I Already Get Enough Spam

I just had a potential client unsubscribe from my Presenting Your Products ecourse. Now, when you unsubscribe from my lists (which you can do using the link at the bottom of every list email I send out), you have the opportunity to give a reason.

This is the reason given by the person who unsubscribed:

I already get enough spam

Now, I know (and if you have a new mailing list, you need to learn) that the more people who subscribe to your list, the more unsubscribes you will have, even if you have an awesome list.

Now, before we get into a discussion of spam, I’d like to say that I send out exactly five messages on my PYP list — one each day. If the potential customer hasn’t purchased my product after that, I assume they aren’t interested and so I don’t send out anything else.

Additionally, my list requires that not only do you enter your name and email address in my website form, you must also click the verification link in the confirmation email that I send you — all before I ever send you the first issue of the ecourse.

So, this person who signed up obviously went to my site, was interested enough in my product to subscribe and confirm the subscription. Now, apparently she (I’m assuming she) had decided she no longer wishes to receive the emails.

The question is: Does this make the emails spam?

According to Spamhaus:

Spam is unsoliced bulk email.

“Unsolicited means that the recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content,” according to Spamhaus.

The message must be unsolicited AND bulk. As Spamhaus points out, spam is about consent, not content.

So, the question remains: Is the email I sent out (or any email you send out to customers or potential customers) spam?

1. If the email is sent as part of a mailing list to recipients who have requested via verified opt-in to receive the message, it is not spam.

2 And if you have an existing business relationship with the email recipient, then the email is not spam.

According to the Federal Trade Commission:

A “transactional or relationship message” – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

So, in a nutshell, any email that I send to a verified subscriber of my mailing list, as long as it’s not misleading and meets the FTC guidlines (which they do) is NOT spam. Even if you don’t want it. And if that’s the case, just unsubscribe and delete the existing emails. But please don’t falsely accuse me of spam.

Now, for those of you who are considering setting up a mailing list, don’t let this scare you.

I recommend you use a professional service such as Aweber, which will help you setup your mailing list so that it follows the law, including putting in the unsubscribe link automatically, adding your address to the email and requiring double, or verified, option.

And if someone unsubscribes, claiming that you’re spamming them, you can rest assured that you’ve simply met someone who really has no idea what spam is. Just hope she doesn’t think that hitting the spam button in yahoo is the same as deleting email. Cause you know, if you don’t want the email, it must be spam. Right?