where do you draw the line between email marketing and Spamming?

[xpl0iter]

I know its a hard question. But many webmasters are using the email marketing to get the clients and more frequent visitors. But send out too many emails and users will think of you as a spammer and even worse they will block you. So where do you draw the line?

 

[Sam1]

Just seen this as I was creating a new topic.
Spammers make it difficult for people to unsubscribe from their lists and don't provide any real value on their emails. Marketers use on double-opt in lists and provide free information as well as direct people to their affiliate links.

 

[Rihtar]

I draw the line when I'm unable to unsubscribe from the email notifications or newsletter, because that only means that I've never subscribed to that stuff in the first place (not a fan of newsletters in general).

 

[Shortie]

I myself will draw the line when emails come through that are not relevant to anything I am interested in and there is no actual option for me to unsubscribe from the emails I receive. You always know if they are spammers or genuine webmasters looking to gain more exposure by the way the emails are worded and how they try and interest you.

 

[Neverz]

Just follow the "CAN-SPAM" act, you don't want to get a bad reputation for your business. I tend to just build my list rather than scrape emails, but one time I did grab for one of my niches a list of 30k emails, cleaned it up and got a great response because I was solving a big problem for them.

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

 

[alphaguild]

I think the best way to use email marketing is the send off engaging content and enticing emails. Not sending too many in a given time (maybe once a week) will add some quality to your campaign.

 

[ormaybeso]

As someone who's only been on the receiving end of this, I find that anything more than 1 email every week or two is going to be counted as spam and I'll find myself unsubscribing as fast as I can. I like those websites that send you an email bi-monthly to remind you that they're alive. I've had others that will send you an email practically everyday, and those just annoy you to death within a week. So the best choice here is to keep it sparce.

 

[lludawg]

As someone who's only been on the receiving end of this, I find that anything more than 1 email every week or two is going to be counted as spam and I'll find myself unsubscribing as fast as I can. I like those websites that send you an email bi-monthly to remind you that they're alive. I've had others that will send you an email practically everyday, and those just annoy you to death within a week. So the best choice here is to keep it sparce.

I definitely agree. Good sites will not need to send out a newsletter every single week. A well organized newsletter every couple weeks with only the most important info would be good.

 

[xTinx]

I know its a hard question. But many webmasters are using the email marketing to get the clients and more frequent visitors. But send out too many emails and users will think of you as a spammer and even worse they will block you. So where do you draw the line?

I'm glad you asked because the answer's relatively easy. First of all, don't use auto-mailers or software that allows you to send 1000 or more emails in a day. You'll be automatically spammed, no doubt. Three to five personalized emails would do. It's a lot more effort and you'll have trouble looking for leads particularly if your target consumers/prospects are few and far between. However, it pays off to be more personalized. They'd warm up to you better. Mailers will give you trouble as far as grammar and alignment are concerned.

 

[OhioTom76]

I am rather surprised because if anything I've noticed email marketing is becoming more and more aggressive. I suppose if your company has a dedicated person running the email advertising, it almost feels like they are becoming desperate or worried about becoming obsolete, so they are becoming increasingly pushy and increasing their frequency of emails to defend their channel.

Even more established brands, such as Publishers Clearing House, geezus, if you get on their mailing lists they send you like 10+ high pressure emails per day with all sorts of salacious wording to make it sound like you won something. It's exhausting to even see their emails in my mail box anymore.

More often than not, they are simply putting you on an automated "drip campaign" which is basically a scheduled chain of emails that they will bombard you with automatically for the next several weeks.