Escaping the SPAM label.

The EU Directive on privacy and electronic communications states that anyone found sending unsolicited emails, without first gaining consent from the recipient will be in breach of the law. Once in place, those of you, and it seems there are still a good few of you out there, that choose not to take this on-board could experience irreplaceable damage to both your business and reputation.

It is apparent that many companies are still not taking this issue seriously enough--thinking that it does not directly apply to them or affect them as they are not a SPAM company. Although it can be said that the directive came about as a means to try and tackle and maintain the significant increase in unwanted SPAM emails, the law does not only apply to SPAM companies, but to anyone seen to be sending unwanted emails--regardless of their content or who sent them.

It is also worth noting that with the increase of email activity, SPAM is becoming more and more difficult to define, and as a result many email marketers are becoming wrongly labelled, being mistaken for nuisance SPAMMERS --a unwanted label that could cost a marketing business dearly.

So, what do these changes mean for the marketing industry and how can legitimate email marketers continue to get their messages out there without being tarnished with the illusive SPAM brush The most effective way is by creating in-house opt-in lists that can be used to target customers during campaigns. By 'opt-in', we knew that customers consciously express an interest in receiving reformation from an organisation, by ticking a visible 'opt-in' box. By taking every, opportunity to open a dialogue with customers and gain email addresses, whether this be through a company website, trade shows, refer a friend schemes, warranty cards etc, companies~ generate their own in-house lists of people that are genuinely interested in receiving information.

It is fundamental to add here that renting an opt-in list from a list broker does not create the same outcome. On the one hand, it can be argued that it is the cheapest and quickest way to target a mass audience, but on the other hand this short term investment can create long term lasting problems.

Creating your own in-house opt-in lists illuminates these problems, resulting in a much higher return on investment in the long run. Creating lists containing only individuals that have specifically agreed to receive communications from you is always more successful than targeting people cold. And if done effectively, as time goes on, and the recipients continue to opt in, not only will the list begin to grow but it becomes much more powerful, allowing you a more targeted relationship with your customer base.

J Barnes Bluestreak Int