Are You a Spammer?

I don’t know a single person who doesn’t hate spam e-mails. Fortunately, I don’t deal with it all that much ever since I configured a spam filter. Now it works great, maybe even a bit too great so I make it a habit to check my spam folder once every 7-10 days for legitimate e-mails that get misdirected.

So imagine my annoyance today when I found a bunch of junk in my Inbox. One e-mail was from a beauty consultant; another – an invitation to a hostess party; the third one contained a newsletter that I never signed up for; and finally the last one was an invite to an all-day educational seminar.

Now, this doesn’t sound like your typical spam – Nigerian scams, fake lotteries, offers of cheap pills from overseas pharmacies, etc. In fact, I know – personally or through online communities – all of the senders. So what’s the problem, you ask?

Well, e-mail spam is e-mail spam as long as the message is unsolicited and sent in bulk. All four of these messages fully qualified. I’d like to believe that the senders did not realize that they were spamming me. So I didn’t mark their e-mails as spam nor did I block their addresses. But I do have a bone or two to pick here…

Exchanging business cards at a networking event does not mean you have my permission to add my e-mail to ALL your outgoing communications. What I expect is a one-on-one follow up on something we discussed during our meeting.

Instead, what I see is this – some business owners ask for business cards from all networking event attendees. Then they add the e-mails to their Outlook list (or whatever other non-double-opt-in list they use). Next thing I know, I get all sorts of bulk offers and coupons from these people. And believe it or not, some don’t even bother to hide e-mails of other receipients which is complete violation of their (and my) privacy.

This is also true for online networking through sites such as MeetUp.com, LinkedIn, etc. Using them as advertising and sales vehicles is against the rules. But people do it anyway. If anything, it’s a bit less invasive to post updates as announcements instead of sending them as e-mail updates to all group members.

Then there’s the issue of signing up for one product and receiving a bunch of other stuff. Like when I signed up for webinar a month ago and ever since then have been getting a weekly newsletter and occassional sales pitches from a business owner.

There’s nothing wrong in growing your e-mail list by offering a free product in exchange. It’s a fair deal and a standard arrangement. But please disclose what else I will be getting as a result of this free download. I am pretty cool about getting autoresponders for a few weeks after I download a product. In fact, I expect and anticipate them since many have as much or even more value that the product itself. But please-please don’t try to sneak in a regular newsletter this way!

But is unwanted e-mail worth whining about? After all, can’t I simply unsubscribe? Well, that’s my final point – whatever you do, make sure the unsubscribe link and/or instructions for subscription management are at the bottom of each and every one of your e-mails. Recently I received several e-mails that I didn’t care for. But I couldn’t unsubscribe from the list because there was no subscription management option.

Again, this is typically a problem if the sender uses Outlook or whatever other e-mail client instead of subscription management services such as iContact, ConstantContact or AWeber.

And speaking of these services, I would highly advise signing up with either of these if one of your goals is to grow and maintain a no-spam list. I personally have used AWeber for a few months now. It helps me to ensure that my subscribers know what they are getting and can cancel their subscriptions at any time with just one click.

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