I Can’t Get Enough Spam. Please Send More!

bytjmoore

879 followers

12 years ago

NOT!!!

Who doesn’t hate spam? We all do. But as an Internet Marketer we need to understand exactly what spam is. I have had to learn more about it than I actually wanted because I am a programmer and I wrote my own email programs. There are several pieces of anti-spam information I have learn that I would like to pass on to you.

Let’s start by identifying what exactly is spam. Any email that is mass sent to someone without their permission is considered spam. Now, this is a very short and to-the-point definition. There are more specifics which the anti-spam laws lays out but it is enough to just understand this to begin with.

You can write an email and send it to someone you know. This is fine. You can write an email and send it to someone you do not know. This is fine too. But if you write one email and send it out to several people you do not know personally, then you have just spammed them.

The Bureau of Consumer Protection enacted a law known as the CAN-SPAM Act. The law defines spam as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites.

If you are caught spamming you can be fined up to $16,000. I am not trying to scare you away from mass emailing. It can be done very easily and legally. Just follow CAN-SPAM’s main requirements. I have copied them into this blog from the link above. I strongly recommend you reading it to become as familiar as you can.

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.

4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.

6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

With a good autoresponder program you will not have to worry because they do not want to get shutdown any more than you do. They will make sure they are following these rules and they will (should) inform you of changes in CAN-SPAM laws as they are made available.

Anti-spam detection systems for email readers will catch spam based on a number of things. First, they could use keyword recognitions. If the subject line or email header contains any know spam keywords it could flag the email as spam. Most of these programs are configurable as to how strong you want to apply rules.

Most modern email filtering is done using the Bayesian spam filtering technique. Bayesian also looks at keywords but also looks in the actual body (content) of the email for words. It then uses a rather complex algorithm to calculate the probability of whether the email is considered spam or not.

The calculations output a point value. The system says the email is spam if it falls within a specific range. If the email rating is 5 or higher (typical settings) the email will be rejected as being spam.

There is so much more that can be said about what spam is and how it is handle. But all you need to know is what not to do. Follow the CAN-SPAM rules and you will be fine. I have been using my autoresponder for several years and had no problems with anything I have sent. I have had problems with certain url links because those links had been previously banned due to spamming.

You see, when you spam, you ruin it for yourself and others. It hurts the IM community.

I hope you get something out of this. It is interesting if nothing else. Later I will discuss purchased email lists and things to be aware of.

Until then, God bless!
TJ Moore