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Today, I received 374 emails total.
A pretty light day considering some days I get more than 1,000.
To clarify what they were35 were for business, 4 were personal in nature, 11 were from groups I asked to get information from like Neiman Marcus and Urban Outfitters, VH1, and a PR Newsletter.
The balance of 324 was unsolicited (UCEunsolicited commercial email)in other words spam.
If I extrapolate the UCE I've gotten in the last six hours alone, I find I must be missing something 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 looking for a lower interest rate on my mortgage while at the same time making thousands of dollars with no effort on my part in the privacy of my own home?filling out surveys, stuffing envelopes and not selling something that miraculously sells itself.
Even better, I can be a travel agent without wrinkles obtain a college degree while waiting for my 1500 advance to show up in my bank account I can restore my credit rating legally while watching my 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 something to consider. NOT.
I've also discovered that I am a prime candidate to help an African Prince transfer funds into the US. He trusts me. All I have to do is give him my bank account information.
The problem is that I am a woman who doesn't suffer those ills. Someone thinks I do?There is something wrong with this picture.
The future of bulk email and why it is likely to remain dead
Now, you might 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 email?
Just to set the record straight, I have never advocated spam or sending spam.
One reporter said to me, "Some people consider all bulk email 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 little quip into a buzzword and I became known almost instantly, all over the world, as representing what everyone, including myself, hates about email.
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 email as a very effective medium for small business, which because of its low cost lets small businesses 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 businesses and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater before even the very term spam could be legally agreed upon and defined to the satisfaction of marketers, ISPs and the government jointly.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of the US economy, and entrepreneurs with their dreams are what have made the US the economic powerhouse it still is today.
Email that is sent to people who WANT to receive it, and that is in accordance with their preferences, still gets a high response. It allows many small businesses to get ahead. I didn't want to see big corporations or the government take over email and bar entry, filter, and extort everyone else while still sending their own advertising messages freely.
And then came the CanSpam act, which I and many other legitimate marketers welcomed, because it had a great promise of getting rid of the noise while 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 were intended for another purpose entirely.
In a climate like this, legitimate companies that had been diligently following best practices, and keeping their lists clean for years, suddenly did not want to stay in business with ambiguities in the law and the potential litigation that might ensue even if all the rules WERE followed, so many companies just folded.
However the people that continue to send email illegally did not fold.
Often times sending from outside the US borders, they stepped up their operations even more, to the point that there is almost no truly legitimate bulk email left.
In other words, the signal has become lost in the noise.
The simplicity is this ? bulk commercial email has gotten to the point where it isn't effective. 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 receive more, especially in their inbox, unless they specifically asked for it.
As a marketing professional, the only thing that should count for you at the end of the day is effectiveness. Bulk commercial email has turned into the above, a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams.
In other words, Spam is a fourletter word.
Legitimate marketers are staying away in droves and it's easy to see why. First of all let's look at some facts. In the United States, it is legal to send unsolicited commercial email. The CAN SPAM act allows for this. You have to provide a way to optout and not hide who you are, and a few more simple but ethical rules.
Although it is legal, there isn't an internet service provider in the United States who will allow you to send unsolicited commercial email.
Larger mailers have optin information from lists they purchase which imply consent but those lists aren't originated from the mailer, but from other submailers?you get a free thing or access to a particular site and the user checks a box that it is okay to get information from their ?affiliates and partners.?
The ?affiliates and partners? they are referring to are those who pay for the email addresses and optin information.
These guys are sending you mail legally, but the fact is, they are not getting into your email box for the most part. Blocking, filtering, and doing 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 someone else's site, not yours.
The response rate is pathetic and when that mail does get through, you have many disgruntled individuals who never remember opting in, so in their view, the mail is unsolicited. The only way to get email into inboxes en masse is by not following the rules, so the only messages getting through are the scams, including the pornographic, illegal, and objectionable.
It is ironic that the very thing people want to rail against, they are getting more of in the aftermath of CanSpam.
So where does that leave us?
What can a small businessperson do to get their message out, and not break their bank?
How to market effectively in the new internet wave
If you are a small businessperson, there are 3 alternatives that you should consider, which are described in this next section:
What is effective you might ask? (Ask away, it's kind of the point here..)
1) First party offers that impart some value added (a tip some information, something the consumer is interested in.)
Lets say John Q. Consumer gave his email address for a newsletter, or for more information on a particular subject, or to play a game.
Chances are he probably would not be angered to get an email from your company especially since he asked for you to contact him. He would recognize your domain name since he spent enough time on your site to actually ask the info.
Additionally, your internet service provider would not shut you down for violations and you'd start to build a small but effective list of people who are actually interested in what you, as a business owner, have to say.
This has been effective since the beginning of the internet. The only problem is, how do you reach people the first time, to get them to your site?
How do you find 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 less costly than television, radio, and (ugh!) banner ads?
Yes there is. Drum roll please?..Search Engine Marketing. If you write good ads, and compete with the right keywords, people who are already searching for an answer to a question, doing research, comparison shopping will go to a search engine and type in their parameters.
If you know how to market well, only people who are interested will go to your site.
If you have a web site that is compelling and you are offering a value added, they will ask for more information or sign up for your newsletter, or get your free download.
Now, getting to this point can sometimes take a little time, but if you are persistent, and know how to interpret your statistics, you can do this. If you want the result without the learning curve, hire a Search Engine Marketing Firm.
So the new tools for small businesspeople to stampede traffic to their websites in 2005 and beyond are going to be:
1) Search Engine Marketing
2) Publicity, including press releases that provide meaningful news
3) Providing quality content and expert commentary for radio, TV, and internet hubs in your field
You can be successful on the internet and these tools help to establish you as an expert in your field, as well as attract the very people who are looking 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 possible business, at the lowest possible cost, 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 businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in 2005 and beyond.
Remember, you heard it here first :)
Laura Betterly
CEO, In Touch Media Group
laura@intouchmediagroup.com
Laura Betterly is the CEO of In Touch Media Group, (OTC:ITOU) and has successfully launched many ebusinesses for herself and others
More information is available at
Just imagine how long it would take you to email even just a dozen prospects every two or three days using manually written emails to each of them. How effective do you think that be? Just a dozen prospects? Your business would be dead in the water before it even made a splash. So how, I can hear you wondering, do you get a bulk email marketing strategy started?
First of all you need a list of email addresses. As already stated, a dozen email addresses is not much use to you. To be effective, a bulk emailing must be targeted at several hundred addresses belonging to prospects that have expressed an interest in your product. In other words, they are focused on your product, service or niche. You will then have a improved chance of your email being opened, and then read. That is your main initial objective: to get your email opened.
Once it has been opened, it has to be read, and then the reader must make the response that you want. That response could be click to your sales page, filling in form in the email, or even placing an order directly from the email. In order to get as far as that there are a number of steps that have to be taken, so let's have a look at those necessary, from the beginning to the end of an effective bulk email marketing campaign.
First the list. For this you need list-building software. The main feature of that will be an opt-in form that potential prospects will fill in with at least their first name and email address, plus any other information that feel necessary such as URL, family name, telephone number, etc. Generally, however, all you need acquire at this stage is the first name and email address. The software should generate this form and provide you with the HTML for you to add to a page on your website. If you have no website, then get one, since you cannot run an email campaign without one.
The software should operate as an autoresponder. That is, that once a prospect gives you their details, and joins your list, a thank you email should be sent to them. The software will do that since it would be impossible for you to. Once you have a decent sized list of several thousand there is no possibility of you handling any bulk communications manually. You will require a good software package to achieve that.
You must also use what is known as a ‘double opt-in'. That is where, after sending the completed form, the prospect is sent a return email informing them that there is an email in their Inbox containing a link that has to be clicked to confirm the subscription. This again is done by your software.
The software should also place the name and address into a database, along with the rest of your list. Over time, your list will grow, assuming that provide a good reason for people to give you their valuable details. That, however, is a different topic. Right now we are looking at the mechanics of a bulk emailing strategy, and are now assuming that you have built up a reasonable sized list of, say, ten thousand. A good list is over a hundred thousand, and some even number in the millions.
Your list, however, will be targeted to your website, and even a thousand such contacts are worth a list of a hundred thousand that you have purchased and that have no specific interest in your products. You now require software that can send an email to every one of them at specific pre-programmed dates if necessary, and send that in both text and HTML format. Some people prefer HTML while others text, and it is essential that you cater for both.
You also have to maintain your list, and remove those that want to unsubscribe. This is an essential requirement if you are to avoid spamming. Each of your emails should offer an unsubscribe option, and your software should automatically remove any person who clicks on that link from the database.
Good email software will also provide you with statistics such as how many of your emails were opened, and how long they were opened for. From that you can tell the effectiveness of your email subject line, or the email itself. It should also point out the undeliverable emails and remove these from your list.
Although bulk email marketing is essential to any home business, it requires a good software suite to enable it to be carried out effectively. You cannot operate such a campaign manually, and are totally reliant on the software that you use. Choose wisely since it could make you or break you.