I was recently taken to task for claiming that unsolicited bulk email was spam. Spam is illegal and Spammers are criminal. Let’s not mess about with words here. Calling someone a spammer is inflamitory [sic]. I’m not arguing that sending unsolicited bulk email is anything other than bad. And that a lot of senders have a negative reaction to being called spammers. I’ve even had hate...
I couldn’t resist posting the newest Nigerian 419 showing up in my mailbox. Attn: Sir/Ma We are writhing to know if it’s true that you are DEAD? Because we received a notification from one MR. GERSHON SHAPIRO of USA stating that you are DEAD and that you have giving him the right to claim your funds. He stated you died on a CAR accident. He has been calling us regarding this issue...
I’ve been hearing a lot of people wondering how many marketers were taking advantage of the “special” date today. I got two, and both managed to work in the number 11 into the offer. One offered 11 of their top selling products for $11 each. The other offered a fixed amount off a purchase, if you used the code “eleven” at checkout. And that particular offer expires...
Brian Krebs has more on Rove Digital and the criminal connection to other scammers and spammers.
Yesterday law enforcement officials arrested 6 people and charged them with running a massive internet fraud ring. Over 4 million PCs were part of the botnet. According to the FBI the cyber ring used a class of malware called DNSChanger to infect approximately 4 million computers in more than 100 countries. There were about 500,000 infections in the U.S., including computers belonging to...
There are lots of terribly complicated rules in email marketing and retention. “Only send email to people who opted-in”, “Never use a pink background”[1], “Have a working unsubscription link”, “Don’t put FREE in the subject line”[1]. Another one should be “How does what you’re doing look to a typical recipient?”. I’ve...
One of the comments on my Spamtraps post claims that audit trails should be maintained by recipients, not senders. If people are using legitimate email addresses that legitimately opted in and verified details, they should be required to have a log of which lists they opted in to. You are just asking to hurt legit mailers. The underlying reasoning appears to be that no sender ever spams, and...
I believe that spamtraps – for the professional marketer – are scare tactics that are no longer relevant. a professional marketer I’ve talked about spamtraps in the past. I’ve described a number of different types of spamtraps and what they tell the trap maintainer about a sender’s practices. One thing I think the professional marketer above is missing is that...
There are a number of reasons I know that mail coming into my mailbox is spam. I get 15 copies. There are a lot of spammers out there who buy and scrape addresses and don’t do even the simplest of de-duping. Send multiple copies to a single address, you’re probably spamming. I get mail to a non-tagged address. I use tags for every signup, and have done since mid-1999 or so. If I get...
People get into all sorts of details when talking about best practices. But so much of email depends on the type of email and the target market and the goals of the sender. It’s difficult to come up with universal best practices. I’ve said in the past that I think that best practices are primarily technical. I don’t believe there is a best frequency or a best time to send mail...
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