Here’s what they said at the bottom of their email:

We do not “Spam” people, and you are not on an electronic database, I have personally sent this email to you from your web contact, if you aren’t interested we understand, just reply with “remove” in the subject box and I will cross you off my manual list.

Sorry. Despite what you think, you ARE spam people! What you have done IS in breach of most existing Spam Legislation around the world!

If you keep doing this type of mailing, you better have some deep pockets, because IT people (your target market) are usually the first to label someone a spammer and complain to the authorities, even IF they are legitimate

Sure – while you “think” might be able to send ONE email “personally” using my web contact, that’s a very gray area! But because you don’t have any sort of pre-existing business arrangement with me, you probably should not have sent me the email at all!

And you certainly can’t send send any more! Whether I “remove” myself from your manual list or otherwise!

UPDATE: I have been “corrected” after my email to the company in question – told you it was a gray area! The Aussie Spam Act says that my consent to receive unsolicited email may be inferred:
“when an addressee has conspicuously published their electronic address. In such a case the Spam Act permits commercial electronic messages to be sent to the addressee, if the message relates to the addressee’s published employment function or role. If a plumber advertises their email address, it is okay to send them offers of work or of plumbing supplies, but not to send an offer unrelated to their work, such as cheap pharmaceuticals. If the published address is accompanied by a statement saying that it should not be used for such messages, such as the words “no spam”, then it cannot be used to infer consent to a message being sent;”

So because I publish my email address on my web site (as a service to my customers) UNLESS I put the words “no spam” next to it, anyone can send me unsolicited email as long as it is “related” to my work.

WHAT A JOKE! And I thought the Aussie Spam Act was one of the toughest in the world!

Still, I can’t understand how they think a telecommunications newsletter is THAT relevant to what I do, especially in light of THIS information on “inferring consent through conspicuous publication” from the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

But how “personal” is it when you said “Dear IT Professional” and didn’t even use my name?

And for that matter, you didn’t even use YOUR name at the end? That’s not too personal either

“Personal” means you know me (like… er, personally) and have sent an email meant for ME only. Any broadcast email sent to your list cannot possibly be regarded as “personal”.

And your “remove” request is really pointless because I didn’t request it in the first place… Such requests should only apply to those who have actually asked for your information and don’t want it any more.

Despite that – please REMOVE my email from your list – I don’t want any more from you. Your information is of no interest to me at all.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, as there’s no shortage of examples I could use… but this one was just so bad it inspired me to take action, and now forms the first of an ongoing series of posts which I hope can provide you with valuable examples of what NOT to do – which is always an effective way to learn the right way of doign something…

The email in question…

It was an unsolicited link exchange request – the sort of thing you normally ignore because the sender has no real idea of what you do, so the link is probably not very relevant to the theme of your site.

And there at the bottom of the email was this little gem…

PD: In order to follow anti-spam regulations, please be so kind of
filling in the following form if you don’t want to receive any more
messages from this address.
http://www . theirdomain . com/Contact_Us.html

Love it – tell us NOT to email you anymore!

Hmmm… do ya think they’ve missed the whole point of “anti-spam” regulations???

This post goes into more detail on each of these steps, so refer back to the image to the right from time to time to see how each step relates to one another…

Step One – Collect Your Prospect’s Information

Your “prospect” enters their details into some type of opt-in form on your web site, or on a squeeze page. Good auto-responder software would be able to generate the HTML form codes needed for this step.

Usually you would only ask for the person’s name and email address, but other information (including custom questions) can also be requested. The Internet being global, I sometimes like to ask what country the person is from (only because I’m a sticky beak). Depending on your needs, you might want to collect all sorts of information to help segment (or break down) your list into different groups later on.

Just remember, the MORE you ask for, the more people are likely to NOT want to give it to you.

Give them too many hoops to jump through, or appear to be encroaching too much on their privacy, they’ll leave your opt-in form faster than a speeding bullet!

Once your prospect clicks the submit button on the opt-in form, their details are sent off to your mailing list management / auto-responder software…

And that starts a very interesting chain of events…

Step Two – The Confirmation Email and Instructions

While this step sounds like you’re making somebody jump through another hoop here, this “double opt-in process” is a necessity if you are to avoid any legal complications in relation to spam legislation in many countries. Double opt-in is often also a requirement of many of the commercial auto-responder services you might be using, as they too want to avoid spam complications caused by their clients.

So once it receives a subscription request, your software sends your prospect an email with instructions on what to do now – usually to click a link in the email to confirm their interest in your offer.

It should ALSO redirect their web browser to a web page you have prepared which ALSO explains to them what’s happening.

The objective here is to get the prospect to click on the link that is in their email to CONFIRM that it was really them who requested the information in the first place, and not somebody else playing silly games with their email address.

The “message” here should reinforce/remind them of the major benefit of confirming their subscription to your offer! A lot of people might have second thoughts about it at this stage, so this is an opportunity you should use wisely.

So if you can modify the initial email message, and the confirmation instruction page, I strongly recommend you do it!

If that confirmation link in the email is NOT clicked – NOTHING else happens!

The process should STOP at this point.

And, unless they fill out the form again, your prospect should NEVER receive another email from you! NOT even a “reminder” one saying
“Hey you forgot to confirm your subscription, so click this link again!”

Step Three – Subscription Confirmation

Once the prospect clicks the confirmation link in their email, it means they have “officially” given you permission to send them the information requested earlier.

Notice I said “information requested earlier“… This is a very grey area in the spam legislation, so be very careful with what you “do” with your subscribers once they have actually received the information your specified on your opt-in form.

Once it receives the “click”, your auto-responder software:

1. Will record the subscribers details (IP address and date and time of subscription for spam/legal purposes), and


2. Should then redirect the subscriber to the download or thank-you page * and let them grab their goodies, and


3. Send out a “welcome” email, which should also include the address for the download/thank-you page, or provide further details of what is going to happen.

*Note: some people don’t set up the automatic redirects to the “personalised” instruction and thank-you pages mentioned above, instead lazily displaying just the “default” pages generated by the auto-responder software.

If possible, get this new relationship off to a more professional start!

Redirect to your OWN pages so you can clarify exactly what you want your subscriber to do.

Depending on your target audience, your thank-you page MIGHT possibly provide a good opportunity to throw in an OTO (One Time Offer) or present a teaser for a related product they could be interested in purchasing. This is something that testing will help determine whether it will work for you or not.

Step Four – The Auto-Responder Sequence

Here’s where your follow-up fun really begins!

Your auto-responder software can now automatically send each prospect a series of emails at regular intervals.

You could have 5, 10, 30 or even 99 (or maybe even MORE) messages “pre-loaded” into an auto-responder sequence, to send out to your new prospects over the next few days, weeks or even months.

While getting thirty or more email messages ready in advance to plug into this system is going to take a fair bit of time to plan and to write, it is well worth the effort.

The timing between each of these messages is something you should put some very serious thought into, and is something that is/will be discussed elsewhere on this site.

It’s quite exciting to realise that at any one time, you could have a whole heap of subscribers, all receiving totally different messages from you, based on how many days since they first subscribed.

And it all happens automatically!

Important: Run your own email address through the sequence FIRST, just to make sure everything works as it should!

Step Five – The Broadcast Message

What happens if you have an important “announcement” or timely “promotion” you want to tell everyone about, all at the same time?

Whenever you want to blast out a message to everyone, that’s when you use the broadcast message feature of your auto-responder software.

This allows you to send an email to everyone on your list, regardless of where they might be up to in the sequence.

Some of the more advanced auto-responder services allow you to send a broadcast message to just a part of your list, using what’s called list segmentation. So if you feel you might need to collect custom information when people sign up, to send out different broadcast messages to segments of your list… then look for that feature when shopping around for your auto-responder service.

Alternatively, set up different lists which target the different groups of people you want to talk to.

Important: Send a TEST MESSAGE to yourself FIRST to make sure the email is formatted properly and the merges and links all work!

So that’s it… that’s how the auto-responder process works.

Provided you follow each of the above steps every time you set up an auto-responder sequence… you’ve got more than the basics covered. Each time you develop a new auto-responder sequence, check it against the diagram shown earlier… just to make doubly sure you’ve got the “flow” right.

And you WILL develop many more than just one sequence!

You will be working on setting up more than just one “list”.

In reality, you’ll end up with a whole heap of different lists, depending on the different offers you make to your prospects. You could easily end up with 10, 20 or more, “little” lists with varying numbers of subscribers in each one.

So now, all you’ve got to do is work out…

What on earth do you actually “do” with all these people?

You’ll see the quick and dirty way of doing things, as well as a far more effective way of setting up your opt-in process, as outlined in this post about a better opt-in process.

This video also very effectively demonstrates the importance of TESTING everything thoroughly to make sure things work the way they should!

NOTE: The pages and emails shown here are used ONLY to illustrate the process. You must put more effort into creating these to make them work for you!

Auto-Responder Setup – 23.9 MB – 16 mins 18 secs

Sites and Software Mentioned in this Video

• Ultimate Marketing Center
• FileZilla FTP Client
• Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
• Gold Coast Discount Coupons

With no government sponsored leglisation on the horizon, Canadian Senator Yoine Goldstein has introduced a private members bill in the Senate. Despite this being one of the most comprehensive proposals made to date (being modeled on the Australian system), commentators say this private bill has little chance of getting through.

However it should put pressure on the Canadian Government do actually do something about the issue which is threatening to see Canada becoming a haven for spammers seeking refuge in countries with slack anti-spam legislation.

Resources:

Senate Spam Bill Important First Step After Years of Inaction by Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law.

Now that’s a big shame when a few extra minutes slightly modifying the process can get your new relationship with your subscribers off on a far better footing!

The Default Opt-In Process

Here’s how the “easy” process goes…

1. Subscriber adds details (name and address etc) to Opt-In Form (or Squeeze Page) on web site
2. Auto-Responder software displays default page instructing person to check email
3. Subscriber clicks link in email
4. Auto-Responder software displays default “Thank You” for subscribing page
5. Auto-Responder software sends first “welcome” message in sequence.

Essentially, all the marketer has to do is put the form code on his/her web site, and prepare a welcome message to plug into the Auto-Responder. Simple. Quick. Very basic.

And while it does get the job done, it’s not as effective as it could be!

A Better Opt-In Process

This time, instead of using the default pages created by the software, custom pages are used in steps 2 and 4:

1. Subscriber adds details (name and address etc) to Opt-In Form/Squeeze Page
2. Auto-Responder software redirects to display custom page (on your site) instructing person to check email
3. Subscriber clicks link in email (and perhaps, depending on your software, you may be able to customise this email too)
4. Auto-Responder software redirects to display custom “Thank You” for subscribing page (on your site)
5. Auto-Responder software sends first “welcome” message in sequence.

While it means a little extra work – creating the custom pages, uploading them to the web site, and inputting some URL’s into the Auto-Responder software – this approach is much more “personalised” than the “default” process.

At each stage, YOU have 100% control over what your subscriber actually sees!

The custom pages you display appear with your site’s “look and feel”. They display specific instructions from you, depending on the type of offer you are making – i.e. how to confirm your subscription, WHY to confirm your subscription, reinforce what happens after you have confirmed, links to (perhaps unadvertised) freebies to download from the final thank-you page, making an up-sell or alternative offer on either (or) both the confirmation and thank you pages… etc.

Many more options for only a little more work.

Much more likely to get things off on the right foot with your new subscribers, and work better for you in both the short and long term!

And well worth making the extra effort.

An auto-responder (or autoresponder – without the hyphen) is simply a computer program that automatically answers email sent to it.

Historically, an auto-responder would only send one message, and that was it.

And still today on most web servers you can set up an email message to be sent immediately to someone who just emailed you.

Tip: With cPanel hosting, check under the MAIL section for Autoresponders.

You use this type of auto-responder to send a one-time message letting people know that you are on holidays (a “vacation message”) or even send them a “Thank you for your email – I’ll be in touch soon” message.

However, with the development of email marketing in the past decade, modern auto-responder software has become a lot more sophisticated, and is now the one really essential tool for those serious about marketing online!

The modern auto-responder allows you to set up a series of emails to be sent out at pre-set intervals, making it perfect for follow-up marketing!

Most auto-responder software also gives you the ability to broadcast separate messages to everyone in your database.

They also include routines that make it easy to collect, store and manage your mailing list information – i.e. the names, email addresses and other information on your customers and prospects who are on your “lists”.

The choices of which software you can use are :

• free or paid software to run on your web server
• free software hosted on someone else’s server
• commercial software with ongoing subscription cost

When I was investigating setting up my first list a while ago, I did try using software installed on my own server. Now there was nothing wrong with the software itself (Dada Mail if you are interested)…

The BIGGEST “problem” with hosting your own mailing software on your web server is…

Your web host!

Seriously! If your web server lives on any form of shared hosting, your mailing capabilities will probably be extremely limited.

Most web hosts will only allow you to send out a maximum of around 200 emails an hour. If you’ve got any reasonable sized list – even 1000 or so – it will take forever to send! I wanted to email around 4,000 people, which would’ve taken 20 hours to do!

And if you ever think you can do it by using your email client (Outlook Express or similar)… be warned that most ISP’s have even more severe limits to the number of emails that can be sent every hour.

Spam is another big issue, and the problems it can cause for you.

Just because you might do all the right things, doesn’t mean you are safe. Someone else using your server could cause immense difficulty by getting your (shared) IP address blacklisted, which means your emails won’t get delivered.

Please notice I choose not to discuss the second free option mentioned above. Just not worth the bother Especially considering the extremely competitive pricing and great features that come with quite a few of the commercial auto-responder software services!

And with pricing from just US$20 a month – the decision to go with a professional commercial service really is the only one that you should make! Since you are trying to run a business online, you should be using decent services to do it!

Let them worry about managing the server, the software and the deliverability issues… You’ve got enough to do!

If you have not yet done the things discussed

First up, I’m assuming that you already done (or are about to do) some comprehensive market research to:

1. Determine the market you want to promote in, and
2. Establish that there ARE actually people in that market who are willing to buy!

As part of that research, you should have identified appropriate products you can promote to that market. These could be any of:

• Relevant affiliate products, (eg products sold through Clickbank or Paydotcom for which you earn a commission)
• Existing products with Resell Rights (which means you can sell them as long as you don’t make any changes)
• PLR products – Private Label Rights – written by others with permission to modify – which hopefully you HAVE re-written to put your own “spin” on it

Or, better yet…

• Your own unique information product – where what you say is fresh and different, allowing you to rise above the normal “noise” in your chosen niche!

Hopefully you’ve also got a couple of useful “freebies” which you can use as “ethical bribes” to encourage or reward people for signing up with you.

Again, these are better if YOU have written them yourself.

When choosing other people’s products with giveaway or resell rights to use as freebies or bonuses, consider how much linkage is in the product you might use. These include links:

• To products you could earn from – but now can’t.
• To products you personally may NOT recommend.
• Which build the customer lists of your competition.

Remember, you will be working very hard to build all sorts of things like credibility, traffic, reputation etc., so don’t readily send people away to other marketers!

In case you haven’t realised it already, it’s also going to be extremely useful (practically a necessity) to have fairly good writing skills.

As well as writing your own products, freebies and reports, there are LOTS OF OTHER THINGS you will need to write, including:

• squeeze pages, and opt-in forms
• confirmation, thank you and download emails and pages
• sales letters
• multiple emails in your auto-responder sequences
• customer newsletters
• promotional mailings
• advertising
• marketing
• web pages
• blog posts

Don’t panic if your writing skills aren’t too polished yet. By the time you’ve written, and re-written some of this stuff several times over, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a seasoned writer

Writing skills are developed with lots of practice, which is one reason why “blog posts” are mentioned above. Try to set up a blog early on, and start to post regular stories to it. It’s an excellent way to develop your writing style and showing your passion for your topic.

Eventually your blog will also become a great mechanism for capturing email addresses to build your list, promoting your products, AND getting content indexed into the search engines really quickly!

Tip: If you’ve already got your own domain name and web server (with cPanel hosting) check out the included Fantastico suite of programs you can install on your site.

The program to use to set up your blog is called WordPress. It’s a great content management system, and is used on lots of my sites nowadays, including this one!

Let’s talk about generating traffic for a second or two, because it’s one of the topics lots of people seem to struggle with the most.

It might seem a little strange, but I really want you to FORGET ABOUT TRAFFIC FOR NOW!

It’s very important that you have your follow-up systems in place BEFORE you start worrying about generating loads of traffic to your web site or sales letter.

If you don’t, you’re just wasting time, effort and possibly money.

The traffic “reality” is that approximately 70-90% of the people who go to the “average” web site will leave, practically almost instantly, without doing or buying anything!

The vast majority of people rely on a first impression formed in probably less than ten seconds, before making a decision to either stay and investigate further… or (most likely) go somewhere else!

Of the minority who do hang around a little longer, what options do they have? They can either:

1. look at what you’ve got to offer and take you up on it now, OR
2. (most likely) they will “file it” for later reference to come back again (when and IF they remember)

So if that was your web site, and you have no follow-up procedures in place, how many of those visitors do you think will return?

Contrast that to another web site where a variety of opt-in, follow-up measures are already in place – free reports in exchange for email addresses, opt-in forms for your “newsletter”, RSS subscription forms, etc.

Now… How many of these visitors are likely to return?

So please… don’t worry about generating loads of traffic until you are actually ready to DO something with it!

Next up… if you haven’t already done it…. please do NOT rush out to organise your auto-responder software yet.

Because there are so many options available in the marketplace, with a confusing array of features and prices, that decision should wait until you know a lot more about what you’re going to do with it!

Which means we’ve got to cover a lot more content yet… so I better get to it!

Forget about finding out how to chase the big NUMBERS and trying to build a mega-list with tens of thousands of subscribers!

Forget about sending out PROMOTION after promotion after promotion.

Subscribers will get sick of this. They won’t stay for long, and you’ll be working overtime trying all sorts of new tactics to replace the hundreds of people who leave every day.

And the money will become harder and harder to get, even if your list does keep growing.

So… Instead of concentrating all of your energy and resources on “building a list”…

BUILD ONGOING RELATIONSHIPS with the PEOPLE on your list!

Concentrate on PROVIDING EXCEPTIONAL VALUE through the dissemination of FREE INFORMATION to your subscribers.

Do this… and the money (deliberately left in lowercase letters because it is not as important anymore) will follow.

And now… the new expression is:

Where the emphasis is now on
RELATIONSHIPS, YOU and PEOPLE
With VALUE and INFORMATION thrown in for good measure

What a refreshing change of thinking!!!

Before this “shift” in thinking… the big question was
“How do you build a list?”

Now, the big question is
“How do you build relationships?”

And that means you need to look closely at the PEOPLE who are likely to subscribe to your list and decide what you can “do” with/for them so that they:

• get to know you as a person…
• stick with you over time…
• become comfortable with your “recommendations”…
• are super responsive
• readily buy from you time and time again.

With the right “nurturing” on your part, a small, responsive list could just grow over time into that “mega” list, with a corresponding substantial increase in your profits!

And to do this right from the beginning, you need to find:

• The BEST MIX of CONTENT and PROMOTION, and
• The correct COMMUNICATION FREQUENCY
• For your SPECIFIC target audience!

So you don’t waste time, effort and money, you really need to have everything PROPERLY SET UP BEFORE you even START TO THINK about driving TRAFFIC to your web site!

And then it can start to get really exciting…

IF you DO set things up properly from the start, the whole process can practically run on autopilot, with only fairly minimal (but regular) input from you to fine tune and update.

I did that, and you know what I got?

• An avalanche of email (over 3,600 in 12 months), and
• Absolute, total confusion!

And you know what the vast majority of those emails were all about?

Yep – you guessed it!

LOTS of promotional emails, constantly asking me to open my wallet to get the latest whiz-bang e-book, course or piece of software (that I probably didn’t really need).

If there WAS any useful information in there, it got buried under a virtual avalanche of promos!

So what did I learn about online marketing from the example set by all these “experts” over that twelve month period?

It’s quite strange that the main thing I could really “learn” from them (as a group) was what I should NOT do and what I didn’t want to do myself!

But they did demonstrate their understanding of how they saw that “the money is in the list”…

• BIG LIST – in the tens of thousands
• PROMOTE OFTEN – six of them sent email on average every 1 to 2 days – where DO they get the time?
• MAKE LOTS OF MONEY (well, we’re led to believe they do, but I often really wonder about that…)

If your interpretation of “The Money Is In The List” is based on the model demonstrated by these “gurus”… please ask yourself:

Can YOU play this type of game? Do you really want to?

Especially when there IS a better way!

If You’re Not Yet Succeeding Online…
Or Haven’t Even Got A List Yet…

It’s probably because you’re trying to follow the “gotta have a megalist” mode of thinking, and trying to use (or work out how to use) mega-list tactics…

But mega-list tactics are NEVER really going to work for you while you are only a small fish in the sea!

While they might work once you become a “big fish”… for now, it’s not the right mindset to begin with.

So what’s a small fish gotta do to get bigger?

Well, for starters, look for food in a different place, away from where the sharks are trolling

And that’s why I reckon…

The Money Is NOT “In” The List…

For all you “small” fish out there – and that would be the VAST MAJORITY of people marketing on the Internet – the “money” is in a totally different place!

It’s in a place where the size of your list really doesn’t matter and you CAN have success with only a small list.

Once I reveal where this “place” is… at first glance, you’ll probably kick yourself (or try to kick me) and say “oh… is THAT all” or “sheesh… I already knew that!”

And chances are, you probably do!

The problem is that a lot of people DO already know this! It’s practically commonsense…

BUT… Most people just don’t DO anything about it!

So if you’re ready to find out where the money is, then…

Please come back after the commercial because that’s a topic for another post… but don’t let that stop you from having a guess below…

Add a comment now!

Heck… I’ve get at least half a dozen different promotional emails every week telling me I have to get out there and get started on building a BIG LIST…

The trouble is, it IS one of those expressions that is pretty believable!

After all… It IS the Internet Marketer’s Mantra
So it MUST be true!

Essentially, what happens is…

1. you capture the name and email address of someone who is interested in what you do,
2. and then you send them promotional stuff,
3. which they hopefully buy.

Now…

4. the more people you have on your list,
5. and/or the more “stuff” you send,
6. the more money you make.

The “essence” of the Manta is 100% correct!

If you are NOT yet marketing to a list of people who are interested in you, then you ARE destined to limited success, or possibly even outright failure, online.

So What’s The Problem Then?

Well, the BIG problem lies in HOW you are marketing to your “list” based on your interpretation of this expression.

Far too many people are putting the wrong meaning into this Internet Marketing mantra… and as a result, it’s causing them immense difficulty with their online marketing efforts.

The most common interpretation people put on it is:
NUMBERS, PROMOTION, and MONEY, where…

• you HAVE to have a big list (in the ten’s of thousands) to be successful, and
• you HAVE to bombard these people daily to make money

It’s Time For Some IM Math 101
To See Why This “Works”…

Let’s assume you have an “average” biggish list of some 20,000 subscribers, and you send an email every 1.5 days – which is not that uncommon for some marketers pushing the “envelope” so to speak…

Over a year, you’ll send HALF A MILLION emails!

Also assume an average sale price of the various things you promote, is around $19.95…

Let’s see what different response rates might mean on 500k emails a year:

Another line of thought is that each subscriber on your list is worth at least $1 a month. That puts your annual income around $240,000.

So, in theory, the bigger your “list”… the MORE money you make!

Now those are pretty good figures aren’t they?

And because the “promise” is so good, it’s easy to see why the vast majority of marketers want to follow the herd and build the mega-list!

BUT… Here’s the rub…

If this works so well, then…

Many recent surveys have confirmed that most people earn UNDER $500 a month from their online marketing!

And more than half of these people don’t have a “list” of their own.

Why is that do you think?

So…
What meaning do YOU put on the expression “The Money Is In The List”?

And as a result of that…
What tactics are you employing with your online business because of that interpretation?

There are two key elements to this legislation.

The first element is Consent and Choice.

You can only carry out unsolicited email marketing (i.e. marketing which has not specifically been asked for) if the individual you are sending the message to has given you their permission and can choose to opt out of receiving marketing at any time. Opt-out requests MUST be dealt with “promptly” and the opt-out option should allow the individual to reply directly to the message.

There is a “soft opt-in” exception to this rule, where you are able to send unsolicited email IF:

• you have obtained the individual’s details in the course of a sale or the negotiations for a sale of a product or service to that person;

• the messages are only marketing your similar products or services;
  
  AND

• the individual is given a simple opportunity to refuse the marketing when their details are collected and, if they do not opt out, you give them a simple way to do so in every future message.

The second element refers to your identity and contact details.

Each message must tell the recipient who has sent the message. You also have to provide a valid address so that they can contact you if they want to stop the marketing.

Exceptions: Would you believe, the rules do not apply to emails sent to organisations (corporate subscribers)! However, you must still identify yourself and provide an address.

Resources:

Privacy and Electronic Communications
Guidance for marketers on the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 – PDF
Data Protection Good Practice Note – PDF

European Union Spam Information

The Spam Act says that unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent. Full stop! Simple as that

The legislation covers email originating in Australia and sent to any destination, and also originating overseas and sent to an address accessed in Australia (although prosecution for this might prove difficult until all countries have appropriate legislation).

The three key elements you need to consider when checking compliance are:

1. Your commercial messages should only be sent when you have CONSENT. This may be express consent from the person you wish to contact – a direct indication that it is OK to send the message, or messages of that nature.

   It is also possible to infer consent based on a business or other relationship with the person, where it is clear that there is a reasonable expectation that messages will be sent.

2. Your message contains clear and accurate information IDENTIFYING the person or business responsible for sending the commercial electronic message.

3. Ensure that a functional UNSUBSCRIBE facility is included in all your commercial electronic messages, and you deal with unsubscribe requests promptly (within 5 days).

For online marketers, the only “problem” areas seems to be around two main points.

Express consent is “a direct indication that it is okay to send the message, or messages of that nature.” To me, that suggests that once you have sent the “messages” originally requested, you can NOT then send them a different set of messages without gaining their consent again.

For example, you have delivered an online e-course by email. When that sequence is finished, do you NOW have their express consent to add them to your newsletter list so you can keep them updated on other “products interest” or other relevant news from you?

I tend to think the answer is NO. Not unless you specifically said that would happen, and they agreed to it!

Now you might think instead that it is reasonable to infer that your “customer” consented to receiving more messages from you because their purchase makes it a pre-existing relationship.

But according to the Australian Spam Act,

it would not be reasonable to infer that a person consented to receiving commercial electronic messages from you simply because of a transaction along the lines of any one-off purchase. Transactions such as the purchase of a t-shirt or groceries from a shop, attendance at a concert, performance or movie, would not be a good basis for inferring consent, or assuming that there is a pre-existing relationship.

So it seems to be a bit of a hazy area there… Best you check these PDF guidelines for more information on inferred consent and other aspects of the legislation. Full details are available here.

However, of more concern to e-marketers is the Australian eMarketing Code of Practice which establishes comprehensive, industry-wide rules and guidelines for the sending of commercial electronic messages, and provides a framework for industry to handle complaints about spam.

Because the code was registered on 16 March 2006 it means that ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) can enforce compliance with the code rules on all members of the e-marketing industry, as defined by the Telecommunications Act 1997.

So you should make yourself familiar with the Australian eMarketing Code of Practice too, particularly in regard to the IDENTITY requirements mentioned!

The main provisions of the legislation are:

1. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email. False or misleading information is not allowed.

2. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message. Subject lines cannot be deceptive.

3. Your email must provide recipients an opt-out method – i.e. a return email address or another Internet-based mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address. You must honor these requests within 10 business days of receiving the request.

4. Commercial email must be identified as an advertisement and include your valid physical postal address. The email must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you.

This FTC document also outlines other instances where you can get into trouble, and includes things like email harvesting, sending emails using dictionary attacks, relaying emails through other networks without permission, etc.

While this legislation appears to spell out what must and must not be done, there seems to be (in this writer’s opinion) a very large “grey area” which opens a few loopholes for those who may want to use them.

Specifically, these relate to “transactional or relationship messages” which, while they may NOT contain false or misleading routing information, they are NOT COVERED UNDER THE ACT.

The “problem” lies in determining whether a message is a “transactional or relationship message” – i.e. an email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction OR updates a customer in an existing business relationship – or whether it is primarily a commercial message (and subject to the Act) – or a mixture of both!

I am seeing a lot of Internet Marketers trying to disguise their emails as “relationship” messages so that perhaps they can think they don’t have to comply… However, I can’t see how affiliate promotions of multiple products is a “customer update” to an existing business relationship… especially when it’s not a CUSTOMER list you might be on.

If you wanted to clear this up, this page might help… but the answer seems to be quite simple though…

If the recipient might reasonably think the message is commercial, then it is! And therefore, subject to the Act.

So next time you cast your eyes over an email from your favorite marketing guru… check to see if they comply with points 1 to 4 above. Chances are… you’ll find MOST of them do NOT fully comply!

Some examples which come to mind:

• Under provision # 1, the use of “no-reply” email addresses could not be classed as accurate as there is no such thing as a no-reply address
  
• Subject lines cannot be deceptive… hmmm… Maybe the legislation should cover subject lines which don’t really say anything useful
  
• Have you ever unsubscribed to a list and still receive emails after the 10 days? I have.
  
• The vast majority of the promotional emails I receive do NOT contain “clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement”.

Considering there are fines of up to $11,000 for offences under the Act, I wonder when US online marketers might consider making themselves 100% compliant with US Legislation???

Oh… and there are also laws banning false or misleading advertising which deceptive commercial email also is also subject to!

Resources:

• Can Spam For Business
  
• The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers
  
• Establishing Criteria For Determining “Primary Purpose” of E-mail Messages

To limit problems that may be caused by breaches of anti-spam legislation most list/email management services/software will make your subscribers sign up using a double opt-in process, where:

• They first fill out a form requesting information (single opt-in)
  
• They see a page advising them that a confirmation email has been sent, which requires them to click on a special link in that email (this is the double part of the opt-in) to confirm it was indeed them who requested this information (i.e. the email address provided is legitimate and the person who has access to that email account actually wants the information).
  
• Once confirmed, the person becomes a “subscriber” to that particular list, and should now be:
  
  • redirected to a web page welcoming them to the list, and also be
  • sent a welcome email to confirm the fact.
  Both the page and the email they see here should also contain links to any “ethical bribes” (freebies) offered as an incentive to sign up.

Now you will NOT have just one list, because one big “master” list is not easy to manage.

Instead, you will most likely have many smaller lists which enable you to segment or target different groups of people based on a common interest – i.e. the people who have signed up:

• to receive information on a specific topic, or
  
• in response to a particular marketing campaign you are running

Why Go To All This Trouble?

Your customers (or potential customers) are always “busy” people. Busy with work, or maybe just busy being entertained. They get easily distracted because of their busy life… along with the huge amount of information overload they are subject to on a daily (hourly) basis!

So when they go looking for a solution to a problem they might have the chances are very good that, even if they have only recently “discovered” you, they will completely forget about you and look for a solution elsewhere.

However, if they were subscribed to your list, you have the opportunity to regularly “remind” them that you exist… and maximise your chances of them purchasing the solution they need from you.

As you build a relationship with the people on your list, you can also encourage them to purchase other products that might be useful to them. These could be your own products, or affiliate products you earn a commission from. The key things here are that the product is relevant to them (another reason to segment your lists) and that you don’t continually ask them to open their wallets!

An email list can also be used to deliver product and information. For example, you may have a short course that can be delivered by email. Or you might encourage people to stay up-to-date with the latest information from your web site by subscribing to your RSS email feed.

To summarize some of the main ways your list can be used:

• As a “reminder” mechanism
  
• As a system to refer relevant product
  
• As a tool to deliver content or updates

What Happens If You Don’t Have A List?

Let’s just say you rely on “traffic” to your web site to create new business for you. Do you realise that the vast majority of people visiting your web site disappear within 30 seconds… never to return again?

It’s quite a scary, but very true, statistic!

Sure… some of those people might bookmark your site and come back… but you’ll spend most of your time on generating new traffic to your site to replace all these people that leave. And that’s NOT effective marketing!

If you don’t actively encourage your web site visitors to sign up for a list, you are missing a huge opportunity to engage in regular correspondence with highly interested people! They are much better prospects to talk to than are the casual “surfers” that arrive at your site.

Eventually, as your “list” grows to some reasonable numbers, you’ll find that your business model becomes much stronger because it relies less and less on the unstable “free” traffic from search engines to generate income for you.

The key to all of this is…

Setting up your lists properly in the first place…

And deciding how you are going to best serve all the different types of people that might be interested in what you offer!

In this case, the tortoise will win the race every day because they’ll take the time to do things in the right order, and maximize their return on the time invested!

The hares all rush off and do too many things without thinking!

For example, the first thing lots of hares will do is get a domain name! They’ll go and get hosting organised, and maybe even sign up with an auto-responder service…

But most of the time, they will not yet have done any of the research needed to determine what NICHE they are targeting, or the type of product they are going to promote.

Despite that, they’ll start with generating traffic to get people to their new web site, and set up some sort of squeeze page to capture email addresses, but won’t put too much thought into the conversion process, wasting a lot of effort because their visitors will leave just as quickly as they came.

These hares are so concerned about list “building”, that they won’t have much of a useful plan as to what they’ll actually “do” with all these email addresses they are collecting.

In short, the hares will probably “do” all the things they need to do…

• They’ll do it all totally out of sequence…
  
• Without taking the time to work out the processes involved that are relevant to their target market, and
  
• Without understanding what is required at each step.

Sure you are going to need a domain name, web hosting, auto-responder service, squeeze pages, and learn how to do basic HTML and FTP… all of that!

But don’t be a hare!

Take a little bit of time to plan and research what you need to do BEFORE you jump in so you don’t severely limit your chances of success!

So much so in fact that, even my 13+ years of full-time, online “experience” as a web designer, was initially of little help in my understanding of how this “Internet Marketing” stuff is supposed to work!

Now I can blame that on my almost anal, pedantic attention to detail… because when something just doesn’t seem “right”, for some strange reason I just have to keep asking “WHY?” And I can’t seem to progress until I’ve got it all sorted out in my head!

I start over-analyzing all the techniques being demonstrated by all the supposed “guru’s” in a vain attempt to work out a model that I am comfortable in following… to work out how I should go about doing things properly.

And to be brutally honest, the daily barrage of “buy me” promotional emails I’ve subjected myself to, had almost soured me from online marketing, full stop!

If THAT’S The Way It’s Supposed To Be Done…

Then I didn’t want to be any part of it, let alone contributing to any of this information pollution myself!

And then I’ve seen so-o-o many marketers touting the “money’s in the list” phrase as if that’s a good enough reason why you must have their latest product. They keep pushing the concept that if you get enough suckers (sorry, “customers”) onto your list, then your “list” will make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams!

I thought about a whole new generation of online marketers who are being shown the way to do business online is with this terrible “cash-sucking” ATM mindset to list building… and I decided I just had to do something about it!

And in the few months I’ve been planning just this site, I’ve seen more horrid examples of big players who should know better, using the “here’s some free education to show you how wonderful we are” tactics to launch their latest (and very expensive) product! And as part of one launch sequence, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people were provided with totally INCORRECT information, and actively encouraged to do things they should NOT yet have been doing… at least NOT without having been told about a few vitally important steps beforehand!

The culmination of this particular event was a “squeezathon” where hundreds of people created a squeeze page.

Now you might think that is a worthy outcome… but:

• when you were NOT taught what you MUST set up BEFOREHAND
  
• when you don’t understand WHY you are setting it up, and
  
• when you aren’t told what you then must do AFTERWARDS…

Yes… I am VERY dirty about this tactic and I am just disgusted with the direction that some Internet Marketing is taking!

And that’s another big reason why I decided I just had to “do” this site!

To help stem this flow of B.S. and hopefully steer some people in the right direction, so they have a much better chance at succeeding with their online business!

Now it’s up to YOU to let me know if I’m doing the right things by you!

Tell me what you think and make sure you comment on the posts on this site. I would really love to hear from you!

Regards
Stephen Spry