Promoting a Website by means of email marketing is probably still the most popular method of driving traffic to a Web link but it certainly is no longer the most effective. Instead, over recent years the field of email promotion has become fraught with problems and dangers, even for the bona fide marketer. The meteoric rise in volume of both (legitimate) junk email and spam email has presented even the most bona fide email marketer with an additional obstacle: boolean filters develop ever finer meshes for their nets, often catching also opt-in emails and filtering them out.

Needless to say that these pitfalls all relate to a singular issue: spam (or mass Unsolicited Commercial Email). We're not going to expand on a subject that has already been dissected to death on many excellent resource pages and will refer simply to a guide treats the various aspects of UCE in considerable detail (see Toolbox). Below we'll offer some more advice to check out the legitimacy of potential suppliers.

To a typical Internet marketer, email marketing must seem like the golden opportunity to present Web based products and services to a potentially large audience. Email is instantaneous, requires little or no resources and can be very low cost per unit.

Email marketing has to be divided into two main methods:

Opt in email marketing

In opt in email marketing prospects agree to receive commercial email from you by opting in to your mailing list. The opt in procedure should be of the double opt in variety, to avoid pranksters signing people up to newsletters etc, using email addresses other than their own. Double opt in requires prospects to confirm their willingness to receive the emails. Double opt in mailing lists should also offer subscribers to remove themselves from the list in every mailing, ideally using an "unsubscribe link".

Double opt in email marketing that complies with both requirements is perfectly legitimate and can be highly effective: subscribers that are agreeable to receiving your mailings are much more susceptible to reading the email they receive from you, resulting in much higher clickthrough rates and conversions.

But building a strong mailing list isn't easy and can be very time consuming. Enter the second method:

Further reading and email marketing tools

Bulk email marketing

It's often assumed that bulk email marketing (BEM) is by definition spam, but that isn't true. We're quick to add that we don't endorse the use of BEM, simply because it's difficult to find anyone who uses it honestly and responsibly.

Some companies that offer BEM will try and sell you very large lists (often millions of addresses) of so called opt in lists. Others offer to send the emails on your behalf using their lists, a method referred to as "hosted email marketing".

But both methods are generally dishonest and can actually land you into serious trouble. Think about it: some companies offer lists (hosted or not) of several millions, sometimes as many as 300 million, opt in email address. Those numbers are a very sizeable portion of US Internet users, 300 million actually almost equalling the total number of world wide Internet users. De facto these claims can therefore not be true: either the actual numbers are much smaller or the email addresses are not opt in. Usually it's a combination of both.

To generate such lists, scamsters use so called email harvesting software. This relatively crude device uses a spider to crawl Web pages bring home email addresses published on these pages (any character string containing the @ sign is likely to be an email address).

There is a relatively simple way to find out whether a potential supplier is an honest player or most likely in contravention with CAN SPAM regulations. Most spammers have been banned once or more often by an ISP for spam violation and it's relatively easy to look them up. Many move to so called "bullet proof" hosts, which simply file any spam complaints in their (probably very large) trash can.

To check if a Website offering spam related services, look up the domain name's IP address (xxx.xxx.xx.xx). Go to Spamhaus and type in the IP address in the search box.

Any Website that has a SBL Spamhaus listing is likely to be an illicit outfit: stay well clear, unless of course you want to deliberately commit e-crime.

Further reading and email marketing tools

Safelist marketing:

So, is there no legitimate way to send large amounts of commercial email, other than by slowly building in-house mailing lists? There is. Safelists have been around for a long time to allow marketers to send email to large groups of anonymous email recipients. Safelists are called just that because they are email marketing clubs to which members subscribe: they are 100% double opt in, so spam simply cannot be an issue. Members agree to receive commercial email from other members and are in turn entitled to send out commercial email to other members. For full details on several safelist marketing, check out the Toolbox.

A final word about tracking your results: as with any method that involves putting your offer under the nose of large amounts of recipients, link tracking is essential. Without counting clicks it's impossible to assess the success of any email marketing campaign, or most other Website promotion campaigns for that matter.

Further reading and email marketing tools