Information for businesses - Overview

Email is a powerful tool for businesses, however used incorrectly, you could find your business accused of "spamming", or transmitting Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE). Aside from certain types of spam being illegal in Australia, once you have obtained the stigma of being a spammer, it takes years to shake it, and you are likely to never recover your reputation completely.

It only takes the vaguest hint of spam for your business to lose customers, and rest assured, when customers think you have spammed, they won't walk away - they'll run. Even previously loyal customers - the type who would have meant 100% guaranteed repeat business, will cut you off completely if they think you have spammed them. Most of the customers who respond in this way won't even tell you - they'll just silently activate a filter in their email software so they never see your messages, and you'll simply never hear from them again. Another "customer we lost but we don't know why."

Granted, not every customer will respond this way. Different people do respond to things in different ways. You might even be tempted to think that nobody would respond in this way - but we're sure you can recall reading surveys where you've seen that "15% of people think X", and thought "where did they find such raving loonies?" It is a fact of life that, whatever opinion you hold, somebody out there holds the opposite opinion, and in the case of UBE, the anger people have towards the spammers means that opinion can have severe consequences for anybody who appears to have spammed.

If you still think nobody is going to be upset by something that even has the vague scent of UBE, check out Consumer Attitudes to Privacy, a 1995 survey by the privacy commissioner. This survey was taken in what is now considered the early days of UBE, and doesn't specifically reference UBE, but it does reference many things that can only lead to the conclusion that Australians will treat unwanted email solicitations as a violation of their privacy, and will not view the sender favourably.

In the United States, Cognitiative, Inc., an Internet marketing consultancy, publishes a quarterly report called "Pulse of the Customer". The first quarter 1999 edition studied spam and consumer attitudes to merchants who send bulk email to them without permission. The study specifically looked at how a merchant's failure to ask up front affected the relationship with the customer. The results were staggering - 32% of customers spammed by one of their vendors will refuse to do business with that vendor again, ever. What's more, customers are now avoiding giving merchants their email address because they have already been spammed by vendors too many times. More recent figures suggest consumer displeasure at businesses who assume permission has increased to 42%.

With statistics like this, you simply can't afford not to take steps to avoid being labelled as a spammer.

Contents
Preface - Why this is the most important lesson in Internet marketing you will ever read.
Overview - What the problem means to you.
Microeconomics of Spam - the economist's view.
Getting Permission - how to get permission for the first mailing.
What to do - Easy ways to avoid being labelled as a spammer, and still get what you want out of email lists.
The law - The current state of the law on this issue.