Re: legitimate unsolicited commercial e-mail vs spam

From: Tom Kirchman <tkirchman_at_instapass.com>
Date: Wed 17 Nov 1999 10:37:12 -0500

Adrian Cooper Wrote:

> There is a legitimate way to engage in commercial mailing
> activities - the ONLY way - and that is to "OPT-IN" lists of
> recipients, where the recipient has *pro-actively requested*
> and otherwise given direct *permission* to receive email
> from a specific originator for specific purposes *before*
> commercial email is sent to that recipient. Even then, a
> means of easily unsubscribing to further such mailings must
> be provided, and the email address of that recipient must
> not be provided to any other entity for any other purpose
> without the prior permission of that recipient.

In my opinion Adrian's view is WAY too restrictive.

There is legitimate unsolicited email (comercial or otherwise).
I receive several each day from people who visit our websites
and have questions or proposals. They all follow the rules
below and get read and responded to. The crap that doesn't
follow the rules gets sent to the bit bucket unread.

Here is my definition of permissible email send to someone
with no previous relationship, business or otherwise.
All parts (1,2,3,4,5 and 6) must be satisfied to be
permissible.

1A. Someone posted in a list and you are responding directly
to that persons comments or question.

1B. The recipient has voluntarily posted their email address
as the contact person for a particular website, business or
organization. That posting can be in a professional directory,
an auction/activity site or on a contact page at a website.
Internic listings do not count, they are not voluntary.

2. The email must relate directly to that person's business
or interests. If in a professional directory, that
profession. On a website, what that website offers or
sells or discusses. On an auction site, what that person
is buying or selling. Very rarely will you be able to
construct a list you can use more than once. If you are
not starting from scratch each time, you are probably
sending SPAM.

3. The recipient's email address is in the To: field, your
personal on-going email address is in the From and Reply-To
field. Your organization, if any, is in the organization field.

4. The subject of the email truly describes the subject of
the message. Not even the slightest deception is allowed.

5. There is a complete signiture block with your name, email
address (same as reply-to), organization, and phone number
(see example below).

6. The "response mechanism" is to reply back to you and you
are ready willing and able to carry on a one-on-one dialog
with every recipient. You can talk about your website or
product, but you should be proposing a dialog. You should
be expecting a 100% response rate to your message. If you
are not expecting that kind of response, you are are not
targeted enough and are probably sending SPAM.

It doesn't matter if it is 1 email or 1,000. If you can't
meet all of the criteria, don't send it. Also you must
always send email out from your own ISP connection that
you are paying for.

If you still want to get the message out to people you
have no prior relationship with then you can turn
to the Opt-In bulk email systems. Be careful, because
only a couple of them are truely SPAM free Opt-In.
(anyone got a list of them??)

Finally, for people you do have a relationship with you
can only send email about your business and must never
pass along your list of contacts to another party or send
out unrelated messages without the list member's specific
authorization.

-Tom
--
Tom Kirchman Phone (703) 834-5385
InstaPass.com, Inc. Fax (703) 834-5387
Creators of GIF Wizard mailto:tkirchman_at_instapass.com
http://www.gifwizard.com/ http://www.instapass.com/




Received on Wed Nov 17 1999 - 09:37:12 CST