| Bulk email marketing or the art of sending bulk emails | | | | The first thing that you need to do before embarking |
| even if unsolicited is a difficult exercise. This is probably | | | | on a bulk email marketing campaign is to acquire email |
| because you are not the only one to send bulk emails | | | | addresses from ethical means. This means that you |
| but rather you would be in the dubious company of a | | | | must get a customer to opt-in before you can send |
| motley crew of spammers. This does not | | | | bulk emails. This can be done by forming some |
| automatically make you also a spammer but the fact | | | | meaningful tie-ups with other online entities that have a |
| is that the lines of distinction between the two are | | | | massive number of users. You can then just poll the |
| indeed blurred – especially from the perspective of | | | | users and ask if they would like to receive updates |
| a potential customer or recipient of mail. Spammers | | | | about your product or service and then you can begin |
| are a nefarious group of people who can be | | | | sending bulk emails. |
| categorized as something between internet | | | | The next thing that you need to do is to ensure that |
| advertisers and hackers. This is because some of the | | | | your mails don’t end up looking like spam. This can |
| methods that are used by these spammers to acquire | | | | be done by using some interesting designs and |
| email addresses and to send emails is more than just | | | | perhaps even using some graphical and multimedia |
| dubious and could be considered an invasion of | | | | elements in the bulk mailer. |
| privacy. Since some spammers even sell CDs of | | | | The final step is to ensure that you follow the CAN |
| harvested email addresses without the express | | | | SPAM rules as detailed by the US government. This is |
| permission of the owners, this is even equitable to data | | | | especially true if your business caters to an American |
| theft. There are many efforts to rein in these | | | | audience or if you are based out of the US. |
| spammers and countries, governments, and ISPs have | | | | Doing these three simple things will go a long way to |
| tried their best to control the rampant spread of spam; | | | | ensure that your bulk email marketing campaign does |
| however, being a largely nameless, faceless bunch of | | | | not end up being a spam campaign that ends up being |
| people, the only way to really stop spammers is more | | | | a random act of just sending bulk email to all and |
| intelligent spam filtering – which is starting to take | | | | sundry. However, these rules are not absolute and |
| some effect if the last figures on spam mail is to be | | | | there can still be an amount of error when you send |
| believed. To not be categorized among this group | | | | bulk emails. So be careful. |
| requires some simple measures. | | | | |