Re: Is it spam if it's targeted?

From: Trevor Johnson <bpfsa_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon 30 Oct 2000 15:34:13 -0500

MARK PEPER <mark_at_hirerocket.com> WROTE:
> We did an email campaign to a very targeted group. Our
> response was great. 13% of the group came back to our
> site and over 5% did exactly what we wanted them to do.

Had these recipients given prior permission to you to
send them mass-emailed information?

If not, then it is spam.

If so, then it *may still* be spam.

A prominent audio software company recently
re-interpreted their customer's permission, given when
software was downloaded online, to send details of
updates and special offers, as somehow giving them the
right to send *unrelated* special offers, being paid
advertising from outside parties, to their mailing
list. That software company is now on MAPS Realtime
Black List, a filter used by approximately 50% of the
world's ISP's to block known bad guys.

Just to clarify one point often not understood, not all
unsolicited email is spam. If you see my website and
have a question or other legitimate communication about
my business, of course you can send me a single,
personalized, relevant email. But if you cross the line
and send it to multiple recipients and unpersonalized
(merely database email-merging doesn't qualify - the
specific relevancy of the contents of the email is what
counts), you are a spammer.

> On a sales/marketing side I have a hard time believing
> this is bad.

Used car salesmen think it's wonderful to be able to
sell clapped out old rust-buckets for double their true
value to little old ladies, too. I'm not equating your
services or product to that of a used car salesman -
just the approach. Ends do not justify means. The
sales/marketing side might not think it is bad, but
what of the OTHER side of the transmission, the 87% of
recipients who didn't go to your site and the 95% who
didn't do what you wanted them to do?

Furthermore, despite claims commonly made in the
closing paragraph of many spams, the oft-quoted
Murkowski Bill has never been passed into law. Spamming
therefore remains illegal under 47 USC section 227, the
law regulating telecommunications abuse. Although that
Act was originally designed to outlaw unsolicited fax
advertising, numerous Court Cases have now upheld it's
applicability to unsolicited emailing as well.

Several States have enacted further specific anti-spam
laws. Under Washington and Virginia laws, if you send a
fax to, from, or even just through the State, you are
guilty of an offence, with damages of $500 per
complaint payable. That is PER COMPLAINT, not per mass
mailing. If 1,000 in the State complain of your
once-only spam, you are up for $500,000.

Recipients, ISP's or points through which your spam is
relayed may also launch Civil Claims against you for
various reasons. Courts in some jurisdictions have even
held that spam constitutes theft (of bandwidth) and
trespass (unauthorized use of servers and entry of your
spam onto recipient PC's.)

> It is a very cost effective way for us to do business.
> And it works.

Cost effective for you, maybe. Not for the recipients.
I am presently trying to resurrect a domain from a
spam-inflicted death. Every spammer in the world seems
to have found one of it's email addresses over the four
years it had been online, and processing the spams is
taking a minimum of 7 hours per day - yes, DAY - and
sometimes as much as 12 hours per day. It costs the
spammer nothing, but it is costing this very small
business it's life.

There is a mighty big difference between
junk-snail-mail (paid for by the sender) and unwanted,
Unsolicited Commercial Email (the bandwidth costs are,
either directly or indirectly, paid for by the
recipient, not the sender). Current estimates are that
worldwide bandwidth is 20% spam-related, and that means
20% of ISP & Hosting charges are being paid for by the
victims of spams, not the senders.

> Do all ISP providers consider this to be spamming or
> are there any that would work with us?

99.99% of ISP's and hosting services do consider that
to be spamming. Consider yourself very fortunate. Most
ISP's would have terminated you without giving you a
second chance. I'm not saying without warning, as you
were already warned. It would have been in the Terms of
Service or Acceptable Use Policy of your ISP which you
agreed to when you joined.

The remaining 0.01% (or so) of rogue ISP's who condone
spamming and have direct-to-backbone connection you
WON'T WANT to work with. There's no point in you
joining a MAPS RBL'd ISP where half the world
automatically filters out your email, whether it is
spam or not.

> From my experience I thought it worked out great.
> We did do a lot of research and worked with a very
> targeted group, but the numbers prove it worked.

The numbers prove that you spammed. "Targeting"
justifies nothings. Murder isn't legitimized when the
victims are "targeted" rather than random. Neither is
spamming. If you really want to target-market online ,
please keep reading Online Ads and learn how to do it
professionally and honestly.

Trevor Johnson,
"Cyber-paramedic" to the spam-dunked
http://bestprac.com, appearing in a
Court near you soon.





Received on Mon Oct 30 2000 - 14:34:13 CST