ASK MR. INTERNET

E-marketing
Spammed to a Halt

Thanks to spam, your e-marketing—and your business—may be grinding to a halt.


Dear Mr. Internet:
I use e-mail extensively in my marketing. But lately many of my recipients have been complaining that they are not receiving my materials. What is happening, and what can I do about it?

Todd Luke
Viereck Commercial Real Estate
Sioux Falls, S.D.

Dear Todd:
You can probably thank spammers for this problem. The volume of spam has grown so rapidly that many organizations have implemented draconian e-mail filters to cut down the deluge of unwanted mail. Unfortunately, these filters also catch and stop a lot of e-mail that was supposed to go through. This has become a very serious problem, especially if you rely on third-party companies to manage your e-mail database and send out your e-mail marketing from their servers. These services are a very easy and typically inexpensive way to send outbound e-mail marketing, particularly sophisticated e-mail drip marketing campaigns and newsletters. In fact, I use just such a service to manage my very large ePOWER NEWS newsletter subscriber base.

Unfortunately, these services also make it easy and inexpensive for spammers to reach you. Reputable Web-based e-mail marketing services will try very hard to screen out the abusers, but it’s often a losing battle. Once a spammer starts sending out unsolicited e-mails using a particular service provider’s system, it can cause the spam filters at an Internet service provider or a company to ban all e-mail coming from that service—including your legitimate marketing to clients and prospects. Even worse, when this happens, there is not much the Web-based e-mail service provider can do about it. However, there are ways to mitigate this delivery problem so that your e-mail gets through, no matter what.

Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Spam ...

The single quickest fix is to change the server used to send your mass e-mails. (If your provider has only one server option, this also may mean changing delivery providers.) If your e-mail list contains fewer than 1,000 addresses, a very easy and inexpensive software solution called WorldMerge will let you send your messages out through the same server your personal e-mail software uses. While you could just send out the e-mails manually yourself, using a service like WorldMerge makes it easier to pull names from your contact management software and send out e-correspondences. You can even personalize each e-mail using WorldMerge’s data-merge capabilities. Unless you have previously sent spam from your personal e-mail, spam filters will not likely tag your messages.

For larger lists, you may want to consider getting a dedicated (i.e., no one else can use it) e-mail server with its own IP address through your ISP. If you go this route, you’ll also need e-mail marketing software with quite a bit of horsepower. The e-mail software you choose should be able to accommodate large lists (several thousand names and multiple campaigns), as well as have the capacity to handle bounce-backs, bad addresses, and opt-in and opt-out requests. Getting your own server and software is not for the fainthearted, however, since it is not cheap and takes a bit of time and programming to incorporate seamlessly into your e-mail marketing procedures. If you do decide to take this route, be sure to hire an IT pro to help you set it up. Ask the software vendor for a recommendation or find a virtual computer consultant on Elance.com.

In addition to changing the server from which your e-mail marketing messages originate, there are some other things you can do to help ensure your important messages get through.

• Be smart about when you send. Avoid evenings or early morning e-mails (especially Sunday) since this is when many spammers send their junk. Even if your message gets through, it may be lost in the clutter of unwanted messages. Your messages are less likely to be thrown out if sent during normal business hours.
  
• Avoid “spam language.” Many words and phrases—including “free,” “subscribe,” and “click here”—are used by spammers so they often trigger spam filters and block your messages. The best approach here is to check your messages before they are sent out and make adjustments accordingly. One inexpensive software-based solution to help keep your e marketing from being trashed as spam is Filter Buster. To use this program, you simply paste your e-mail message or newsletter into the program; then click the Check Ad button. The program checks your copy against its spam word database. You also can customize and edit your own word list. Filter Buster also offers free lifetime upgrades so you can stay ahead of the newest spammer vocabulary, which can change over time.
  
• Spread the sending period. Some organizations will automatically ban your messages if too many come in from the same source at the same time. So if you’re sending material to quite a few agents at one company, you might want to spread the send over several days.
  
  If all these efforts to get your e-mail through to clients seem like a lot of work—it is. But thanks the spammers of the world, it may be your best option if you want to continue using e-mail as a viable business tool.
  
  Mr. Internet’s Tip of the Month
  
  Have a killer PowerPoint presentation that’s sure to wow prospective buyers and/or sellers, but worried that your prospect doesn’t have PowerPoint software?
  
  That’s no longer a problem, thanks to the new Package For CD feature within PowerPoint 2003 (part of the new Microsoft Office 2003 package). Now you can burn your cool PowerPoint presentations onto a CD and include a player right on the CD so that anyone with a PC can play your PowerPoint presentation, even if they don't have a copy of the PowerPoint software on their computer system.
  
  And because CD capacity is so large, you can add voiceovers and music as well. Powerful, compelling multimedia just became a lot easier!