Email Marketing

[sdouglas]

Wow! Let me tell you honestly, I am IMPRESSED! That was some reply…ferocious.. driven.. forceful… I am damn impressed! Now as far as spamming goes, with all the experience that I have of doing business online, I can assure Mr. bob477 that there is a special cyber law in each and every country in the world which prosecutes organizations who spam. They have to adhere to this law or pay up the fine which goes into thousands of dollars depending upon the intensity in the crime. It is not that easy as you think of it Bob. No one can just go on a spamming spree. The law will make the organization pay heavily for it.

I guess that even maxbot was trying to explain the same thing….but the language got a bit harsh. Never mind. If you think that consumers always go wild on reading these emails then you are wrong again. They have this handshake protocol where the consumer and the sender shake hands virtually which indicates that both parties are in sync with the mails that are being exchanged. The stuff written in these mails are thoroughly professional. You won’t find mails where people invite you to come over to their place for a drink.

So pal….get a life. Never be so finicky about things. You never know when something good might come your way which may benefit you monetarily. And even if it does not happen, you can simply get the mil deleted by someone instead of blowing your lid off. Cheers!

[cameron.fisher]

You know I won’t really disagree with you bob! I mean I myself support e- mail marketing but lately a lot of companies are using it and sending unsolicited mails that have lead to a lot of spam on the net. You know internet administrators have always held themselves responsible for abuse of the net or spamming but there is not really much way out to stop the abuse. For uninitiators, I must inform you that earlier internet that was known as Arpanet was not at all used for commercial purposes. It was only used for communication, defense and research purposes.

So you see that all these e mail marketing companies seriously had to work their way up and build their credibility to make their businesses work. These spam mails from foolish companies has made it very difficult for e-mail marketing companies to seep in through the junk and spam mails and actually make the readers read their mail. For observers also it is frequently difficult to filter out the legitimate mails from the spam mails. I mean I get these stupid mails from this site called wall st and WC horoscope that I once visited and I don’t know in which fateful moment I gave them my E mail id and since then have been trying to clean up my mail box everyday of their junk mails. It is so frustrating, I wish there was some way I could unsubscribe or complaint about these freaks. It getting over my head now…

Newaz, you know there are some sites that even have the opt in option for e mail marketing. This is used by established e mail marketing companies who give the option to their consumers to opt for e mail marketing and through that they can opt for the e mail marketing and then they can receive mails only from reputed businesses and websites.
Most of the times legitimate and spam mails have the same appearance that is why it is even more difficult to recognize these mails and one needs a spam filter to receive only the legitimate mails. There is another effective way that e mail marketing firms have picked up these days. These companies have a ‘double opt in option’. This method requires the prospective customer or client to manually confirm the request of information through a unique link and code provided to them. They need to click on those links and enter the code so that they can confirm that they need the information. Responsible email marketing and auto responder companies use this double opt in method to confirm the request of any information sent out.

Companies that use e mail marketing need to make sure that they do not violate spam laws and their mails are able to make their way into the customers mind. The e mail written for marketing should have a persuasive and compelling content that makes the user click on the link and visit your website. Your e mail should be attractive as well as effective in its communication.

[tim.brooks]

Gentlemen…gentlemen…please! Try and control yourselves. I know it’s hard and perhaps even a little impossible for the two of you but for the sake of peace in this forum…please…shut up! It’s a forum, for crying out loud! It’s a place where people express their opinions. And as long as no one’s using any profanity, I don’t see what the problem is.

[helen.carter]

@tim.brooks - I think you’re confused. The disagreement happened a couple of posts back. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention. lol. Maybe next time, you should check and see whether you are really in time to intervene.

back to the topic…..

Cameron – You’ve made a couple of very valid points. Genuine email marketing companies are facing a lot of problems because of spam mails. It’s tough to fight against what is fast becoming the general perception that all email marketing is spamming or junk mails. The information that email marketers want to bring to their customers, people who actually make use of their services gets lost in the sea of spam produced elsewhere. And although the ‘opt in’ option you spoke about seems like a problem solver because it ensures that it reaches the customer and is not automatically dumped in trash, there is a problem I see even with that.

My doubt above this method is that compared to a simple ‘enter-your-email-address’ it requires the user to navigate to another page for the code. Are users going to be willing to spend that additional one minute just to enter their email address for marketing mails? The attention span of the prospective consumer is so short that they can’t be bothered to open the email marketing mails that are sent to their mailboxes so unless they are really interested in the product I doubt that they will take the time to opt in for email marketing mails. I may be wrong but this is the first thing I thought of. Speaking from personal experience, I know that if I am asked to enter my email address at a particular site, I do it if I feel like it at the moment but if I was asked to wait for a code and then use that code to enter my email address so that I could receive marketing mails….I probably would not do it.