Not everybody we talk to (especially in the sales process) shares our commitment to permission, our commitment to spam prevention.


It makes sense, right? There is a lot of spam out there. I get thousands (literally) of spam messages myself, every single day. Somewhere, somebody is sending those messages. Even though it’s not a good idea, somebody thinks it’s a good idea. Either because they’re bad guys and don’t care about best practices, the law, and overwhelming ISPs, or because they just don’t know any better yet. Most folks aren’t born with an innate understanding of how email works, or they don’t understand that email is not the same as “direct mail.”

 

So, every once in a while, we have a sales call that turns out to be a real bummer. Somebody wants permission to spam, and is upset that we’re not about to grant that permission. What do we do in these cases? We spend a lot of time explaining that spam doesn’t work. Spam doesn’t get delivered. It gets blocked. The senders get blacklisted. It’s the kind of things ISPs are actively looking to prevent their users from receiving. How successful do you think you can be, long term, if you’re sending something that ISPs are actively attacking?

 

Oh sure, you’ll get away with it for a while. That is until the feds show up at your door, and you start down a path that leads you to thirty years in prison. Or, you could deal with lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

 

But, set aside the legal aspects of it. You want people to open your emails, to buy from you, and to do that, you need to be able to get that email delivered. And that means not sending spam.

 

It seems simple, but not everyone sees it that way. As my boss Chip is fond of saying, “Hey, we're just trying to tell you what works. If we thought spam was successful, we'd be telling you to spam. It's not. That's why we're telling you otherwise.”