Web Marketing 101: Will the Real Spam Please Stand Up? — Please?

Professional, Technology

In this post, we will review: Web Marketing 101: Will the Real Spam Please Stand Up?

Now, I’m an email delivery professional. That is, I work with email all day, every day, usually in the capacity of dealing with the fallout of people who think that they know what they’re doing. So, I run across characters like this one every now and again. “My newsletter is SO useful no one EVER would block it!” and “People THANK ME for sending them my newsletter!” It all boils down to “What I’m doing isn’t spam!”

In fact, the entire point of this article seems to be to point out what a Great and Powerful Web Marketer Mr. Stirtz is. Kinda like the Great and Powerful Oz. And the First Rule of the Great and Powerful Web Marketer Mr. Stirtz is to HELP PEOPLE! And you realize that he wants to help you because he emails you. So NO! THIS CAN’T BE SPAM!

Yes. Yes, it can. And it won’t scale. It can’t scale. There is, literally, no way that you can build a list with such precision that you are able to guess whether someone is going to want your email or not. That is, unless you’re mailing your long lost Auntie Marie. She probably does want to hear from you. ihatespam3188@example.com does not.

The vast majority of “Web Marketing 101: Will the Real Spam Please Stand Up?” is spent saying that we should remove “unsolicited” from the consideration of what makes spam, “real spam”. One thing is oddly missing, though: He doesn’t seem to ever actually say what “real spam” is or how it should be defined. That usually means that he thinks it’s something like Viagra, Cialis, or something called “MegaDik” spam. But, you know, those people want to help you too. I know this because the majority of the Viagra and Cialis spam I get these days lets me know that it’s all about me and how my wife is probably in the 69% (stop snickering there in the back, we all got that too) of women who insist that SIZE REALLY DOES MATTER! Anyway, I digress. He doesn’t say, so while we can speculate, we just don’t know what he considers to be “real spam”.

Usually, this means that we should table the discussion until we find out what “real spam” is, exactly. But, hey, let’s keep going, shall we? Let’s consider what he’s saying. Remember, the premise here is “WHAT I’M DOING IS NOT SPAM!!!!!11!1!eleventy-one!” Is it?

Let’s ask ISPs. Here are things that I have ACTUALLY HEARD from ISPs about delivery and blocking issues:

“If you don’t have permission from your recipients, and an active, engaged audience, you should expect to have delivery issues at ______”

And that’s from one of those really BIG ISPs that everyone worries about delivering to. Not enough? How about:

“The first question that we’re going to ask before removing a block will be: Can you provide documentation that our customers opt-ed in?”

That was from one of those really big cable, broadband ISPs. Still not enough? How about an official policy statement:

America Online, Inc. (”AOL”) does not authorize the use of its proprietary computers and computer network (the AOL Network”) to accept. . . unsolicited bulk e-mail sent from the Internet to AOL members. . . . Unauthorized use of the AOL Network in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk e-mail. . . may result in civil and criminal penalties against the sender, including those provided by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030 et seq.) and the Virginia Computer Crimes Act (Va.Code Ann. 18.2-152.2 et seq.) (amended effective July 1, 2003).

Yeah. That’s YOUR newsletter — the one that HELPS people.

And then there’s this: “Second, you need to be sure that your recipients are okay with getting unsolicited emails.” Let me assure you, your recipients are not okay with getting unsolicited marketing email — not matter how helpful you think it will be to them. And really, the only way to make sure that your recipients are okay with getting ANY email from you is for your list to be populated with addresses of people solicited (that is, opted-in) to receive the mail.

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the Great and Powerful Web Marketer Mr. Stirtz can’t tell you the open and click rates on his email. That would be because his list is probably still small enough that he’s mailing from Microsoft Outlook.

How do I know that? Because for every example of someone who got his unsolicited email and thanked him for it, I’ve probably 500 from people (WHO DID ACTUALLY SUBSCRIBE AT ONE IN TIME) who now unsubscribe with scathing notes to our clients. And we’re talking about things along the lines of “HOW DID I GET ON YOUR LIST U SPAMER!” (often written just like that).

I can also tell which of our (former) clients are running dirty operations because they manage to get blocked early and often by ISPs. Why? Because the ISP’s customers are complaining. The result of this? Al Iverson says it best:

When you send unwanted and unexpected email, recipients report it as spam in overwhelming numbers. Those spam reports significantly damage your sending reputation. Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL will filter or reject your mail as a result. You’re likely to get blacklisted by Barracuda, Spamcop, Brightmail, and Spamhaus, as a result.

When it comes to sending unsolicited email, the best advice I have is JUST SAY NO.

MickC @ September 13, 2007