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Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 9:49 am Post subject: Opinions on email marketing
Hi, everyone. I'm kind of new to this, so I thought I'd hunt around to see if anyone else has tried email marketing yet. I found a company called murgent and I'm probably going to sign up with them but I wanted to get some other thoughts. Has anyone heard of murgent? Has anyone even tried email marketing? How did it work?
I own a small boutique and I have a lot of regular customers, so I wanted to start sending a newsletter. Any thoughts would be great. Thanks in advance!
It depends entirely what you mean by that term. If you mean emailing information to people who have pro-actively given their consent to receive such information, no problem. This would typically include newsletters and the likes.
If you mean unsolicited emails (spam), no way... don't even think about it. And if you do, hopefully, you will caught and suffer the conseqences.
There's a massive difference between the two. Hopefully you are thinking about the first, in which case, with a bit of luck, someone will be able to assist you. You will have to be very careful though, because most people are totally sick of spam and the term you use above could easily be interpreted in that way.
Best to offer a sign-up option for news letters. _________________ [url=http://www.eagleimagery.co.uk][b][u]Logo Design[/u][/b][/url] • [url=http://www.eagleimagery.co.uk][b][u]Vector Conversion[/u][/b][/url]
[url=http://www.ukbusinesslabs.co.uk/forums/][b][u]Business Forums without the fluff[/u][/b][/url]
Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 5:44 am Post subject: Email Marketing - Get What you Pay For
As a major online media purchaser, please beware with email marketing. There is only a handful of legit email marketers in the industry - and the price reflects this.
If done incorrectly, your site can be shut down and service cancelled. I can stir you in the right direction or better safer options if you are on a limited budget
If (and it is a big if) you are getting your existing clients to give you their email address then go ahead, send out coupons, discounts, special offers etc
But mass spamming (gasp) will not win you any friends!
Simon _________________ Affordable & reliable web hosting from Best Value Web Hosting
I collect emails from my own customers for this. I am already well aware of the trouble that spamming could cause. murgent doesn't let you use a purchased or rented list, and it's not like they are doing you marketing for you. You do it all yourself, it's just a way to schedule it and design better emails than I would be able to design with my own email server. So I guess I should re-phrase my question. Has anyone out there had experience with "permission-based" email marketing? How has that worked out?
Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 10:59 am Post subject: Spam
Actually, spam gets binned by most of us but some people read it and buy. I read some articles about guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by spamming. Geez! I should quit my day job! But seriously, if it didn't work, why is there so many of them?
>> if it didn't work, why is there so many of them <<
Because it's a desperate knee jerk effort by lazy people who can't work out honorable and sustainable strategies.
Believe me, I and others are spending greater and greater amounts of time hunting them down. At the very least to get their sites shut down, but in some cases, to face the legal consequences (well done Microsoft for once). The latter will increase as case law emerges, and I hope more and more of them can be thrown onto the streets, where they belong.
Let's double our efforts - make it a criminal offence to respond to spam email too! _________________ [url=http://www.eagleimagery.co.uk][b][u]Logo Design[/u][/b][/url] • [url=http://www.eagleimagery.co.uk][b][u]Vector Conversion[/u][/b][/url]
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 9:30 am Post subject: Spam does work
Sorry Silver, but I don't agree with you: yes, spam is not "honorable", but to discard it as the work of lazy people with no strategy, I disagree. Some spamming campaign are well orchestrated and highly profitable. Yes, they are short-term strategies, but who cares when they are so profitable!?!
I'm not a spammer and I hate receiving spam. But I do understand that there is a rational strategy behind it and that, although many spammer have no idea what they are doing, many of them are making good money out of it.
Silver wrote:
>> if it didn't work, why is there so many of them <<
Because it's a desperate knee jerk effort by lazy people who can't work out honorable and sustainable strategies.
Believe me, I and others are spending greater and greater amounts of time hunting them down. At the very least to get their sites shut down, but in some cases, to face the legal consequences (well done Microsoft for once). The latter will increase as case law emerges, and I hope more and more of them can be thrown onto the streets, where they belong.
Making good money out of spam doesn't make it right or even acceptable. Alledgedly, you can make good money out of robbing banks! (Poor analogy but you get my point!)
I could make good money out of spamming businesses that don't have logos (or crap ones!) but I choose not to...
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 2:57 pm Post subject: Spamming
Dear Eagle,
The point here is not to judge if it's right or wrong, 'cause we all agree it's wrong. The point I'm trying to make is that spamming is a viable business model that should not be simply discarded as "a lazy way to make money".
As long as spamming will be profitable, you will have it. You can run after spammers, but you can only get the dumb ones or the kids that do it for fun. The real ones won't be scarred off spamming with legal threats and they'll keep doing it as long as it'll be profitable.
That was my point.
Eagle wrote:
Making good money out of spam doesn't make it right or even acceptable. Alledgedly, you can make good money out of robbing banks! (Poor analogy but you get my point!)
I could make good money out of spamming businesses that don't have logos (or crap ones!) but I choose not to...
Joined: Sep 11, 2004 Posts: 19 Location: Las Vegas
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:53 pm Post subject:
Spamming is simply the shotgun technique--blast it out there and your are bound to hit something. Its just playing the odds, like cold calling sales. Its horrible, wastes huge amount of resources and annoying, but people do it because it works for them. If you are in for the long haul, then its definitely NOT an option.
Last edited by Jade456 on Thu Oct 07, 2004 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:17 pm Post subject: Spam
I disagree with you. First, you can't compare spamming with cold call because spamming requires little efforts to reach zillions of people. Cold call is one by one and time consuming. Second, spamming can be a strategy for the long haul: as long as you got products to sell and you don't get caught, you're in business! Not all countries have anti-spam laws, so it's possible to spam to the world and export to customers from these countries that have no anti-spam law. Most mail isn't checked. I know so many people who order 5$ illegal copies of movies from Malaysia they've ordered from the Net and the postal service doesn't even bother to check. Spamming can be a viable strategy (geez, I'm convincing myself to start spamming now ).
[quote="Jade456"]Spamming is simply the shotgun technique--blast it out there and your are bound to hit something. Its just playing the odds, like cold calling sales. Its horrible, wastes huge amount of resources and annoying, but people do it because it works for them. If you are in for the long haul, then its definitely NOT an option.
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If you are in for the long haul, then its definitely NOT an option.
