To Spam or not to.. that is the question!

[DarrenC]

Okay, I have never spammed in my life, and I have a growing reputation amongst holiday homeowners, as someone who can give good advice on renting a holiday home, so I don't want to ruin this with one email.

I've heard business to business emails are okay?

Is this correct?

Renting a holiday home is classed a business - income - taxable etc.

Would you say it was spam if I emailed a number of owners, and informed them about my free advertising offer?

Advice appreciated.

Darren

[10 Yetis]

Darren,

Interesting this... I have posted similar questions about this on here. To sum up all the legal jargon i got, the bottom line is if it is unsolicited then it is classed as spam. :(

And yes, this even applies to where you can see a business has a problem that you know your services could solve.

I am just as frustated by this as everyone else.

Interestingly, this may be a saving grace to stop you wasting time and money though, for the reasons outlined below.

I am not going to go into too much detail on here as I want to try a few things out for myself first (and i paid to attend so I am not giving too much away of what i have learned--- yet! :) ) and write it up as a newsetter.

I was at a really interesting DM (direct mail) conf the other day where the industry leading DM analysts were talking about its finding of a 2-year long survey of DM.

The analysts paid thousands of the average UK small and big business owners and recipients of mailings a fee to have all the DM they received sent to them for analysis.

This included all forms of communication, i.e. email as well, but only of a business nature (not including all the piagra spam!). The response rates from these were shockingly poor.

Basically, and keep in mind this was carried out by a market leading DM research company using thousands of companies as the source data, the amount of spam acted upon that translated into a sales lead was 0%!

Not one sale came from spam. Again, not going into too much detail, but unless you are in the recipients sub-conscious as being a "preferred supplier" (i.e. they know your brand and it has a reputation that triggers all the right things), your email has no chance, not even when using a subject title that is relevent.

This has really made me sit up and take notice (I guess it is sad that it took physical research rather than legal regulations for me to take this seriously :) ) and I will definately think twice about taking the time to email someone about how our Yeti-Loving services could help them when they have never heard of us.

There are some ways to move away from the 0% figure, but for now I am keeping schtum until I have tried these myself.

Oh yeah, and you are always going to get people on here who say that they have acted or bought something as a result of spam, but I am confident that they are in the minority, especically as this is an online forum where the users are more techy savvy and are more inclined to read through an email communication.

Hope the long-winded ramblings of a coffee'd up Yeti helps.

[DarrenC]

Interesting post Andy, thanks!

[climbingmerlin]

Well,

IMHO I would say it depends how you go about it. No one likes SPAM, but still a targeted email campain can work if it is carefully planned. Email after all is just another form of communication.

My advise is that I would make some sort of maillist that you can monitor, who you have emailed and the response.

In the address of the email make sure that it is only their address that is in the TO box. You don't want to give out everyone's email addresses that you are sending the email to. As if they are like me I like to control who I give my email address to, I don't want lots of people that I do not know to have that address.

Also give people the chance to 'unsubscribe' from your list so that you don't email them again. If you fail to do this then it can be interpreated as some sort of SPAM campaign.

The last thing that you want is to have your email address/domain black listed by an ISP or business, if you send out lots of unwanted emails.

Like I have said this is my own opinion.

Hope this helps.

[DarrenC]

Thanks Merlin.

Your post did remind me of something that I should be concentrating my efforts more on and that's providing a useful newsletter where people can subsribe to (or unsubscribe) and include a few hidden marketing messages within it.

I'm assuming this would be the right way of going about it?

Darren

[Mortime Business Software]

I've heard business to business emails are okay?

Is this correct?



I assume that you're referring to a thread which mentioned government legislation regarding spam. The following is the message I posted in response. It also includes a question regarding the legality of stripping email addresses from web pages, which was not answered.

Quote...
-----------------------------------------------
Revised UK regulations will mean online marketers can send e-mail pitches and SMS messages only to consumers who have agreed beforehand to receive them, except where users are existing customers of a particular company. So, for consumers at least, the UK government is applying the 'opt-in' approach to regulating spam.

Corporations can still be approached 'cold' with email pitches but in these instances emails must have an opt-out clause.
-----------------------------------------------

After distinguishing between "corporation" and "consumer", it sounds to me like...

"If a consumer is a customer of a company, then that company can send him/her unsolicited emails. Other marketers must have the consumer's prior consent. Marketers can only send emails to consumers in general with their prior consent."

"Marketers can send unsolicited email to any company provided they include an 'opt-out' clause in the email."

I am using "corporation" and "company" interchangably here, so my interpretation may be wrong.

On a related matter, it is quite easy to write a program which can automatically download web pages, strip out any email addresses, and send emails to them. Is this illegal?

Dave

[DarrenC]

On a related matter, it is quite easy to write a program which can automatically download web pages, strip out any email addresses, and send emails to them. Is this illegal?

Harvesters - well they are used and in my opinion yes they are illegal. If they are officially illegal in law, I don't know. I do think thought that people are getting wise to this type of act, and with PHP programming you don't need to see the email address within the page, it's all held within a mysql database.

[clairemackaness]

10 Yetis stats are very interesting and I would be interested to learn more about his new ways once he has tried them out for himself.

With regards to targetted e-mail/newsletters, I send one out every month or so and I have to admit there are a few e-mail addresses on there that have not been given out of choice!

I do tend to get at least one bit of business though from each newsletter and on two occasions out of five this has been from an unsolicited address!

[climbingmerlin]

Darren,

I would use that approch of a newsletter and Claire has said it works.

The only thing that I would say is, use the subscription method, and allow people to remove themselves from this list.

The data that you would gather from this will also enable you to improve your furture marketing campaigns

[easyasit]

yes it is true
Not relating to business i sent an email out to some people about the cheap petrol.
Only to get an email back from one asking me not to send spam.
Needless to say their addy has now been removed, i shall not contact them again :-)

Al

[Mortime Business Software]

yes it is true
Not relating to business i sent an email out to some people about the cheap petrol.
Only to get an email back from one asking me not to send spam.
Needless to say their addy has now been removed, i shall not contact them again :-)

Al

You can automate the removal of email addresses from the database by providing a link (within the spam email) which invokes a script on the server. After the script has completed this task, simply have it display a "thank you and goodbye forever" page. This would probably avoid the receipt of emails from annoyed spamees.

Dave

[clairemackaness]

I always have an unsubscribe link at the bottom

[easyasit]

oh i have the standard email for the company.

This was me just sending an email to some contacts, but yes i guess its the same thing

Oh dear

Al

[Eagle]

*
What about if there is no 'list' to opt out of?

E.g. you see a firm who would benefit from your services and you fire them off an email... Perfectly legal according to Uk law but how can they opt out of a list that doesn't exist?...

:)

[clairemackaness]

I always add an e-mail address to a list I keep so it can be deleted

[directmarketingadvice]

E.g. you see a firm who would benefit from your services and you fire them off an email... Perfectly legal according to Uk law but how can they opt out of a list that doesn't exist?...

I see this as totally different and perfectly legit.

About 8 months ago, I received a sales letter from an estate agent.

It was obviously home-written and it was terrible. I sent the estate agent a letter that explained why their letter was terrible and some tips on how to improve it plus an offer to come and talk to them about their marketing.

She replied and asked me to call her. We met and did some business together.

And it's not the only time I've used email to get business. However, when it's worked, it's been heavily personalised to show that it's a unique message to them and the response mechanism is consistent with the email approach.

I'm often curious about the unsolicited email I receive. I see a lot of the same offers over and over so, I'm guessing that these must generate a return.

Though, I'd guess that with some of them, they send out a million emails and get back 2 responses.

Now, there are not many people here that have that kind of business model.

Darren, I'd be curious to know where you got these email addresses you're thinking of writing to and what other information you have about these homeowners (e.g. postal address).

Steve

[creacom]

You have raised an interesting point there Eagle.

For example if we take Claire's position first. She says that she has a list and some of the emails on it are there without the permission of the person she is sending it to. This is therefore illegal.

Then as Eagle says you can send out an email to people who you think might be interested in your services and not keep them on a list, and therefore not break the law.

Thats how I understand it anyway.....correct me if Im wrong though guys.

Jacqui

[Mortime Business Software]

*
What about if there is no 'list' to opt out of?

E.g. you see a firm who would benefit from your services and you fire them off an email... Perfectly legal according to Uk law but how can they opt out of a list that doesn't exist?...

:)

According to the snippet I posted earlier in this thread, which explains the government legislation on spam, you must provide an opt-out clause even when spamming businesses. Therefore you will need to create the list to opt out of before you send the mail. If you don't provide an opt out clause, then it is illegal spam.

Claire is doing nothing illegal, as long as those unknown addresses are for businesses. If they are for consumers, then the spam will be illegal if those consumers have not given their prior consent.

As a simple solution, I would say the email address should be placed on a list of recipients which you email now and again. If the opt-out link is clicked, then the address is deleted from the list, and placed on a second list. This second list is checked by the mailing script before sending emails to the first list. This would solve the problem of email addresses somehow reappearing on the first list.

In my opinion, the lack of opt-out links which work automatically and immediately, contributes to the reason why spam is such a dirty word.

Dave

[Ian J]

I always have an unsubscribe link at the bottom

Trouble is that the spammers also have an unsubscribe link so that when you click it they have confirmation that the email address is valid.

[Cornish Steve]

I'm not an expert on this subject, and I dislike finding unsolicited and unwanted email messages in my mailbox. Nonetheless, I would like to pass along some observations.

Most of the valuable contacts we have made are the result of sending unsolicited email. HOWEVER, we sent personal email messages to specific people in specific organisations. I would say that we received a positive response, and started a relationship, with about 75 percent of them. I don't classify this as spam at all. The email messages were unsolicited - but the response proved they were not unwanted.

It's outrageous that the government has dictated that unsolicited email is illegal. Are credit card offers in the regular mail going to be illegal too? What about door-to-door sales or people collecting for charity in the street? After all, these are unsolicited requests too. Sure, some people abuse the system, but that's no reason for the nannie state to dictate by law what's right and what's wrong.

Also, if spam didn't work, no one would ever send it.

[Ian J]

It's outrageous that the government has dictated that unsolicited email is illegal.
I disagree as you can opt out of receiving unsolicited telephone, fax and junk mail (which I do) so why should you have to put up with unsolicted emails.

[Cornish Steve]

It's outrageous that the government has dictated that unsolicited email is illegal.
I disagree as you can opt out of receiving unsolicited telephone, fax and junk mail (which I do) so why should you have to put up with unsolicted emails.
That's what spam filters are for. Why does the government need to step in and dictate a solution?

[clairemackaness]

You have raised an interesting point there Eagle.

For example if we take Claire's position first. She says that she has a list and some of the emails on it are there without the permission of the person she is sending it to. This is therefore illegal.

Then as Eagle says you can send out an email to people who you think might be interested in your services and not keep them on a list, and therefore not break the law.

Thats how I understand it anyway.....correct me if Im wrong though guys.

Jacqui

But if you dont kep a note of them you cant delete them! Its swings and roundabouts.

[clairemackaness]

I always have an unsubscribe link at the bottom

Trouble is that the spammers also have an unsubscribe link so that when you click it they have confirmation that the email address is valid.

I know this which is why mine says....

"To unsubscribe from this newsletter, please reply to this e-mail quoting unsubscribe in the subject box."

[MinuWeb]

I always have an unsubscribe link at the bottom

Trouble is that the spammers also have an unsubscribe link so that when you click it they have confirmation that the email address is valid.

I know this which is why mine says....

"To unsubscribe from this newsletter, please reply to this e-mail quoting unsubscribe in the subject box."

Spammers often say the same thing, however whereas you will actually remove the address from your list the spammers add the address to a list of verified address so they can really start spamming it.

[WakingDragon]

*
What about if there is no 'list' to opt out of?

E.g. you see a firm who would benefit from your services and you fire them off an email... Perfectly legal according to Uk law but how can they opt out of a list that doesn't exist?...

:)

Under the Data Protection Act you are required to keep solid records of any people or companies whose data you hold. So if you are sending out emails you should be keeping details of those addresses. It makes common sense to know who you have contacted.

On the broader point, targeted spam can work but it is a poor substitute with real risks. The whole newsletter thing works wonders but most of the time it is just keeping your name familiar and won't necessarily result in sales.