Email - Is it Still a Promotional Tool?

Email, don't you just love it? What a tool: you can contact
anybody in the world without spending a dime on postage, paper
or ink!

All the above are the reasons email is such a formidable tool to
promote your business, stay in touch with your customers, send
out special offers to your lists and acquire new business.

Of course, if you listen to the naysayers, they will tell you
email's days are numbered and that you had better start
preparing to use some other form of contact to reach your
customers! With all the news about phishing and other forms of
email fraud, it would tend to give credence to that opinion.

The fact is this: email is here to stay! The ease of use and the
huge base of installed users makes it a very hardy tool. That's
not to say implementation and distribution will remain the same;
not hardly!

Gone are the days you could install and run your own private
mail server and reach 100% of your customers. As a matter of
fact, many ISP's will no longer allow you to send out email in
large enough volume to warrant the trouble and expense of
setting up your own server.

Another thing that will stand in the way of setting up your own
mail operation is email "whitelisting." Whitelisting is when you
approach ISP's and list your company as being in compliance with
their email policies, in hopes your email will reach the
intended recipient. Of course, all it takes is for one of your
recipients to "forget" he/she signed up to receive your email
and you are blacklisted for spamming.

Email isn't going to go away and I can predict some ISP's being
taken to task for blacklisting responsible marketers. As it is
now, there is no legal protection for businesses. The bulk of
ISP's don't have any policies in place to give businesses an
opportunity to present their side; some of the filtering has
been done in a true knee-jerk reaction to Spam.

The prevailing policy at ISP's is to punish the worthy and the
innocent. Throw the baby out with the bathwater! Perhaps the
government's present policies will be modified by Court rulings
giving businesses access to review panels that will ascertain
the merit of ISP's blacklisting.
 

                          Soap Box Issue:

The alarm should be sent out: Fair is fair! ISP's and email
recipients alike should know there are responsibilities
associated when you sign up to receive a Marketer's email.

All honest, hard working marketers should be given the option of
presenting their side, in the light of day!

                   OK, done with the Soap Box!


With all the bad things happening to email, it has become a
necessity for companies to further specialize and call upon the
services of mail processors. They do nothing but handle large
volumes of email responsibly and efficiently, such as: aWeber,
Getresponse, eMail Aces and so on.

The need for the above services is an obvious one because they
are specialist in email delivery, don't cost all that much and
do a good job. They have policies in place to make sure all
their accounts are opt in and police their members for
compliance. Besides, who in the world has got enough time to do
their own white listing?

Careful planning and due consideration should be given to how
your Web business deals with email since it is one of the most
powerful marketing tools. It will go a long way to make your
enterprise a success.


 by Francisco Aloy

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy