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A typical day at the inbox
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Today, I received 374 e-mails total.
A fairly light day thinking about some days I get much more than 1,000.
To clarify what they had been--35 had been for business, 4 had been personal in nature, 11 had been from groups I asked to get info from like Neiman Marcus and Urban Outfitters, VH1, and a PR Newsletter.
The balance of 324 was unsolicited (UCE-unsolicited commercial e-mail)--in other words spam.
If I extrapolate the UCE I’ve gotten in the last six hours alone, I discover I should be missing some thing about myself on some spiritual level..
I am a balding, fat man with a small penis that doesn’t work. I am in debt.
I am searching for a lower interest rate on my mortgage whilst at the same time generating thousands of dollars with no effort on my part in the privacy of my own home—filling out surveys, stuffing envelopes and not selling some thing that miraculously sells itself.
Even much better, I can be a travel agent with out wrinkles acquire a college degree whilst waiting for my 1500 advance to show up in my bank account I can restore my credit rating legally whilst watching my totally free satellite Tv and munching on my drugs sent courtesy of an offshore pharmacy that has a doctor who will write me a prescription… HMMM…definitely some thing to think about. NOT.
I’ve also discovered that I am a prime candidate to assist an African Prince transfer funds into the US. He trusts me. All I have to do is give him my bank account info.
The problem is that I am a woman who doesn’t suffer those ills.
Someone thinks I do…There is some thing wrong with this picture.
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The future of bulk e-mail and why it is likely to stay dead
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Now, you may be asking why I, who was dubbed the “Spam Queen”
in the “Wall Street Journal” three years ago, am even bothering to say anything about e-mail?
Just to set the record straight, I have never advocated spam or sending spam.
1 reporter said to me, "Some people think about all bulk e-mail as spam. What do you have to say about that?" to which I replied, "Then I guess you'd call me the spam queen," as a joke.
In our sound byte media world, one editor turned this small quip into a buzzword and I became recognized almost instantly, all over the world, as representing what everyone, including myself, hates about e-mail.
The media as usual emphasized sensationalism and missed the point.
I am not complaining because my marketing business skyrocketed as a result.
At that time I advocated e-mail as a very efficient medium for small business, which because of its low price lets small companies level the playing field against big corporations.
At no small personal risk, I visited the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, and spoke my peace about small companies and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater prior to even the very term spam could be legally agreed upon and defined to the satisfaction of marketers, ISPs and the government jointly.
Small companies are the lifeblood of the US economy, and entrepreneurs with their dreams are what have made the US the economic powerhouse it still is these days.
Email that is sent to people who WANT to obtain it, and that is in accordance with their preferences, still gets a high response. It allows many small companies to get ahead. I didn't want to see big corporations or the government take over e-mail and bar entry, filter, and extort everyone else whilst still sending their own advertising messages freely.
And then came the Can-Spam act, which I and many other legitimate marketers welcomed, because it had a great promise of obtaining rid of the noise whilst keeping the signal.
As it turned out, the opposite happened. Email filters from ISP's now block a large amount of legitimate messages, which they call "false positives".
Marketers can't send the text they would like to send to their subscribers, so they have to resort to filter tricking tactics such as spelling the word spam as sp@@@M so that they can get past the filters that had been intended for an additional purpose entirely.
In a climate like this, legitimate businesses that had been diligently following greatest practices, and keeping their lists clean for years, suddenly did not want to remain in business with ambiguities in the law and the potential litigation that may ensue even if all the rules Had been followed, so many businesses just folded.
However the people that continue to send e-mail illegally did not fold.
Frequently times sending from outside the US borders, they stepped up their operations even much more, to the point that there is almost no really legitimate bulk e-mail left.
In other words, the signal has become lost in the noise.
The simplicity is this — bulk commercial e-mail has gotten to the point where it isn’t efficient. We just don’t do it anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t get a response, and we found people are overloaded with advertising messages and no longer willing to obtain much more, especially in their inbox, unless they specifically asked for it.
As a marketing expert, the only factor that should count for you at the end of the day is effectiveness. Bulk commercial e-mail has turned into the above, a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams.
In other words, Spam is a four-letter word.
Legitimate marketers are staying away in droves and it’s easy to see why. Initial of all let’s look at some facts. In the United States, it is legal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. The CAN SPAM act allows for this. You have to offer a way to opt-out and not hide who you are, and a few much more simple but ethical rules.
Even though it is legal, there isn’t an web service provider in the United States who will allow you to send unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Bigger mailers have opt-in info from lists they purchase which imply consent but those lists aren’t originated from the mailer, but from other sub-mailers—you get a totally free factor or access to a specific site and the user checks a box that it is okay to get info from their “affiliates and partners.”
The “affiliates and partners” they are referring to are those who pay for the e-mail addresses and opt-in info.
These guys are sending you mail legally, but the fact is, they are not obtaining into your e-mail box for the most part. Blocking, filtering, and performing it the “legal” way bulk wise, is just not working.
Not to mention, there is no way to prove that the recipients opted in or are willing to get the message since they opted in at somebody else’s site, not yours.
The response rate is pathetic and when that mail does get through, you have many disgruntled people who never remember opting in, so in their view, the mail is unsolicited. The only way to get e-mail into inboxes en masse is by not following the rules, so the only messages obtaining through are the scams, including the pornographic, illegal, and objectionable.
It is ironic that the very factor people want to rail against, they are obtaining much more of in the aftermath of Can-Spam.
So where does that leave us?
What can a small businessperson do to get their message out, and not break their bank?
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How to market successfully in the new web wave
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If you are a small businessperson, there are 3 alternatives that you should think about, which are described in this next section:
What is efficient you may ask? (Ask away, it’s kind of the point here..)
1) Initial party provides that impart some value added (a tip some info, some thing the consumer is interested in.)
Lets say John Q. Consumer gave his e-mail address for a newsletter, or for much more info on a specific subject, or to play a game.
Chances are he probably would not be angered to get an e-mail from your company especially since he asked for you to contact him. He would recognize your domain name since he spent sufficient time on your site to actually ask the info.
Additionally, your web service provider would not shut you down for violations and you’d start to build a small but efficient list of people who are actually interested in what you, as a business owner, have to say.
This has been efficient since the beginning of the web. The only problem is, how do you reach people the first time, to get them to your site?
How do you discover a target market for your products that is likely to be interested in what you have to offer and sign up for your newsletter, visit your site, and hopefully buy your stuff?
Is there anything much less costly than tv, radio, and (ugh!) banner ads?
Yes there is. Drum roll please…..Search Engine Marketing. If you write great ads, and compete with the right keywords, people who are already looking for an answer to a question, performing research, comparison shopping will go to a search engine and kind in their parameters.
If you know how to market well, only people who are interested will go to your site.
If you have a internet site that is compelling and you are offering a value added, they will ask for much more info or sign up for your newsletter, or get your totally free download.
Now, obtaining to this point can occasionally take a small time, but if you are persistent, and know how to interpret your statistics, you can do this. If you want the result with out the learning curve, hire a Search Engine Marketing Firm.
So the new tools for small businesspeople to stampede traffic to their web sites in 2005 and beyond are going to be:
1) Search Engine Marketing
2) Publicity, including press releases that offer meaningful news
3) Providing quality content and expert commentary for radio, Tv, and web hubs in your field
You can be successful on the web and these tools assist to establish you as an expert in your field, as well as attract the very people who are searching for your product or service at the same time.
These are the tools of a new form of marketing, which people are calling "In Touch" Marketing, or "intelligent marketing" and is one way to cut through and actually get you the most feasible business, at the lowest feasible price, with laser precise targeting. In future articles I will teach you how to use them with deadly precision.
This is the new way for small companies and entrepreneurs to succeed in 2005 and beyond.
Remember, you heard it here first
Laura Betterly
CEO, In Touch Media Group