Spam: Some Serious Food for Thought

Today, I want to talk about one of the most important ethical problems facing the Internet marketing community: spam.

We all get it in our inbox or spam basket, and we can’t believe anyone falls for it. But, not everyone is Internet-savvy – and unfortunately, unethical businesses take advantage of less aware people, and give all of us who rely on email for sales a bad name.

This is not to say that sending emails to your customers is always a bad thing. It’s only when you do it too often, or send it to people who are not interested, that it becomes an ethical challenge.

That’s why an ethical marketer uses email marketing in a fair, conservative way. When you collect emails to build your list, make sure people understand that you will be contacting them with information and special offers.

Next, make sure you send out email blasts only when you have a sale or a new product that you’re sure they are going to be interested in. By keeping email marketing efforts few and far between, they become much less invasive – and people are going to want to hear what you have to say!

Also, make it very easy for people to opt out of your list at the click of a button any time they want to. A lot of marketers sign up for an opt-out widget to include on their emails, but don’t realize that sometimes it can be a production for the customer to use it. Do your research, and find the opt-out service that has as few steps as possible – and that it’s clear to the user that they will no longer be receiving emails from you after a certain amount of time (it’s usually about 48 hours).

The absolute number-one rule, however, is this: Do not sell your list to anyone else, and don’t buy email lists from people. Although the money involved can seem attractive to you, this is the biggest ethical no-no of them all when it comes to spam.

Again, we in the business are Internet-savvy. We know that if a company has a list of people who have bought a certain product in the past, chances are those people are going to be interested in our related product.

But think about your own email inbox. How many times have you purchased a product online, only to open your inbox the next day to find emails touting similar products? What did you do? If you’re anything like me, you delete, delete, delete.

Well, that’s what those people on your purchased list are doing. If you’re buying a list with this idea in mind, it’s not only unethical – it’s a bad investment. And the same goes for selling a list, too. If a customer purchases from you and then receives a bunch of unrelated emails the next day, they’re going to put two and two together – and now, you’ve lost a customer.