Understand Email Basics & Spam

Isn’t the power of email terrific?  It comes in all shapes and sizes, and it’s virtually instant.  There’s plain text, there’s HTML, there’s even something called "rich media".

Email can be used in many ways to market online.  Frequent bursts of advertising, weekly newsletters or even just a quick email to your biz contacts when something great comes along.

Unfortunately, where there’s power, there’s always a flip-side. In the case of email, the flip-side is abuse, also known as SPAM... that big nasty word.

Is spam email considered marketing? It probably is, if you want to get all technical about it, but it’s most definitely not RESPONSIBLE email marketing. Although some marketers don’t seem to be able to see the difference between permission marketing (where people have ASKED for the mail) and email spam.

Permission marketing is really a requirement these days, and it simply means that when you sign up for something, most often you'll receive an email asking you to confirm that you did in fact ask for that info.  It's not the sender being awkward or demanding!... he's safeguarding himself and you from spam.

Spam is actually a major threat to legitimate email marketers.  People check their emails, see their inbox cluttered with all sorts of stuff they believe they didn’t ask for and they yell SPAM!!

Unfortunately, with so much stuff in their inbox on a daily basis, it can become really hard to recognise the mails they’ve asked for, they may even forget they asked for it in the first place, or they may just be sick and tired of receiving too many mails, and they yell spam about the wrong mail.

Everybody has their own definition of spam. As it currently stands, spam is in the eye of the beholder.  Spam is usually unsolicited ads sent in bulk by people you don't know - although there are exceptions to this rule.

Some spammers will argue that email spam is no different to traditional junk mail, but there is one undeniable difference... cost.  The cost of sending junk mail through conventional means is very real, including postage costs paid by the sender.  The cost of sending email spam is very small, and most of the costs are paid by people other than the sender.

The lack of cost for sending is often named as a key problem with email spamming.  With traditional junk mail, a direct marketer has to make sure that the offer & targeting are good enough to more than make up for the costs of mailing.  With email spam, anything goes, often in the form of shady deals and outright scams.

But besides the scams and other legal consequences of sending spam, one very important consequence is always overlooked: the credibility of the sender.  Entire companies have had their credibility ruined for sending spam, faster that you can hit "Send".

So think twice before you send unwanted email to that address on your computer - it might mean the end of your business.

Getting Back To Email Basics.

While we all agree that there’s way too much spamming/junk-mailing going on in our email boxes, there are a couple of things we can do to reduce the amount of mails we actually have to sift through, without having to resort to paying for expensive software that can be a real pain to set up properly.

Firstly, and this is a great tip.  Get yourself a free email account.  It's indispensable if you download a lot of free stuff from giveaway promotions.  Or if you use Classified sites, Search Engine Submittals etc.  When you create your junk mail account, be sure to save the information you’ve used to create it with into a WordPad/Notepad file. Or in a directory in Outlook.

Try hotmail.com, gmail.com or yahoo.com (click on the "signup" under the welcome sign) for your free email account.

When the account is full, flit through it quickly, just to make sure there’s nothing of real importance there.  If there is, copy and paste it to your favourite text document.  To Word or Notepad.  N.B.  Notepad won't save any live links.  Word.doc will.

Then just go ahead and delete the whole junk mail account. You’ve saved the info you used to create it with in the first place, so it’ll only take a couple of minutes to re-create it with a different address.  

Next... whenever you join a program or a site, have your email client open at the same time, so you get the welcome mails immediately. You'll be asked to confirm in the welcome email by clicking on a link.  Do that immediately, and then put the mail into a special folder, created for all emails from that particular address.  

That way, different emails go to different folders, without getting too mixed up. If and when you decide to leave that program, delete all the mail you’ve saved from them, but please make sure that you DO actually opt-out before doing this.  

Another thing to remember is if you’re getting mails from someplace and you’re pretty darned sure you have absolutely no reason to be getting them, DON'T click on the remove me link!  What you’re really doing, is letting the spammers know that they’ve mailed to a real, used address, and they’ll mail more and more, and never stop.  Some of the more unscrupulous ones will even sell your address to be used as part of a mailing list, which in turn with result in even MORE spam.  

A lot of people seem to have forgotten where the delete button is, and scream the dreaded word "SPAM!!" as soon as an unfamiliar looking email drops into their inbox.  This can be very damaging to legitimate business owners, so please, don’t ever say spam, unless it well and truly is.

If you're absolutely, positively sure that it is spam, report it to spam@uce.gov   Don't expect a reply... they're a bit busy!!  I usually just send on the spam email to that address, using "forward".

If you really don’t have the time or inclination to follow these tips, there IS software out there that can filter your mails for you. The biggest drawback with these is that they can actually stop you receiving mail that you WANT to get if you don’t set it up properly. 

Setting up the software filters can also be very confusing and time consuming, so if that’s the way you choose to go, make sure you set aside some time for it, and don’t get distracted by anything else until it’s done.

Having said that... if you want to be absolutely sure that you get the Newbies Club emails... check below for instructions on how to make that happen.

Neil Robins

NewbiesOnTheNet

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