Digital Marketing Companies Pay Heed

I recently received an unsolicited commercial email from an esteeemed business owner and that got me thinking of what in the world West Virginia marketing and digital marketing companies are doing.

In essence, WV State Code prohibits the sending of unsolicited bulk email to WV residents. It additionally provides for reciptients of that bulk email to be awarded about $1000.00 PER EMAIL! Basically, if you are using a OPT-IN service for bulk e-mail you're fine, but if you are using an OPT-OUT email service you may be up a creek without a paddle (and liable!). Section 46 A- 6 G- 1 of the State Code clearly states the standing policy.

If your marketing or digital marketing firm advises the use of any OPT-OUT service, run like hell. Not only will it serve to increase the amount of spam (which we ALL hate), but it very well could make potential (or existing) customers relunctant to do business with you. They have to take minutes out of their already busy day to handle some thing they shouldn't need to - getting off the list you put them on. This can be a pretty harrowing experience depending what in the world YOU got them into. Not a positive user experience thats for sure.

Sure collecting e-mail addresses is a good business practice, but what to do with them is a whole other ballgame. Even an overall positive campaign can have some serious financial reprocussions if just ONE person decides that an email was 1 spam too many. So if your marketing firm said something to the effect of "get all the email addresses you can and send them mass emails", you could be getting yourself into trouble. Obviously, now, there is more to it than just sending a simple email to thousands of people.

There is a good way and a bad way to use list servs or bulk e-mail transports, the good way CAN increase business and customer relations. Digital Beckley provides a powerful solution for list serv/bulk e-mail use and can provide guidence on how to maximize its use without being spam.

 

Categories: Rants

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22. December 2009 09:06 by Administrator | Comments (0) | Permalink

About the author

I've been involved in Internet technology since the early 90's. I started by running a BBS, then FIDOnet (precursor to todays e-mail). This in turn lead me to start one of the world's first HTML based BBS with Internet technology. Prior to moving back to hometown WV in 2004, I was a developer for numerous companies, including Fortune 500 firms, dot com 'darling' companies, and AOL's public web site (non-member side) inlcuding having completed many sites for the Federal government including the EPA, FCC, NIH, and the USDA. I've worked on massive challenging sites, with a teams of developers, programmers, all for one single site and I've worked in companies where I took manula web site production from several weeks to just hours creating 2-5 new sites a week using automated tools , many with e-commerce capabilities.

Its been an exciting career for the past 15+ yrs or so. Sure, I've stepped on toes, I've hit the perverbial glass ceiling too (in a previous job),  I've seen trends come and go (heck I may have even started a few). I've made some people a lot of money, and I've seen people put their entire life into a web site. I was there at  the beginning - where were you?

I've learned to tell what works for companies and what doesn't. The internet is not one size fits all, as social networking is not for every company. Technology is not the challenge. Almost all the internet technology suitable for everyday business is off-the-shelf, the true challenge is change. Change involves education, implementation, and adaptation.