Will Spam Kill Email Marketing?
BY Doug West
Have you noticed that you get a LOT more email lately then
you did, say just 6 months ago? If so, you also probably
notice that most of it is JUNK you never asked for.
Many "Gurus" predict that email marketing will be a thing of
the past within a couple of years. They claim SPAM or
unsolicited email will clog up mail servers so bad that we
won't be able to do business via email anymore.
While all that may indeed happen, we want to make a few
predictions of our own here. We predict that SPAM filters
and solutions will become more and more powerful, and that
the majority of SPAMMERS will be closed down.
Already there are some fairly useful tools on the market,
and they are getting better. One of the best things you can
use right now are the filters in your email program.
Netscape and Outlook Express both have them. You simply set
filters for words in the body or subject of the email that
you want to reject. Any email that comes in with those words
will go straight to the trash.
Of course, the P*O*R*-NO and other Spammer types try every
trick in the book to get past filters. You can get rid of
about 90% of it with your email filters though. As you spot
new SPAM tricks like P#O#R#N#O in the subject, just add that
to your email program filters.
You can also filter out any email from certain senders or
domains. Play with the filters in your email program and you
should master the options in no time.
Filters on the mail servers don't seem to be as great right
now. They seem to either filter out everything - even email
you want - or nothing at all. If much filtering on the
server is done, it slows the already-bogged-down machines to
a crawl. As faster mail servers with better filters emerge,
the situation should improve.
Coding your email address on your web pages will cut down on
the SPAM you receive. There are simple programs that can do
this for you. This keeps your email addresses from being
harvested from your sites by SPAM ware, and then sold to
every spammer in the world.
We also predict that stiffer fines and penalties will be
imposed on SPAM, and that presidents soon are set as a few
SPAMMERS are caught and prosecuted. Will this stop SPAM? Has
it stopped theft or fraud? It may slow SPAM down.
If you have ideas on how to combat the SPAM problem, now is
the time to make yourself known. Fortunes will be made by
savvy netpreneurs who come up with viable solutions.
Our best guess is that SPAMMERS will continue to SPAM, and
legitimate email marketers will find ways to market with
email. The good news for legitimate marketers is that
ethical forms of email marketing such as solo ads, and
building your own opt-in list are still working well. So go
with the flow until you see that they are no longer
effective. Your list may be extremely valuable to you for
years to come. Just Please don't SPAM anyone and add to the
problem!
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More Great Articles by Doug West
Doug West is the editor of Opportunity Investigator. He has
been interviewed in many of the top home biz publications
like SFI magazine - (see http://kosoma.com/DougWest.htm ).
Take his complementary email course that covers all you
need to succeed online at
http://209.61.158.154/spamkill.htm
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