Do you know if you are a Spammer?

We’ve had an interesting thread going on over at the Advertising Moms forum.  A new member posted her introduction and mentioned in it that she had already contacted many forum members by email to tell them about her products. 

Rutro!

I welcomed our new member and let her know that ‘mining emails’ from a forum is a real no-no (bad marketing juju) and that she had actually spammed our members. 

I could tell by her wording in her intro that she had no idea that what she did was wrong – so I didn’t feel the need to roast her alive or kick her off the forum.  When you’re new – you make lots of mistakes.  I know I did!

The ensuing conversation revealed that she did indeed not know that sending an uninvited email was wrong – and that she viewed it as ‘advertisement’ plan and simple.

Well – what is spam?  Uninvited advertisement via email, right?  (That’s oversimplifying things, but that is generally what we think of it.)

I get a lot of Professional SPAM in my mail box.  This is email from people who know darn well that they are Evil Spammers – it is how they make their living.

I also get quite a bit of Amatuer SPAM.  This are email ads from moms who really don’t realize that they are emulating the behavior of an Evil Spammer. 

Sometimes I take a minute and write back to let them know (gently) that they are spamming and need to take a different route to getting attention but most times I just delete.  It really depends on what the email was about. 

Are all uninvited emails spam?  No, of course not.  But if it is an advertisement and I didn’t sign up to receive offers from you – it certainly is spam.

You can write me and ask a question.  You can write me and share a comment, opinion, idea, etc.  You can write me and tell me you think I’m great (or not). You can tell me about something you think is super cool and which I’d check out in hopes that I’ll interview you. 

You can write me about just about anything – except to sell me something uninvited.

So, what about you? Have you ever been a Spammer?

I have. I shared my story on the forum but I’ll include it here too.

When I first started to do business, I was doing desktop publishing and I wanted to market myself to local businesses. I hand picked 20 or so local businesses, found their email and sent a very nice personal email to each owner about my new business.

One guy – a web host – emailed me back with words that burned my eyeballs. He called me SPAMMER and told me he’d NEVER EVER do business with me and would advise others to NEVER EVER do business with me because I’m a SPAMMER!

I nearly cried!

I wrote him right back and told him something like this: “I am soooo sorry! I had no idea that writing one email to one person would be considered spam. I thought spam was sending the same email to hundreds or thousands or millions. I had no idea and I am soooo sorry. I would never have done something wrong on purpose – I want to have a good relationship with business owners – not a bad one.”

Well, he wrote back a slighly less scathing response and said he understood – but that I needed to familiarize myself with internet ettiquete and email laws.

It was a hard lesson. But a good one.

If you want to be able to email people about what you have to offer – you have to start your own mailing list and invite people to sign up for it. Or you can buy ads on other people’s mailing lists. 

If you haven’t started your own list yet, I recommend Aweber for mailing lists only and WAHM Cart for mailing lists, shopping cart & affiliate program :)