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 Email, don't you just love it? What
a tool: you can contact anybody in the world without
spending a dime on postage, paper or ink!
All the above are the reasons email is such a formidable
tool to promote your business, stay in touch with your
customers, send out special offers to your lists and
acquire new business.
Of course, if you listen to the naysayers, they will tell
you email's days are numbered and that you had better
start preparing to use some other form of contact to reach
your customers! With all the news about phishing and other
forms of email fraud, it would tend to give credence to
that opinion.
The fact is this: email is here to stay! The ease of use
and the huge base of installed users makes it a very hardy
tool. That's not to say implementation and distribution
will remain the same; not hardly!
Gone are the days you could install and run your own
private mail server and reach 100% of your customers. As a
matter of fact, many ISP's will no longer allow you to
send out email in large enough volume to warrant the
trouble and expense of setting up your own server.
Another thing that will stand in the way of setting up
your own mail operation is email "whitelisting."
Whitelisting is when you approach ISP's and list your
company as being in compliance with their email policies,
in hopes your email will reach the intended recipient. Of
course, all it takes is for one of your recipients to
"forget" he/she signed up to receive your email
and you are blacklisted for sp^mming.
Email isn't going to go away and I can predict some ISP's
being taken to task for blacklisting responsible
marketers. As it is now, there is no legal protection for
businesses. The bulk of ISP's don't have any policies in
place to give businesses an opportunity to present their
side; some of the filtering has been done in a true
knee-jerk reaction to Sp^m.
The prevailing policy at ISP's is to punish the worthy and
the innocent. Throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Perhaps the government's present policies will be modified
by Court rulings giving businesses access to review panels
that will ascertain the merit of ISP's blacklisting. Soap
Box Issue:
The alarm should be sent out: Fair is fair! ISP's and
email recipients alike should know there are
responsibilities associated when you sign up to receive a
Marketer's email.
All honest, hard working marketers should be given the
option of presenting their side, in the light of day!
OK, done with the Soap Box!
With all the bad things happening to email, it has become
a necessity for companies to further specialize and call
upon the services of mail processors. They do nothing but
handle large volumes of email responsibly and efficiently,
such as: aWeber, Getresponse, eMail Aces and so on.
The need for the above services is an obvious one because
they are specialist in email delivery, don't cost all that
much and do a good job. They have policies in place to
make sure all their accounts are opt in and police their
members for compliance. Besides, who in the world has got
enough time to do their own whitelisting?
Careful planning and due consideration should be given to
how your Web business deals with email since it is one of
the most powerful marketing tools. It will go a long way
to make your enterprise a success.
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