Chapter 1: Spam Is Sucking The LifeOut Of Email MarketingBefore I began writing this book, I conducted a survey and asked many of my online marketing friends what was the BIGGEST challenge they currently face with their Internet business. The answer I got loud and clear was "email."
The majority of the people I talked to told me they wasted anywhere from 5 to 10+ hours of their time every week dealing with email challenges. They told me that managing their email lists, adding new subscribers, unsubscribing old subscribers, removing bounce-backs, duplicate names and deleting Spam mail was frustrating and difficult to manage.
They told me they were NOT profiting from email marketing like they used to and, in order to duplicate the results they achieved three years ago, they were forced to quadruple their paid advertising efforts in order to attract and keep more subscribers on their list!
Does this sound familiar? Are you stuck in a similar trap?If you're like most Internet business owners you may ALREADY be caught in this vicious cycle of spending more time and money just to break even.
Here’s the typical scenario:
• You craft your incredible promotional piece with attention grabbing subject lines.
• You are eager to get your message out. You know your marketing materials are very impressive and now you are ready to start making money.
• You spend time, money and energy driving traffic to your opt-in page.
• Your advertising materials convince people to join your list. They request more information by filling out the form on your landing page. Then your autoresponder takes over sending out your expertly written email messages that are responsepullers.
• But... less than half of your subscribers ever receive your mailing!• Then to add to your disappointment... very few actually read your mailing. Your follow-up attempts produce miserable results.
You did everything "by the book"—so what the world happened?
The answer is simple—many of your subscribers NEVER received your emails!
Then to add to your problems, people start sending you angry messages complaining and demanding that you remove their email address from your mailing list. Some even threaten to report you for Spamming! Now you’re worried that you might get blacklisted or, even worse, lose your domain!
To make matters worse, your downline or affiliate members are in the same position. The people who join your program soon realize that email marketing RARELY produces results and your business starts sinking faster than the Titanic!
You see, most people rarely stick with the same advertising method for more than a few weeks.
Why? Because the majority of the people you enroll: • Don't have the patience
• Are usually in a hurry to make money
There was a time when we had to go to the post office to send a letter that took a few days or sometimes months, depending on which side of the globe you were on, to reach its destination. Then came the fax machine with its instant connection—but of course, having to make those long distance phone calls wasn’t exactly cheap. When email arrived, it was an answer to our prayers and dramatically changed the way we communicate.
But within just a few short years, the email system has turned into a real nightmare. Despite the implementation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2004, Spammers continue to wreak havoc and Spam continues to fill up users’ inboxes—a full 99% of Spam doesn’t comply with the law.
Today’s email users suffer from ‘email fatigue syndrome’ and simply don’t have the time or desire to read all of their messages—even newsletters they have subscribed to and asked to receive.
Remember the good old days when email marketing had significant response rates of 5% click-through? Now you're lucky if your click-through rate is 0.0005%.
Why? There are three main reasons: • The plague of Spam filters and their “False Positives”.
• Mass deletion of emails by subscribers.
• Email overload—constant bombardment and abuse by Spammers and marketers.
Most people simply trash advertising emails without even giving them a second look.
A DoubleClick study found that 64.7% of all legitimate emails sent are never opened. For mailing list and newsletter owners the news is even worse. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of your subscribers are actually reading your email messages!
In a recent interview with
online Media Daily, Denis
McGrath— interactive
marketing manager for
Procter & Gamble admits, "It's
not working quite as well as it
used to, and the trend is a
little disturbing. We were
doing better a couple years [source: The Radical Group] ago. The smart marketers
have got to be asking: 'What's it going to be in the future?'"
McGrath and other executives cite several reasons why consumers no longer respond to marketing emails at the same rates as in the past. But the major culprit is the mistaken reporting of legitimate email as Spam.
When consumers report messages as Spam, Internet service providers and email service providers sometimes classify the company that sent the message as a Spammer-which means they refuse to deliver future emails from that company. [Read more….]
As Spam invades more email inboxes, ISPs are deploying more aggressive Spam filters and these Spam filters have the unfortunate side effect of blocking legitimate emails.
Many email marketers have experienced blocked rates in excess of 30% for double optin information.
These are legitimate, wanted, and requested emails that are getting blocked before they reach the subscribers' inboxes!When this happens, the blocked message is referred to as a "false-positive" result.
As it turns out, stopping Spam is not nearly as difficult as avoiding falsepositives. Eliminating false-positives is the most difficult problem for email recognition and filtering technologies.
Sending emails to a list of subscribers or an opt-in list is like playing tennis in the dark—you have absolutely no control of the outcome. Ezine
publishers, website owners, Internet
Bill Gates' Spam Prediction Misses Target – Information Week January 24, 2006
Two years ago, Gates said the spam problem would be 'solved' by now. We're not even close, experts say, and for many reasons that don't have anything to do with Microsoft.
Did he predict his lack of prophetic skills?"It's not such good news for Bill Gates' skills as a fortune teller," said Cluley. "Spam is clearly not a thing of the past." [ Read more… ]
marketers and many others doing business online, experience endless frustrations just trying to stay-in-touch with the people who want to communicate with them!Spam and email overload are the main reason email marketing results are down by approximately 60%. It is really no surprise then that many mailing list and newsletter owners have given up on email.
Ironport , a firm that makes its business tracking the world of Spam, says that the volume of unwanted junk email has doubled in the past year.
According to The New York Times December 6, 2006 article, “Spam is back — in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide Spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a Spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk email now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet.
Spam accounts for more than 90 percent of all e-mail messages on the Internet – that’s double the load in 2005. [Read more…] “These ‘Internet Pirates’ continue to devise new and more insidious ways to harvest email addresses and send maddening unsolicited emails. To make things worse, they then turn around and SELL your email address to other disreputable Spammers who send you even more junk email.
• People are sick and tired of searching through a load of junk emails just to get to the emails they want. Most people just don’t have the time to read all their email, so they quickly skim through their inbox and fail to notice your important message.
• Bounce back emails from free email accounts could result in your account being blocked. The majority of Internet marketers and information seekers use free email accounts with very little storage space. Inevitably, emails bounce if their inboxes exceed their maximum storage space. WARNING: Each time you email to your lists and you have a lot of "bounce backs", you risk being blacklisted by the ISPs.
• Aggressive Spam filters leave you in the dark about who is receiving your email and who is not. It takes time and money to keep your list current and since ISP filters have no way of letting you know if your message has been flagged, you have no way of knowing if you have been blacklisted or not.
• People change their email addresses frequently to escape the flood of Spam email. Your marketing efforts are going to waste! Not only are you losing time and money, you are also losing potential subscribers and customers.
• Spam Police find you guilty, no questions asked. If your email accidentally gets reported as Spam, clearing your name is a long, tedious process.• Legitimate, wanted, and requested emails get filtered as junk email. If you use Spam triggered words such as "FREE", "Home-based Business" or "Click Below", your message is almost guaranteed to end up filtered out or in your subscriber’s junk box.
Spam places a serious strain on the Internet pipeline. Spam is clogging servers so thoroughly that legitimate email sometimes takes hours to break through the jam, causing major headaches on the information
superhighway and costing businesses a considerable amount of money.
There are casualties on both sides and the cost to prevent Spam keeps mounting. Anti-Spam tools, legislative attempts, criminal prosecutions, and lawsuits are costing the industry billions.
Spam Harmed Economy More Than Hackers, VirusesBy Tim Lemke
Spam caused more economic damage than hackers and viruses last month, despite indications that the amount of unwanted email actually declined.
London-based computer-security firm mi2G said in a report on Thursday that computer outages and lost productivity because of Spam led to $10.4 billion in worldwide economic losses in October. Meanwhile, the company said viruses and worms — also known as malware — caused $8.4 billion in losses, while hackers contributed to $1 billion in financial damage worldwide. [Read More….]
According to a recent study conducted by Ferris Research, a market and technology research firm specializing in messaging and collaboration, Spam cost U.S. businesses over $10 billion in 2003. Despite the escalating cost, Spam continues to defy most legal and technical efforts to stamp it out.
Email users have no choice but to deal with Inboxes taken over by Spam—the occasional good mail is difficult to spot while legitimate mail is blocked—and their mail not getting through because of all kinds of anti-Spam tactics.
Newsletter publishers and mailing list administrators have to authorize themselves and continually defend what they do while still getting continually blocked.February 2006 – Saul Hansell of the New York Times reported that America Online and Yahoo will begin the use of a system that gives preferential treatment to emails from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have their ads delivered. AOL and Yahoo will still accept email from others, but the paid messages will be given special treatment.
He goes on to say…“The Internet companies say this will help them identify legitimate emails and cut down on junk emails, identity-theft scams, and other scourges that plague users of their services. They also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.”
The article also says, “But critics of the plan say that the two companies risk alienating both their users and the companies that send emails… Paying senders will be assured that their messages will be delivered to AOL users' main in-boxes and marked as "AOL Certified Email." Unpaid messages will be subject to AOL's Spam-filtering process, which diverts suspicious messages to a special Spam folder.” [Read More…]
It’s obvious with so much money at stake that it’s just a matter of time before all the other email providers start charging as well. Even your grandmother’s emails may be in trouble! Be prepared to be strong-armed if you run a commercial mailing list. The problem here is once Certified Email gets going it will be increasingly difficult for people who DON’T pay to get their mail through because the system has no way to distinguish between ordinary emails and bulk emails, Spam and non-Spam, personal and commercial emails—it just gives preference to people who pay.
This in no way stops Spam. Instead, we will be subjected to a constant barrage of “certified” paid emails running side by side with Spam.No! According to Les Seagraves, EarthLink's Chief Privacy Officer, “We can reduce it so you don't dread checking your email because you have to deal with a 10-to-1 ratio of junk every time you log on. We're trying to preserve the usefulness of email.” [Read More…] Junk emails now make up 9 in every 10 email messages sent!
Despite the CAN-SPAM Act, which became effective January 1, 2004, Spammers continue to ignore the law. The CAN-SPAM Act, which is fondly called the "Spam Legalization Act," is showing its true LACK OF IMPACT a full two years after the law went into effect. Spam is still arriving in Internet users' email boxes –99% of it is noncompliant with the law.
US-based Spammers are actively off-shoring their operations to avoid tough US antiSpam laws. If Spammers are sending Spam from servers outside the United States, as many of the effective Spammers now do, the law can't touch them.
Although the vast majority of Spam comes from computers in the US, researchers believe that a large percentage of Spam actually originates in Russia. The Russian Spammers use hijacked PCs in the US to distribute their annoying messages!
China now pumps out nearly 26 per cent of all Spam filtered by Internet ISPs and ranks second in the world of Spam-producing countries. Britain – 21 per cent, France – 15 per cent, India – 7 per cent, and Turkey – 4 per cent.
Is the CAN-SPAM Act a help or a hindrance? Joel Dubin 02.01.2007While some argue email has become more dangerous since CAN-SPAM was enacted, I believe the increased email danger is due to changes in the spamming technology and scams; these changes are independent of the law and would have happened regardless of whether it has been signed into law. However, regardless of what you believe, it's clear to see that CAN-SPAM has been ineffective. And here are four reasons why: [ Read More… ]
At this point, things are looking pretty grim for email. But it frustrates me to no end because it feels like we are losing the war, even if we happen to win the occasional battle. As things stand now, we need some serious changes, and we need them fast.
My Solution AND The ONLY Real Solution…Take away the revenue lifeline from Spammers and they'll be forced to find new jobs! It really is that simple.
The best solution is to put power and control back in the hands of users. It's time we got serious about alternatives to the current email system and start offering real solutions
that help stamp out Spam rather than making the ISPs richer and politicians look as if they've done something useful.
Has The Door On Email Marketing Officially Closed?I believe it’s just a matter of time. Email is no longer a reliable, cost effective, safe way to communicate with your prospects, clients or even family and friends!
But when one door closes, another door opens...
Chapter 2: ThePaul Burks Story
W hile Everyone Else Remains Disgruntled And Worried About The Future of Email, An Innovative And Bold Internet Company Decided To Take Matters Into Their Own Hands And Do Something About It!
In August 2005, a pioneering online marketing company unveiled a New Breakthrough Technology that could seamlessly replace email as the most efficient, cost effective, and personalized way for individuals and businesses of any size to communicate with customers and associates online.
Just over 5 years ago, Paul Burks, the owner and founder of NewNetMail, created a company call FreeStoreClub. FreeStoreClub experienced explosive growth and within 24 months grew to over 2 million subscribers. Trying to stay in touch with 2 million people worldwide via email proved to be a nightmare. So Paul, a computer programmer, thought, “why don’t I create a communication device that bypasses email altogether, that can not be touched by ISP email filters, and delivers my messages directly to the member’s desktop?”
Paul developed NewNetMail as his own personal way to solve the uphill battles he faced trying to stay in touch with over 2 million FreeStoreClub members via email.
When Paul first introduced NewNetMail in November of 2004, his friends and associates though he’d lost his mind. The excuses ranged from ‘Why should I pay for an email account when I can get one for free at Hotmail or Yahoo or just use the one that comes with my Internet connection ISP account?’ or ‘No one is using it yet, so I wouldn't
have anyone to write to’ or ‘I wouldn't like it because I couldn't receive letters from my friends who use Yahoo’ or ‘I don't need it because I have anti-virus software and I don't get much Spam.’
Little by little, a handful of individuals took the plunge and decided to give it a try—they wanted to see for themselves what Paul was so enthusiastic about. Since his last mad idea, FreeStoreClub is still going strong after 4 years with more than 2 million members; it was possible that he was onto something!
As they began experimenting with NewNetMail, their excitement grew as they too began to see Paul’s vision.The word spread like wildfire and, and as of this writing, NewNetMail has over 50,000 subscribers with hundreds more joining daily and requests for private labeling are pouring in.
Email is like the United States Postal network of a few years ago. It was public, available to anyone and cheap to use. But it was poorly managed, inefficient and frustrating. And, because it was a government operated monopoly, it was all any of us had to get a letter from point A to point B.
Then came two PRIVATE companies, United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx. I remember the naysayers back then saying some of the same things they were saying about NewNetMail. Like ‘Why would anyone pay $12 to send a letter to someone when they can send a letter through the US Post Office for a few cents?’
Or ‘Parcel Post was good enough for my Grandfather and it's good enough for me.’
But they were wrong! Totally and hopelessly WRONG. Those companies have completely changed the way important letters and packages are delivered. And they were successful because they did it better, faster, more dependably and for a fair price.
NewNetMail will be successful for exactly the same reasons. It simply does email BETTER in so many ways that there is no comparison. Will it ever completely replace email? Of course not. Just as neither UPS nor FedEx have completely replaced the Post Office.
But they didn't have to! They just carved out a huge niche market where the Post Office couldn't compete. And they get bigger and bigger each year.You see, RIGHT NOW, companies and many individuals are fighting a losing battle trying to use email. Spam, viruses, inaccurate Spam-filtering and insecurity of important communications are a major threat to their ability to do business. The demands of commerce today REQUIRE them to communicate over the Internet and until now email was all they have had.
Do you really believe that, when they learn that there is a better way, they won't jump on it en masse? Of course they will! As we say here in the South, like a bird on a June bug! Can you imagine what it would be like for you if companies like Toyota or Coca-Cola were brought into the NewNetMail™ system by someone in YOUR downline? I have no idea whether those specific two companies will adopt NewNetMail, but I know that thousands of companies will.”
He goes on to say “But in the past week I am seeing the explosion coming. The first USA Today Ad, run by some of those who SEE what is about to happen, appeared this weekend.
Already scores of people have responded to the ad and left their contact information on the 800 voice line. Some of those people left additional messages saying that they are professional networkers and that this is the first program that has gotten them excited in years!
That is EXACTLY what happened with FreeStoreClub! I wish I had a crystal ball that would tell me exactly when the explosion will occur. But I don't. It could happen this week or it could happen two, three, or four weeks from now.
The only thing that I can predict with certainty is that IT'S COMING. And I think it will be sooner rather than later.”
C hapter 3: NewTechnologyBypassesEmailFilters & Delivers Your Message 100% Of The Time
There is a new idea on the horizon— NewNetMail, a Private Internet Mail system. New