| |
SPAM or Direct
Mailing
Most people who have access to the
Internet have email accounts, so using email to market your
products and services would seem like a good place to start to try
and attract your customers to your products or services. You
must remember, however, that the people you intend to mail to
(your potential customers) pay for the email they collect and many
see email as a private facility and dislike unwanted email infiltrating
their inbox, this is often referred to as SPAMMING.
If you are an intelligent marketer who believes in the product or
services you are marketing you will avoid SPAMMING whether
highly targeted or not. There you have to proceed with care and
extreme caution.
The consequences for sending
unsolicited email can be severe:
- Complaints made against your intrusion
to your ISP may result in your company being disconnected
- Persistent spammers may get
blacklisted, and so you will be unable to find an ISP courageous
enough to take you on
- There are laws which govern
direct email both in the UK and US, and you could be liable
for prosecution
- Your company will get a bad
reputation, so the likelihood of you actually selling
something will be very small
In addition, most people receiving
your mail will not treat it seriously or will send it to their
trash can without reading it, similar due to the way direct mail
is viewed by the emailing community. The fact is, direct
emailing is not an acceptable for of marketing, selling or advertising
on the internet, so it is best kept at a very safe distance.
Developing your
own mailing list
You can of course
create your own mailing list within your own web site. If
your website audience is very small, you may invite your visitors
to subscribe to your own mailing list. You could then manage
this using a small database sending multiple emails from your own
email software.
You may decide to
purchase specific mailing list software to manage your mailing
list subscriptions; or subscribe to on online mailing list service
who will store the database for you and manage your list for
people subscribing and unsubscribe. |
|
|
In America,
spammers are liable for a $500 fine if caught spamming. In some
states, it falls under the definition of illegal faxing without
the recipient's permission. In the UK, it falls under the Criminal
Statutes regarding unauthorised alteration of computer data or
theft of computer resources. (Theft of access time and disk
space.) |
Using Mailing lists
A mailing list is simply a list of e-mail
addresses of people interested in a certain subject. Each list has its own
distribution address, which looks just like the e-mail addresses described
above. All you have to do to get involved in an interest group is to
request to be added or ‘subscribed’ to it by sending e-mail to the
list administrator, which is either a normal human being or an automated
list-maintenance program. Your e-mail address will be added to the list,
and you’ll start receiving discussion contributions from other list
members. You may reply to these messages or send new thought-provoking
topics at any time. Any message you send to the e-mail list address will
be distributed to every member of that list. You don’t have to actively
participate by sending messages all the time; you can just listen’ to
the discussion.
Many Internet mail servers
allow users to subscribe to a mailing lists service connected to a
subject, issue or company. When e-mail is send to the mailing list service
it duplicates the sent e-mail message and distributes it to other
participants who have subscribed to this list. There may be thousands of
subscribes, and the advantage of this facilities is that you only need to
send one email message, it is a very efficient and cost effective process!
However, as is not advisable to market your
products and services within existing mailing list areas, as many are
monitored and you are liable to be struck off the list. However, it
is a great facility for finding new leads or testing ideas on a new
market. Lurk around and read, don't interact unless you have
something important to say. Mailing lists are teaming with great
leads and contact, and this can lead to possible sales, so treat with
caution.
Newsgroups
Apart from mailing lists,
newsgroups can also be utilised for market research. These areas can be
utilised to sound out ideas and test the water, and because the groups are
so very specialised, you can get some extremely rewarding answers.
< More
Details ... >
|
|
