This might seem like a stupid question but I am in need of an answer. I started a niche busyness directory and am thinking of inviting people to take part. I want to know if sending them an official email with information about my directory is considered to be spam. Because these businesses aren’t very active on the internet the only way I could drive them to my site would actually be by inviting them. Is there any guide rules that one must apply to make this type of marketing honest e transparent.
If you looked up their email and think they will have an interst in your directory it could hardly be considered spam.
A company (or an individual) has their email address shown on a site, it does not mean to send them an email asking them to come to your site. That is spam, spam, spam! Email addresses on company sites and individual sites are there for the purpose of asking questions about whatever is on the site. I guarantee, you harvest email addresses and send out emails for your business, you will get mashed good for being a spammer! Your best bet for companies is to find an email company that will send your email to these companies.
Depends on how they take it. I mean if i send u a mail after seeing a posting here. Would you consider it spam? I could have been sending a robot to scrape your email address and sending mail to you as. Hi, I read your post. on the {blah blah forum} . And thought of asking you to visit my {blah Blah website}. Regards Blah Blah. How would you take it?
This is the definition of Spam email. UNSOLICITED email where no previous relationship exists. Plain and simple, that is how it is defined in law. I have many domains. My own Business is Umbrella Consultancy, and I have a business email address there. I ALSO have a personal email address there, and if you were to send me business email to my personal email address you would be breaking the anti spam laws. But plain and simple, any unsolicited email is SPAM. Even the emails you send requesting link trades are classed as spam if there is not request for contact with this regard on the website. If you sent me email or PM from Dp saying that you got my address from here, and you request me to visit your site, then unless I had requested you do so, or you were requesting a quote for my services, I would report you to the admins for spamming, just the same as if you did it by PM.
Please pay attention to iowadawg. I maintain an antispam project. Any unsolicited message trying to drive traffic to a website risks ending up with the site being blacklisted in my project -- which is in use by some universities and a growing list of companies -- maybe even some in your niche. Worse, your domain could be blacklisted at SURBLwhich deals with URLs in the body of an email message. The only way to ask me to visit your site with a significantly reduced risk of being considered a spammer would be to use the form on my website and make a request through that. However, promotions for sites about meds, porn, etc, will be viewed as spam as they do not relate to any of my sites. Getting traffic quickly is not easy. But, if you create a quality site, with quality content, and make yourself known in parts of the internet where people with like interests congregate, you will succeed. Also, if you are in a small enough niche, contacting individual webmasters about link exchange IF they maintain a links directory is a good way to build traffic.
That’s exactly why I wanted to see what people here at DP said before I started sending emails out. I don’t want to spam anybody nor do I want to be branded as a spammer. Why can these companies send emails in my name and I can’t? Is there any rules that they follow that enables them to send my emails without being considered spammers?
They use 'opt in' lists. I subscribe to many many email lists, I get about 30-50 a day. These are lists I ASKED to be added to. I have opt in lists for many clients and they do very well out of it. If your product or service is good enough, then people will WANT to read it.
The main problem I’m facing is not related with gaining traffic as such but more getting people that don’t use the Web regularly to add there site to my Directory. I’m looking at people that have small businesses and that most probably don’t even maintain their own site. I’m talking about mechanics, small retailers, services, etc. If I don’t contact them personally they will never know about my service no matter how good or popular it is.
Hi Emperor, By the "letter of the law", the definitions provided in this thread are accurate - any unsolicited email you send to another party, with which you don't have a pre-existing relationship, is technically spam. By the "spirit of the law", contacting businesses you think may be interested in your product via email is no different than telemarking, direct sales, or any other existing form of marketing. If you do decide to contact other businesses by email, I make the following suggestions: 1. Learn about and understand their business before contacting them 2. Make it clear that you've learned about and understand their business in your email 3. Provide specific reasons, based on what you've learned about their business, as to why it's in their best interests to do business with you. Doing all this won't guarantee avoidance of spam-related issues, but it may put the odds in your favor. Best of luck. Sam
Quick question for Clancey - or anyone else that runs an anti-spam project or exchange or domino admins: many email programs these days have a "report as spam" button. Even if you form your email list as an opt-in list, and they are valid, solicited emails, I imagine some users would simply block a newsletter as "spam" just out of laziness. In your anti-spam algorithm, would one of these actions characterize the valid SMTP sender as a spam engine, or is there some sort of statistical threshold that would need to be set? Also - any other advice for keeping a valid non-spam email list out of the junk-mail lists. I plan to include a "remove me from this list" tagline at the bottom and all the valid SMTP headers and SMTP validation.
It happens with AOL all the damn time. People subscribe, forget they have subscribed, and report you as spam. It is a RIGHT PITA
Individuals do not use my system. It is invoked by the mail server on inbound and outbound email. I do not have a consumer version for use by email readers such as Outlook. Consequently, the spam reports that I get are from SysAdmins. They also provide me with reports on false positives as we would both rather let some spam throgh than block real messages. I review false positives and rewrite/reweight rules as warranted. For that project, the content of the message and any URLS it contains are examined. Numbers of messages received in a period of time or the number of users on a list are ignored because there are legitimate reasons why the same messages could come in several times to several people in an organization. Anyway, SysAdmins can develop their own rules. I do not act on spam reports by other people unless they send me a full copy of the message and unless I am convinced it is spam. I do not include opt-in list managers unless they send me messages to which I did not opt-in. Further, I have asked entities such as Spamhaus to remove legitimate opt-in mail managers. Failing that, I give them weight in my system so that requests to check third party lists are ignored. "Remove me" links are good. But, they are not considered in deciding whether or not a message is spam. And, if you are sending unsolicited messages, why should I have to ask to be removed from something I did not join? When people are taking mail at Google or they have anti-spam programs installed in Outlook or some other email reader -- you are at their mercy. If they forgot they opted in, they might click the "report as spam" button. I suspect some people click on the "report as spam" button to unsubscribe from lists. Sorry . . . . slow answer to a quick question.
No need to apologize. Good info there. And yes, I have noticed that the big email programs (gmail, hotmail, earthlink) treat messages differently. That was actually the impetus for my question --- I noticed that even perfectly legitimate authenticated emails get tossed automatically in the junk-mail folder by Hotmail (such as a "send this page to a friend" email generated by a PEAR-mail php script), but some of the others seem to be more reasonable. It is good to get the perspective of a "home-built" screening system. thanks!
Interesting thread folks. I have been in the same position as the author of this thread but ended up actually sending out the emails do to an unknown knowledge of spamming. I have since ceased sending out emails after receiving a few "could not send to user" emails stating that my email address was added into a bad list. I too am targeting a small community that does not spend a substantial amount of time on the Internet so email was really my only viable option since the website I was attempting to market was and is still free. My only other alternative as it stands is to create some good backlinks and possibly purchase some banner space on reated websites. I couldn't believe it when I was added because every email I sent target the individual owner/webmasters name (if available on the site) and my recommended category suggestion for their particular business. It is what it is so now I have to hope with time I will overcome the negative results from my unwarranted actions. By chance does anyone know if there is anything I can do on my end to remove myself from these list or does it just take time to be forgiven by the search engine Gods....heh Thanks again for the nice thread and look forward to learning some new marketing techniques within this forum
Drives me up the wall! I know the exact problem. Edit: Forgot to add my views I wouldnt bother sending the emails out. Even if you can define them by the letter as not spam... it's not the letter that decides if you are on a black list. It's the receiver of the email. The more you send out the more chance you have of being reported. If I was running an antispam type service and someone sent out a few hundred emails and I got 10 emails back with your URL I would probably tag it as spam. I personally dont think it's worth searching for email addresses and sending out emails.