Don’t let your email marketing campaign get mistaken for spam

Having an aggressive email marketing campaign is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business over the Internet. However, it is easy to accidentally become too aggressive and be flagged for spam. There are a few principles you should keep in mind when you are setting your campaign up so that you can maintain an ethical marketing strategy.

Where is the magic line between a spam email and a legitimate email? Unfortunately, there isn’t one. Marketing email or spam? describes how you can only try to minimize the likelihood that an email will be reflected as spam. Sometimes even the most innocent messages can get flagged by a very conservative recipient. Unfortunately, you can never control how someone is going to respond to your message.

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The spam business that arts in cyberspace

Today there are many types of “electronic-spam”, including the most famous “E-mail spam” aka “unsolicited e-mail”, “Forum Spam”, “Newsgroup Spam” Advertisement and forgery in a newsgroup, “Messaging Spam or Spim” that is spam through instant messaging system for advertisement or even extortion. On the web, there is an important type of spam called “Spamdexing” – the art of manipulating a search engine to create the illusion of popularity of a particular website.

The University of Maryland issued a report in 2003, saying that spam costs businesses approximately $22 billion in lost productivity each year. There seems to be a no easy ways to deal with spam. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in 2004: “two years from now, spam will be solved”. Well, that is another mis-prediction from Bill Gates.

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Spam and how it all started

“We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSystem-20 family”, wrote Gary Thuerk of the Digital Equipment Corporation in an effort to let people in the technology field to know about his company. That email written in 1978 marked the beginning of the unsolicited junk emails which is notoriously known in the internet term as SPAM.

After selecting six hundred West Coast addresses, Thuerk realized that he would never have time to call each one of them, or even to send out hundreds of individual messages. Then another idea occurred to him: what if he simply used the network to dispatch a single e-mail to all of them?

The next moment he finished writing the message and hit the “Send” button, he became the father of SPAM.

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We don’t need no Spam

Dear Spam Sender,

Thank you for taking such an interest in me. I regret to inform you the following:

My penis is just fine, but thank you for asking.
I don’t own a home, so why the fuck would I need to re-finance my mortgage.
I don’t require any medication and even if I did I wouldn’t buy it from someone who can’t spell the name of it.
I deeply regret your situation in Nigeria (or whatever 3rd world country you and “your millions of dollars you need to transfer” live in) but you’re barking up the wrong tree.
I already have a degree (again, last time I checked you didn’t spell diploma with a 1 in the middle).
Posing to be the institution I do my banking with, wow, that’s fucking admirable. No, you can’t have my account information.
Re: I don’t remembering sending you e-mail in the first place.
“Your PC is infected”. No it isn’t, I have a Mac which doesn’t open your fucked up .exe files, you stupid.
Thanks for the stock tip, unfortunately I didn’t see a listing on NASDAQ for: bL06Wjob GraNNy99.
Chicks banging horses is soooo 1999.

Bye for now,
Brajeshwar

Is Gmail the Best Spam Filter for your Domain?

Very recently our domain Oinam went in for Gmail for Domains and we’re currently using their Google Apps for Your Domain. Besides the security and privacy concerns that many user have, Google Apps for Domains is a very viable solution for a small to mid-size company. Currently, Google offers Gmail (for email), GTalk (Instant Messenger), Google Calendar and a simple web page creation tool.

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So they were indeed Nigerians

I have been having a hard time trying to block their e-mails, swear at them and they are manual spammers (likely) about making me rich with transfer of huge sum of money. I am not sure if the recent spurt of lucky lottery winnings are part of their gullible way to leech money from innocent people; may be even the Iraq gold, money transfer scams are from them.

Wired carried an article today, Netherlands Nabs Nigeria Scammers.

Nightmares through the net

First, I am extremely sorry if I have hurt anybody online on web-forums or on mailing list, I never intended to hurt anyone but believe more in helping aspiring developers and designer alike in using Macromedia Technologies like Macromedia Flash, Flash Communication Server, Flash Remoting and Macromedia Central alike.

Couple of weeks ago, I started receiving comments on this blog which looked more like the usual spam which I read and brush it aside as just another spam but there was no site url or anything, so I am not sure of the spammers intention. I received quite similar ones but I kept that too as another spam and have forgotten about the same. A couple of days back, I received an e-mail which when I replied returned back with a mail-delivery failure. The sender quite pissed off with me or with the identity “Brajeshwar”, which I am trying to built more of my own identity than just my name. Without going much in details, I am afraid to say that there are some people with vested interest against me.

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Spam mails, I would definitely look in

I have just opened an e-mail address, [email protected] for all those e-mailers out there to crawl, extract and mail me with all your needs, sell me goods, offer me free passwords to porn sites, sell me inks for my printer, advertize me those sleek cars, offer me discrete viagra shipping, offer me $3000 a week earning without doing anything but sitting duck at home, offer to give me 30% of the 30 million dollar that you have in your nigeria bank, 25% out of the 50 million dollar that a deceased billionnaire left behind (please take into consideration that I am concerned about other offers which I have left out here).

I promise I will check that mail once every weekend (I will try my best) and click your links, read them, whatever. Also I expect any other language to be translated to English as I can read only that, I can atleast read if you really have an unsubscribe option. Ok, guys go on start the mails. Enjoy spamming.