Call That Spam

Lance,

Is it still spam if you are writing a thoughtful personalized email to someone who you've never met and who has never indicated they want to hear from you?

If not, surely that line can be blurry as you scale that up.

No. Spam is officially unsolicited bulk email (UBE).

I am running into the same moral dilemma with trying to start an industry Meetup. The only cost effective way to find other people that would be interested is to gather emails and "SPAM" them. The issue is that without doing this there are very few cost effective options to let people know that a Meetup ( or insert item here ), that they might like, exists. Maybe a post about other cost effective targeting methods would be a good follow up.

If you bought the list in bulk from someone, it's definitely spam.

The keywords here are bulk and bought.

"Bulk" refutes the notion that your message is in any way personalized.

"Bought" proves that you have no pre-existing relationship with those people you are targeting. Otherwise, you wouldn't have to buy that list, you could use a list of people who signed up on your site. You wouldn't need to buy that.

Lance you hit the nail on the head and its really great advice. When you are talking about sending commercial email it comes down to permission. If you haven't received the proper permission just throw the list away. The effects of a list without permission are generally high spam complaints and eventually blacklisting. Purchased lists have the same issues as well as being populated with spam trap addresses. Generally a purchased list will land you on a blacklist faster than anything else. Another thing to point out is the ISPs are changing the deliverability model. The ISPs have already started moving away from the old way of collecting say abuse/bounce/etc stats against an IP/domain to determine if you are good or bad. Now they are moving towards an engagement model combined with the abuse/bounce/etc stats. This move will begin to show not only senders with permission issues but also engagement issues. So its not all about permission, its also whether your followers are engaged and responding to your email (opening, clicking, how long they read the email, etc). With the new model ISPs will quickly find whether you have proper permission and are engaging your subscribers, otherwise you face bulking or outright blocks.

Let me ask you a question -- if you use google to find companies that are potential customers of your product, is it ok to:

* Call them?
* Mail a hand-written letter?
* Send a single, personally-addressed email explaining how your product could help them?
* Create a list of 500 such people and personally email each?
* Create a list of 500 of such people and use a mail program to email them?
* How about a list of 50?

I guess my question is when does bulk become bulk?

I am curious to hear your responses.

Alan

* yes
* yes
* yes
* yes
* no
* yes

I have over 3,000 contacts in my address book. Just emailing them all in a single swoop would be spammy.

I have 2,000 comments on this blog. Harvesting the associated email addresses and sending them totally unrelated to FoG email would be spam.

Figuring out who the top 50 commenters on FoG were and sending them a personal invite to Cypress for drinks to expand our relatonships would be fine.

Yeah, its spam. If you buy a list and use automated mailing software, its spam.

The kicker there, is when you realize that despite it being spam, *it still produces results*. The sad truth is that email marketing (aka spam) still has the highest click through rates in the industry. I'm sure thats a hard pill to swallow -- to say, yes, I'm going to spam people, and its going to result in clients for myself.

It represents an interesting slippery slope. It's ok for sales people to cold call companies right? Is it ok for them to cold-email companies? Is it ok to buy lists of companies to cold-call? Is it ok to buy lists of companies to cold-email? Is it ok to automate that emailing?

I think the point at which it becomes useful is past the line where people would draw what is and isn't spam. So what your friends' marketing guy really meant was "Spam is OK", with no qualifications on it. Spam works, spam gets clients, spam makes money. Businesses exist to make money.

It's almost as if an ethical objection to spam (which I certainly personally have) ultimately has to boil down to an ethical objection to capitalism itself.

If you are questioning your methods, then think hard about it.

There are many ways to gather contact information related to your market, where the individual has an association with your business. Building a list such as this is OK.

Additionally, I also think it would be acceptable for a client/prospect to receive a solicited email, which contains the ability for them to opt-in for additional news and information.

I believe that most tech companies, especially in the B2B space, can build a valuable, ethical list with just a little extra thought and effort.

Ray: Thanks for speaking up, always good to hear new voices on FoG.

To be clear, I am not questioning my methods at all. I have been cultivating communities long before it was fashionable to do so. I agree 100% that you put in the work to get an ethical & intrigued base of people that are interested in what you are doing and what your organization potentially has to offer.

Lance: Thanks for commenting. To clarify, I didn't think you were questioning your methods at all. That was a comment based on some feedback of others on this thread.

Thanks for the answers. We'll see what happens!

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