what many savvy businesspeople fail to
grasp is that fact that email marketing can be one of the best tools available
to promote their business and reel in the fish.
The
Good: Email = Free Mail
If you are like most
business owners, then you spend a considerable amount of time and money trying
to create qualified leads for your sales staff.
Having owned, operated and/or managed a number of thriving businesses
over the years, I have come to appreciate the fact that many forms of lead
generation provide great results. This includes leads generated by newspaper
ads, coupons, yellow page ads, and direct mail. While these forms of lead
generation systems have proven to be effective at making our phone ring in the past, they have
also proven time consuming, hard to track and expensive.
Take direct mail, for
instance. With the cost of a first class
stamp currently at 46 cents apiece, designing, constructing, stuffing and mailing
a single circular from one business to another is going to cost you a minimum
of $1.00. So if you want to send your
mailer to 1,000 businesses, this is going to represent a significant financial
risk.
Sending the same offer
or newsletter via email on the other hand won’t cost you more than the time it
takes to craft the offering. While there
is a right way and a wrong way to go about creating a legitimate email
database, if you belong to networking groups, attend business functions, or in
other ways come into contact with potential customers, getting permission to
send them a monthly newsletter is as simple as asking permission.
You can also include
forms on your website, landing pages and social networks that allow interested
parties to sign up to receive your white paper, e-book or newsletter at the
click of a mouse. Providing a way to let
your prospect opt in is just another way of connecting with them.
Opt in data bases are even
better than purchased databases because these prospect want to receive your
information. You can increase your bottom line by expanding the distribution of
your newsletter via email. By automating parts of this process, you can to
touch prospects with less effort, lower cost and greater frequency. Best of all
your opt in database can also up the ante by getting your existing customers to
sign up as well.
Creating a newsletter
is a snap, since there are websites such as constantcontact.com, icontact.com
and mailchimp.com that provide a low-cost service that includes everything you
need to construct newsletters, invitations and offers, all via their template
driven system. Want to send out a
birthday or holiday greeting to those on your mailing list? Try jibjab.com a website that contains
hundreds of customizable e-cards and video cards that you can send to as many people
in your database that you would care to, for a flat $9.99 per year. We recently sent out a series of holiday
video cards that were a huge hit because they were humorous and because we
added our staff’s headshots into the action. (If you haven’t seen this site you
don’t know what you are missing.)
Best of all, all of the
above mentioned forms of online promotion are cost effective and spam
free. If anyone receiving your
newsletter wants to opt out, all they have to do is click a link on the
newsletter to be removed from your mailing list. Of course, that doesn’t mean
that spammers do not exist.
The
Bad: No End in Sight for Spamming
Anyone who receives
email usually receives tens or even hundreds of unsolicited emails every
day. According to cyber security firm
Symantec, in 2012 72.89 percent of all email received worldwide was considered
spam. While most of us employ one form
or other of spam filter to keep from being buried alive by spam, Symantec recommends
a few other ways to reduce the amount of unwanted emails coming your way.
This topic deserves a standalone blog post, so
we’ll highlight the most important points only:
1.
Do not give away your primary email address
when registering online. Use a secondary or special address for registrations.
2.
Unless you are a salesperson, don’t include
your email address in the public profiles visible by everyone.
3.
Choose an email address which is difficult to
guess.
4.
Never respond to spam emails such as by asking
to unsubscribe – this will confirm your email address validity rather than
unsubscribe you.
5.
Use a spam filter on your computer or in your
corporate network.
6.
Use the “Report spam” option within your email
client so that you never receive emails from this sender again.
7.
Update your anti-viral software on a regular
basis.
The problem with spam is that there is no way
to legitimately take your name off the spammers email list.
The
Ugly Truth About Spam
Not only are spammers raking in millions of
dollars, so are the companies who sell them their lists. Add to this the fact that a number of
freeware and free apps are being used to collect email address illegitimately.
Some are even being used to infect the computers, tablets and Smartphone’s of
unsuspecting consumers and business owners worldwide. This ugly truth is
becoming more than a nuisance, it’s epidemic.
It is threatening all our livelihoods.
Governments have been woefully inadequate at protecting consumers. They
have done a poor job of going after and prosecuting these spammers, hackers and
cyber criminals. However, that doesn’t mean that there is nothing you can do to
defend yourself.
What can you do about
unsolicited commercial e-mail?
Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) can come
from various organizations, companies or be the product of ‘computer viruses’.
Companies or individuals can get your e-mail address from the web. Other
sources exist such as marketing lists that you sign up to that often get passed
between companies. Unsolicited commercial e-mails generally also come from
outside the US. Many of these UCE originate from countries like Ireland and those
in European Union. This means that it is quite difficult to stop the occurrence
of UCE as it is a global phenomenon. Generally, there is little that you can do
to prevent unsolicited commercial e-mails being sent to you.
In
the vast bulk of cases of UCE’s emails, the
e-mail headers is not valid.
·
E-mail headers may be forged so replying to
the e-mail merely results in you sending UCE to the innocent person whose
e-mail address was forged.
·
It is not advised to respond to an e-mail
address to "opt-out" of a list unless the address is from a recognized
organization. These e-mail addresses may also be false or are used to confirm
that the unwanted e-mail was originally sent to a valid and active e-mail
account.
·
Responding to a web site that supposedly lets
you remove yourself from the list is also not advised. This is because once you
access the web site your details are logged. You could also you be exposed to
pornography.
It
is possible to determine the location (rather than the user or the e-mail
address) from where the e-mail was sent. If you are able to look at the e-mail
headers, you will then be able to determine the IP address of the Internet
Service Provider (ISP) whose services were used to send the e-mail. Finding out
exactly where UCE has come from can be difficult and time consuming.
If you have
determined the location of the sender of these mails, then it may be possible
to send an e-mail to abuse@isp to complain about the e-mail. However, adult
e-mails are not illegal in many countries including Ireland. If you do succeed
in sending an e-mail complaint to abuse@isp and the material is illegal in the
jurisdiction it originated in or in breach of the Acceptable Use Policy of the
sender's ISP, the ISP can disconnect the sender. However, it might be unable to
tell you the name of the sender due to international data protection
regulations. In many cases, the sender just moves to a different ISP and starts
the process again.
Just like in the movie, the good, the Bad and
the Ugly with Clint Eastwood, email has a way of making you feel good and
raising your anger at the same time. Email has save billions of dollars for
businesses worldwide. It has also cost billions in return. While email can be a
two-edged sword, it can also be a godsend to businesses looking for a way to
increase their exposure. It allows you to engage an ever-growing audience and
survive the tough financial times that are upon us today. It can save you money and allow you to touch
your clients and prospects and a very cost effective way. Just bear in mind that the when it comes to
working the web, only the good guys play by the rules.
Carl Weiss is one of the good guys who has
been helping clients work the web to win since 1995. He is president of WSquared Media Group a digital marketing agency and owner of Jacksonville VideoProduction. You can speak with him live
on the air every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern on Blog Talk Radio.
It's a shame that spammers have ruined email for everyone else. It's good to know that it can still be a viable marketing tool for those in the know.
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