Email campaigns

[mjm1905]

Hello All,

I am thinking of implementing a heavy Email ad campaign, but I am curious of where the boundry is between Spam and Email Advertising. This seems absurd, as we can direct-mail advertisements waisting paper and ink, but your not allowed to send Email.

I am reading that a Website can be shut down for a violation, and fines can apply. I mean after all, any way you size an Email Ad campaign is sending solicitation in the transitive sense.

[chrison600]

I think there are published standards that an email must meet to avoid being classified as SPAM, but I'm not sure where you will find them.

My understanding is that a promotional email is not SPAM if it has been sent to a list that has opted to receive the type of information you are sending and if the email offers an adequate mechanism for removing the recipient from the list. There are various levels of opting in, single, double, I'm not sure of others. Double basically means the request to be attached to the list is verified twice.

[carpman]

Not an avenue i would take, but as i have mentioned else where if you can offer free email service you can ad a tag ine to outgoing email that advertises your site.

If you don't want to run your own there are many that will do it for you.

[mjm1905]

Opt out, huh,

I get dozens that dont have that, the ones that do never work. That is interesting, thank you Chrison.

Carpman, I like that idea alot. Give them something free and have an ad attached. You mentioned that there are services available offering this, do you have any you would recomend?

[carpman]

Not sure i can recommend any but i use oemmail.com for one site, i signed up for their private label scheme a few years back, users can get free email but also upgrade to premium account if they wish. Would not do it again as had to pay and of over 9000 users only had 8 sign up for premium. This not to much of an issue as it has no ongoing running costs so i can use tag line for advertising my other sites.

For the multiple domain free email service i am going to use webumake.com mail product. This is a cgi script that allow me to offer free email on one or domains, this give me full control and flexibility over my service but best used if you have your own server. This product comes with many addons so can be expanded.

It is not the best script of it type but for the money it is best value. If you want an alternative that is more expensive but is a very good product then look at www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/webmail/ i considered this when i first reseached idea few years ago. This product has matured well but as i have over 100 domains to offer it is to expensive for my needs


For a list of companies offering outsourcing look here:

www.fepg.net/webmasters.html

[mjm1905]

Hello Carpman,

I briefly analyzed the links you provided. That is a strong tool to offer people. I am curiouse as to why you feel it neccessary to implement this type of functionality on a different website?

[carpman]

Umm not sure what you mean? do you mean outsourcing or my offering free email on a different web site of my own?

If the latter the reason is that offering free email for the domains i have would not work with my GC site, although the domains are related to the main target group for GC site they do apply for the rest.

If you plan to offer multiply domains then creating a site specifically for free email will work better as some free email users may not be interested in my GC site but as a tag line is added to outgoing mail one of the recipricants of the email may use GC site.

I don't think that offering free email from your GC site will work, but if you have a free email site or community type site related to target group then free email will work.

[mjm1905]

I understand. I was curious if you forseen some sort of security risk. The one major concern that comes to mind, considering email, is the passing of viruses. The other is people using the service to generate unsolicited email. It seems there is not much of a clear definition on the internet for either.

I appreciate your feedback,

Michael

[carpman]

I understand. I was curious if you forseen some sort of security risk. The one major concern that comes to mind, considering email, is the passing of viruses. The other is people using the service to generate unsolicited email. It seems there is not much of a clear definition on the internet for either.

I appreciate your feedback,

Michael


My mail server has anti virus in place so catches any virus before they reach a users, spamming is an issue but you should be able to set the about of email sent at anyone time.

[kalmos]

I don't want to offer free e-mail space but I am offering free classifieds as a promotial period. Is it SPAM to e-mail potential customers directly offering my classifieds services? My competitors display the customers e-mail addys so, can I just send an e-mail to that person promoting my services? I would offer the "Remove" me from the mailing list directions.

If I don't do it directly is it better to do it in a 3rd person?

[mjm1905]

I think you would have much worse things to worry about, if your competitiors discover what you are going to do.

As far as spam, I am not sure of the exact guidelines yet. I will post a referrence here after I good one.

[mjm1905]

Here you go Kalmos,

Penalties include a monetary fine, 5 years imprisonment, or both. You can reference under the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, you should look up cases involving losses and damages to commerce, and Anti-trust.


This excerpt was taken from the Federal Trade Commission's website. Regarding the Congressional ruling on Electronic Mail effecting commerce, "the Can Spam Act":

‘‘Sec.‘‘1037. Fraud and related activity in connection with electronic mail.’’.
(b) UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION.—
(1) DIRECTIVE.—Pursuant to its authority under section 994(p) of title 28, United States Code, and in accordance with this section, the United States Sentencing Commission shall review and, as appropriate, amend the sentencing guidelines and policy statements to provide appropriate penalties for violations of section 1037 of title 18, United States Code, as added by this section, and other offenses that may be facilitated
by the sending of large quantities of unsolicited electronic mail.
(2) REQUIREMENTS.—In carrying out this subsection, the
Sentencing Commission shall consider providing sentencing
enhancements for—
(A) those convicted under section 1037 of title 18,
United States Code, who—
(i) obtained electronic mail addresses through
improper means, including—
(I) harvesting electronic mail addresses of the
users of a website, proprietary service, or other
online public forum operated by another person,
without the authorization of such person; and
(II) randomly generating electronic mail
addresses by computer; or
(ii) knew that the commercial electronic mail messages
involved in the offense contained or advertised
an Internet domain for which the registrant of the
domain had provided false registration information;
and
S. 877—8
(B) those convicted of other offenses, including offenses
involving fraud, identity theft, obscenity, child pornography,
and the sexual exploitation of children, if such
offenses involved the sending of large quantities of electronic
mail.

[carpman]

I recently placed an ad in autotrader.co.uk for my car, no reply for buying it yet but i did get two emails from other classified sites trying to get me to place an ad on their site, that made a point of saying that the did use mailing lists and would not bother me again, still smells spammy :)

[mjm1905]

Thats pretty interesting carpman. I just heard on the News today, first arrests where made based on the Can-spam act today. They shut down a company that used email to promote wieght loss.

I wonder how the other countries around the globe are reacting to this. I read on the website, the US is pushing for global efforts on this matter. It seems that the high volume of Spam is causing complaints from businesses that provide email infrustructure.

I guess that semi-private and private email feature is an extremely valuable asset to the classified program. Additionally, I am glad that I will be using the software to promote my own sales as well. After reading your post, I am considering exposing my email address for that reason.

[admin]

Thats pretty interesting carpman. I just heard on the News today, first arrests where made based on the Can-spam act today. They shut down a company that used email to promote wieght loss.

I wonder how the other countries around the globe are reacting to this. I read on the website, the US is pushing for global efforts on this matter. It seems that the high volume of Spam is causing complaints from businesses that provide email infrustructure.

I guess that semi-private and private email feature is an extremely valuable asset to the classified program. Additionally, I am glad that I will be using the software to promote my own sales as well. After reading your post, I am considering exposing my email address for that reason.

There is also a hidden cost in that the way these places get the email is to create a crawler that harvests them from the pages on your site. This is the reason the ability to expose the email within the ad is a choice for the admin within the enterprise.

[mjm1905]

I can see that too, the bandwidth the crawler consumes to obtain the emails.

I thought section A - ii, was interesting. I would think people who have the affiliat option would have to use caution if they promote through e-mail while using our classifieds "If they provide false registration information".

Personally, I may include a link to the Act, or a small excerpt with the confirmation e-mails.

[carpman]

Not sure exposing email would be good idea?

Should note that many sites set out in their TOS that using their email/communication system to offer or promote goods/services outside of service is not allowed.

As for email crawlers of use a javascript to make email address unreadable.

Maybe this type of feature could be included in GC!

[admin]

Not sure exposing email would be good idea?

Should note that many sites set out in their TOS that using their email/communication system to offer or promote goods/services outside of service is not allowed.

As for email crawlers of use a javascript to make email address unreadable.

Maybe this type of feature could be included in GC!

Can you point us to this javascript? If it is javascript it would be something you could place within your templates if using the enterprise edition. Without any need to make changes to the code...haven't seen the javascript so don't know if this feasible.

[mjm1905]

Hey Carpman,

I think we were on a different page. What I meant was our customers that we provide affiliate pages features. If they promote their website or products through e-mail (using the classifieds affiliate pages), they have to ensure that they did not register for our Classified services using false information. Nothing we have to worry about as I can see. But if advertisers send out an email, with links to the affiliate section of our sites, in my opinion, it would put them in violation under the subsection I mentioned above.

It might not be a bad idea to let our affiliate advertisers know of this. From how I took it, it does not have to be bulk email or "harvested" to be considered in violation of the Act.

Just some food for thought

[carpman]

Not sure exposing email would be good idea?

Should note that many sites set out in their TOS that using their email/communication system to offer or promote goods/services outside of service is not allowed.

As for email crawlers of use a javascript to make email address unreadable.

Maybe this type of feature could be included in GC!

Can you point us to this javascript? If it is javascript it would be something you could place within your templates if using the enterprise edition. Without any need to make changes to the code...haven't seen the javascript so don't know if this feasible.


Hello, here the javascript i use, all you need to do is change 'var' to your needs

<script language="Javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!-- // hide from old browsers

//variables
var user = "emailaccount"
var domain = "domain.com"
var subject = "Subject title"
var bodytext = "First line of body text"

//output
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + user + '@' + domain + '?subject=' + subject + '&body=' + bodytext + '\">');
document.write('email </a>');

// -->
</script>

[mjm1905]

That took me a minute to grasp what the code was doing, but I got it. Thats an excellent idea for generating an email address on your page. There is no way to generate the users email using this right?
I am taking it that you use this only to include your email address on a page.

[carpman]

That took me a minute to grasp what the code was doing, but I got it. Thats an excellent idea for generating an email address on your page. There is no way to generate the users email using this right?
I am taking it that you use this only to include your email address on a page.

Hello, yep when ever i need to put an email link on a web page i use this script.

[Graham]

I am planning an email campaign for when my new site launches but I intend doing it in a somewhat different way.

i think this may only work for niche markets.... but then classified sites probably only work for niche markets anyway.

I will be selling antique British ceramics and i will be doing an adwords campaign that doesn't even mention the site itself.....

Instead i aim to 'raffle' an antique vase, or something, worth about £1000 ( GBP ) and entry to the draw is free, all you have to do is subscribe to an email newsletter ( there will be a different 'newsletter' for each catagory on the site and you get an entry for each catagory newsletter you subscibe to )

The idea then is obviously to email details of the new ads about once a week or so to those who have subscribed.

[mjm1905]

That sounds like a good idea.

Personally, I strayed away from Email. I was at the office one day, and though about it. I never once did business as a result of an email. Moreover, I don't think I would conduct business with someone that hammered me with messages.

Once a week though, thats not a burden. I am to the point now, I only open my email because of support to the site. It seems to me the Canned Spam Act brought a wave of Spam. I get more spam now than ever. I did drop some of my filters too. Primarily to ensure that messages from users get through.