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publishing a contact email address on the web constitute a solicitation?
I am CEO of a new internet business with limited funds. Am I not allowed use the power of the net to contact companies I believe would be interested in our
services? Is my only option to fund expensive marketing/advertising to publicise my business?
Our ISP is threatening to close us down if we don't stop sending email to prospective customers. Is this fair?
Any lawyers out there interested in taking this on?
I get emails all the time like this that I do not want or have not asked for but I can't have them stopped cause they are leaving away to have yourself removed. From what my research has found as long as there is a remove link on the email it is not considered spam.
Anyone who sends me UBE earns a request to their upstream that their email accounts and websites are removed. Presence of an opt-out at the bottom matters not one whit.
Where in the world do you get the impression that Web sites that post a "contact us" link are giving you permission to spam them???
Quite frankly, you're lucky that your spam victims are not suing you.
BTW - I hope that you learn the lesson of what a bad business practice sending spam is. Not only does it demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what is acceptable to your target market, but it also produces ill will toward you and your company.
If you want to market your goods and services, do it the legal way -- pay for advertising, or use other acceptable marketing techniques.
If you can't afford to market your products properly, then maybe you should ask yourself if you are in the right business in the first place.
Again, if you cannot afford to market and advertise your business legally, then you should consider a different line of work.
While it may or may not be spam (frankly, I think Dave is being a little harsh, although if your ISP is complaining about it, you're certainly not staying under the radar)... this approach isn't going to work anyway.
Don't all of us set up "contact us" email names for precisely the flotsam and jetsam that is part of the Internet? And the decisionmakers have private addresses which are given a lot more attention?
If you're sending your email to the email address that the intern opens, it's not going anywhere but the trash anyway.
But if you get the decision maker's name and email address, and you say, "Hi, I heard about your business in x newsletter/y magazine/z article at ecommercetimes.com, and I thought you might be interested," I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Spam is when I get emails without personalization that are about online gambling in the Caribbean...
I appreciate, your well thought out comments. I certainly agree with you about personalization and have included it in our email policy, along with other criteria like these messages must be B2B and 1-2-1 not 1-2-many. I am currently awaiting a response from our ISP on our updated email policy.
BTW, they say they sympathise when I spoke to them but that they are dead scared of being 'frozen out'.
Apparently, there are 1 or 2 organisations out there, holding ISP's to ransom and threatening to block traffic not just from ISP's but main carriers because they have received complaints about SPAM emanating from domains they are hosting/carrying.
It can be industry specific and I usually don't mind getting things from lists that I have agreed to get information from.
If I am not interested I hit the delete button
I do agree however that outright unsolicited is a violation of the ethic--whatever semblance of it is left.
Yes, it is spam. And a big part of the issue has to do with the cost. Most people pay for their email service. The cost for sending of spam is no longer on the distributer it is on the receipent.
The phone analogy doesn't work because here the cost still resides with the distributer. (Try calling 1000 people in 20 minutes, what does it take to do that.)
A better analogy is cell-phones. Both users pay the cost (in the US), and hence, you would have a difficult time getting a directory listing of cell phone numbers.
The mail analogy doesn't work either, the cost is still born by the distributer.
This is why we fought to have spamming laws introduced. I do not want to go back to the days before them.
I am the CTO for a large organization and spam costs us a lot.
jfb
Best regards,
Alexander Bulgakov
Quantum Art
aleksandrbulgakov@artq.com
http://www.artq.com
Best regards,
Alexander Bulgakov
Quantum Art
aleksandrbulgakov@artq.com
http://www.artq.com
