Pt 3 and the final part of my spam series (see archives for previous posts)-
by Tammy de Leeuw
Financial Advisor Netzone
For whatever reason, it seems to be easier for some agents and advisors to crawl up on their high horses and excoriate the person they perceive sent them spam.
That these folks actually take the time and trouble to send detailed responses to the purported spammer and report them to the FTC, quoting from their own versions of CAN-SPAM , etc. is mystifying. However, it might explain why they aren't getting enough clients.
In my opinion, unless you are getting loads of unsolicited porno (the very reason for the CAN-SPAM act, by the way) or a company just refuses to take you off their list after repeated unsubscribes, you should be very careful to do any kneejerk reporting.
Why? Because some day you are probably going to want to market your very legitimate, worthwhile product or service via the internet. What a surprise it will be when you discover your own emails are getting bounced further and faster than a Congressman's check.
Why? Because when you report someone as an abuser who really ISN'T an abuser, they sometimes put YOUR name on a black list in retaliation. An advisor I know learned this the hard way when he went to mail out his newsletters to his client list for the first time and found that two major ISP's had him listed as a spammer.
Instead of getting all worked up when you get unsolicited email- why not just put your finger on the old delete button and recognize that your own surfing habits are most likely responsible?
For your own emailing, use a subscribe list. People will still forget they subscribed and rush to complain about you, but at least you have proof you can give to any ISP who blacklists you.
Be sure to note on all correspondence with your own clients that you provide information via email and ask them to set their spam filters to allow your emails to get through.
Be sure to quickly remove anyone who asks you and double check all your lists to make sure they do not appear in another list.
Most of all, realize the internet and email are here to stay and spam is a small price to pay for having information (aka "power") at your fingertips and exponentially increasing your marketing power.
Below I am reprinting a comment from my SUPER PRODUCER Todd made on PT 1 of this series. He just seems to "get it."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Tammy,
I've never understood why some people get so upset about receiving email solicitations (aka, spam)... They are simply the 21st century version of the things that we've been receiving in our mail boxes since mail boxes were invented... It is especially puzzling that anyone in financial services would complain as we, by definition, are all solicitors of one sort or another...
I mean, seriously, the only reason that we call it spam is because we might not have an immediate need for that specific product/service... But, if we happen to need Viagra, a larger 'member', or a date with a person in a foreign country, the solicitation might actually be of benefit ;-)
This is just the price we pay for living in a free country and those who try to limit free speech in this area may quickly find that their free speech is limited too (in ways they never intended, like not allowing us to prospect to anyone that didn't contact us first)...
If you don't want spam, don't give out your email address to anyone. The easiest way to avoid this entirely is to have one email address that you use to communicate with 'friends' and another that you use to register for stuff on the internet (you can use people like yahoo, aol, msn, etc as they offer 100% free email accounts).
August 11, 2007 8:37 AM