Isn`t the power of email wonderful? It comes in
all shapes and sizes, and it`s virtually instant. There`s plain
text, there`s HTML, there`s even something called "rich media".
Email can be used in many ways to market online. Frequent bursts of
advertising, weekly newsletters, or even just a mail to your biz
contacts when something great comes along.
Unfortunately,
where there`s power, there`s always a flip-side. In the case of
email, the flip-side is abuse, also known as SPAM, that great big
nasty word. Makes me shudder just to think of it these days.
Is spam email considered marketing? It probably is, if you
want to get all technical about it, but it`s most definitely not
RESPONSIBLE email marketing. Although some marketers don`t seem to
be able to see the difference between permission marketing (where
people have ASKED for the mail) and email spam. Spam is actually a
major threat to legitimate email marketers.
People check
their emails, see their inbox cluttered with all sorts of stuff they
didn`t ask for and they yell SPAM!! Unfortunately, with so much
stuff in their inbox on a daily basis, it can become really hard to
recognise the mails they`ve asked for, they may even forget they
asked for it in the first place, or they may just be sick and tired
of receiving too many mails, and they yell spam about the wrong
mail.
Everybody has their own definition of spam. As it
currently stands, spam is in the eye of the beholder. Spam is
usually unsolicited ads sent in bulk by people you don't
know--although there are exceptions to this rule.
Some
spammers will argue that email spam is no different to traditional
junk mail, but there is one undeniable difference... cost. The cost
of sending junk mail through conventional means is very real,
including postage costs paid by the sender. The cost of sending
email spam is very small, and most of the costs are paid by people
other than the sender.
The lack of cost for sending is often
named as a key problem with email spamming. With traditional junk
mail, a direct marketer has to make sure that the offer &
targeting are good enough to more than make up for the costs of
mailing. With email spam, anything goes, often in the form of shady
deals and outright scams.
But besides the scams and other
legal consequences of sending spam, one very important consequence
is always overlooked: the credibility of the sender. Entire
companies have had their credibility ruined for sending spam, faster
that you can hit "Send". So think twice before you send unwanted
email to that address on your computer - it might mean the end of
your business.
Good Luck, Happy email marketing, and have
fun!
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