Targeted Unsolicited E-Mail
By Al Bredenberg

I personally think spamming is not only risky but unethical. I recommend this simple policy for companies that want to advertise by e-mail: No one should ever be placed on an e-mail list without their permission. No one should have to ask to be removed from an e-mail list they never asked to be on in the first place.

Rather than looking at the question of direct e-mail marketing as a black-or-white issue, I've been thinking of it in terms of *risks*. I do think ethical issues enter into the picture, but practically speaking many marketers won't evaluate a promotional method based on whether it's ethical or whether it conforms to standards of etiquette and courtesy.

I've been writing and consulting about e-mail promotions and recently started speaking on the topic. I've come up with this maxim:

The risks of direct e-mail marketing are directly proportional to the number of people who don't want to receive your message.

The risks can include such consequences as loss of Internet access, flames, mailbombs and especially damage to the company's reputation. Risk to reputation was evidently the reason for Barnes and Noble's hasty retreat from spamming earlier this month. Various methods of e-mail marketing can result in a greater or lower level of risk, depending on how many people don't want to receive your message (and how vehement they are about it). Here's a chart that I call "The Direct E-Mail Hierarchy of Risk":

HIGH RISK

• "Rented" bulk e-mail spam list (from a spam
• provider)
• Homemade spam list (addresses harvested yourself)
• One-time spam (letting recipients know this is a
• one-time mailing)
• Cold prospecting (one-by-one unsolicited personal
• contacts)
• "Rented" opt-in or voluntary list (from a provider
• such as PostMaster Direct)
• In-house opt-in or voluntary list (developed
• yourself from customers, Web site visitors, etc.)

LOW RISK

Hiring the services of a bulk e-mail spam outfit engenders high risk because your message goes out to many people who don't want it and the practice is so widely hated. Using an opt-in list is less risky, although I couldn't say the risk is always zero. Some people will forget they signed up; or someone may forward the message to a friend who doesn't know where it came from.

Sending targeted unsolicited e-mail might present medium risk, but the risk can be reduced, as many have pointed out, by more careful targeting and personalization.

Regards,

Al Bredenberg

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