By Jim Daniels, of BizWeb2000
[August 23rd, 2000]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

Late last Friday afternoon I made one final email check before leaving for the weekend. Much to my surprise there were nearly 1000 email messages waiting in my inbox. And little did I know at the time, there would be thousands more over the next few days.

So, I'll bet you're excited to learn this new promotion method that brought in all this email right? Well, before you get too excited, let me tell you this... it's one you should never even consider using.

You see, that windfall of email was not from potential prospects and customers. It was from angry netizens - all recipients of unsolicited email. No, not spam from me, but spam that caused a nightmare for me none the less. And it shut down the site that was responsible, before they even realized they did anything wrong.

The rest of this article shares the few sordid details, including how YOU can avoid similar trouble...

It seems that a company in New Jersey who was new to the online marketing game decided to try some "email marketing". So they bought one of those email lists that bulk email companies sell as "targeted email addresses" and had their host load it to their server.

One posting later their business was bombarded with complaints from angry recipients of the message. Not long after, their website was shut down, all because of one email message.

As for me, my own problems started when the spam hit my autoresponders. My "Welcome to the Bizweb eGazette" autoresponder appeared on the list no less than 17 times. The autoresponder was the one I used when new subscribers asked to be added to my newsletter.

Well it seems that the list of 30,000 addresses had been set up as an unmoderated discussion, and every angry spam recipient was free to reply to the entire list, snowballing the problem into a mass of junk mail in seconds. When my autoresponder replied to the list of 30,000 angry spam recipients over and over with "thanks for subscribing", many of the spam victims figured I was the culprit in the whole mess! And let me tell you, there are more nasty people out there than I imagined.

If I had a nickel for every cuss word and threat that came in over the weekend I could retire today. And I can understand why so many of these people were upset, but unfortunately their anger was misdirected at a fellow innocent bystander.

Now let's get to the main point of this whole story. I'm sure I can keep at least a handful of newbies from getting themselves in hot water like this website did.

I can also prepare my fellow "experienced" web marketers for the day when THEY are the recipient of misdirected anger due to spam.

OK, first the lesson for newbies...

No matter how tempting it may seem to buy an email list and "broadcast targeted email to thousands", it is a trap. And it only takes one message to shut your site down. The sad part is that these bulk email CD's are promoted as "millions of targeted addresses" and you can get them dirt cheap, making them even more tempting. The problem is, nearly every bulk email list comes with a few features you are NOT being told about. For instance...

• NONE of the addresses on these spam lists have asked to be there. Actually, NONE of the email addresses on those lists even realize they are on them and they have NOT opted in to receive email solicitations.

• By "targeted" addresses these list hawkers really mean they entered keywords into an email address harvesting program and the program loaded thousands of addresses from sites with that keyword somewhere in their pages. (Is that targeted?)

• A HUGE percentage of people on those lists will complain to every ISP, host and agency they can, which will shut your site down in a heartbeat.

• The USER of a bulk email list is the one liable for damages that result. And there is now legislation against sending unsolicited email.

It really is simple to stay out of trouble -- just don't ever email anyone without their permission. And never trust a company that sells email addresses. If you think there is a chance that the addresses are truly opt-in (and it would be a rare instance) then ask for a list of satisfied advertisers BEFORE you buy the list. Contact each and every one of them and ask about their results using the list.

And definitely ask the company selling the targeted addresses exactly HOW they built the list. If they say that the list members opted-in to the list then ask them if they realized that the list was going to be sold. You'd be hard-pressed to get 100 email addresses to opt-in to a list that was going to be sold over and over, let alone 30,000 or a million. After all, would YOU offer your email address to a company that told you up front they were going to sell the address over and over?

More: How to build your own opt-in mailing list

Article by Jim Daniels, author of "Insider Internet Marketing", a book that cuts through all the hype and lets you discover how to REALLY make money online.

Visit Jim at the BizWeb 2000 site where he shares exactly how he makes his living from the Internet. You'll discover some vital details on setting up a web business, growing website traffic rapidly and making money while you sleep. And get Jim's free weekly email newsletter, BizWeb eGazette by sending an email to optin@bizweb2000.com. S