spam?

[rizbit]

If someone went to my website, saw what i offered, got my email, then emailed me regarding a service, or product that is relevant and potential advantageous for my business, would that original email have been SPAM?

 

[WolfStores]

The definition of spam for you:

Spam is most often considered to be electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited email. However, if a long-lost brother finds your email address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it is unsolicited.

Hope this helps

 

[rizbit]

so "unsolicited" does not define a message as SPAM,

so a better definition is email that you dont want, not relevant to your business or just completely weird...

like getting an email from a "lost lost supposed next of kin" from nigeria, who wants to give you money?

 

[WolfStores]

If you want to be really strict about it then most emails could be classified as spam. In theory somebody should secure your consent before emailing you (which I guess is next to impossible), otherwise the email could be classed as 'unsolicited'.

In our case many get our email data via the websites we build and then 'spam' us offering SEO services promising 1st rank in Google

 

[Ezymobiles]

If they went to your site, saw what you offered, how are you capturing the email address? As long as the "opt-in" at the point of the email capture you are ok to send the email

 

[Morrjo]

I wouldnt say thats spamming... its really hard to define, i get all kinds of spam every day from dating sites etc but if someone finds the email useful then its not spam to them right?

 

[rizbit]

so say i went to an online directory and searched for local aerial installers and emailed them to promote a new ultra slim portable ladder, which is relevant to their business as its something they use every day (prob..). so if i emailed all ten installers listed there would that be spamming... in my opinion, no as its only going to be one email and if they dont reply i prob wont ever email them again, also the business email is bound to get businedd related emails esp if you put it online.

Its just that some mail providers have spam policies that dont really make sense in practice.

 

[beasty]

Anyone else remember when spam was simply slapping your wee brother on his forehead?

 

[Deleted member 162294]

so say i went to an online directory and searched for local aerial installers and emailed them to promote a new ultra slim portable ladder, which is relevant to their business as its something they use every day (prob..). so if i emailed all ten installers listed there would that be spamming... in my opinion, no as its only going to be one email and if they dont reply i prob wont ever email them again, also the business email is bound to get businedd related emails esp if you put it online.

Its just that some mail providers have spam policies that don't really make sense in practice.

In your example that is not spam.

Its quite a widely used term now and though there is a solid definition to what it actually is, but it often means different things to different people.

To mail providers spam comes from places where its auto generated in the billions and its a point of annoyance for their users. Generally messages that attempt to part a fool from his money. Nigerian princes with cash to move, miracle sex drugs, ***** enlarging techniques, how to make a woman have sex with you by asking 3 simple questions, somehow being signed up to dating services and hot woman are asking you out, miracle weight loss pills/techniques. The selling of false hope really.

Ever notice how with hotmail when you get a message from somewhere new for the first time if there any images attached to the mail then its not shown. This is a technique used by spammers to verify you are actually using your mail address. The image attached to your message is unique and once you've viewed it then it means you've downloaded it and they know specifically your email is real.

 

[James1980]

On one hand, your email is unsolicited and commercial (two of the traditional criteria for spam), and some people will not like that.

On the other hand, your email sounds relevant, targeted and certainly not 'bulk' (the third criteria); plus presumably you'd be sending emails using your legit and verifiable company email address (as opposed to spammers using disposable and untraceable Hotmail accounts). Plus, your product is probably a lot more respectable and 'kosher' than the usual spammer fare.

Personally, I would not be annoyed if I received an email of that nature, but you can't guarantee that everyone will feel the same way. Unsolicited email marketing exists on a spectrum, and sadly it's the Viagara guys at one extreme who have ruined it for the ladder folk at the other extreme.




James

 

[rizbit]

Google gmail policies

Generate or facilitate unsolicited commercial email ("spam"). Such activity includes, but is not limited to

• sending email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act or any other applicable anti-spam law
• imitating or impersonating another person or his, her or its email address, or creating false accounts for the purpose of sending spam
• data mining any web property (including Google) to find email addresses
• sending unauthorized mail via open, third-party servers
• sending emails to users who have requested to be removed from a mailing list
• selling, exchanging or distributing to a third party the email addresses of any person without such person's knowing and continued consent to such disclosure
• sending unsolicited emails to significant numbers of email addresses belonging to individuals and/or entities with whom you have no preexisting relationship

Now my gmail account got disabled after i sent one email to 400 recipients (using BCC) in one message.

Now the bold policy above i suppose would define my message as spam. I sent one email to businesses whose emails i had got from online directory, took a long to get these but i thought it would be worth it.

Now the email ws sent to same type of businesses and the prodcut i was telling them about was 100% relevant to their field as in the example i gave above.

However it seems that this was the reason the account was disable. I have read somewhere that sometimes the reason is because a large number of email recipients are broken emails or invalid, but if these emails are taken are directories and these emails are invalid thats being penalised for someone elses mistake... As someone stated above this is not SPAM but however the google policies may define it so. so is it just a case of respecting your own mail providers policies?

The other is then people say get you own server and send from that like a dedicated server... but then you would have another problem with people like hotmail. who seem to have a problem with you sending tolots of hotmail users at the same time. its a very awkward topic. i gues i could use something like mailchimp