If someone you have never ever met before sent you an email you weren't expecting offering you their services, that would be Spam ? Unsolicited mail ?
If they put the following message at the foot of the emailer
Disclaimer: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask mailers to stop spamming them. The above mail is in accordance to the Can Spam act of 2003: There are no deceptive subject lines and is a manual process through our efforts on World Wide Web. You can opt out by sending mail to atoz1234567@gmail.com and we ensure you will not receive any such mails.
It would just telegraph the message that is really is spam.
When they don't even give a link to their website or a link to examples of the work they have done, no matter what they say in the email; it's just spam. I wasn't expecting the email, it certainly isn't relevant (sorry but India based web designers don't have the cultural experience to design for UK Shoppers) and it wasn't even personalised.
Hey, we all wanna to do business. To connect with other people. I understand where these spammers are coming from. They have mouths to feed like you and I.
Even when you have permission from people who have opted into your database, the majority don't open up your emails.
(in my last 4 email campaigns I ran for a client, I had 10%, 25%, 30%, 20% open rates for various prospect and customer campaigns).
Now, assuming you have a half decent respectable looking website with nice case studies and ways to reach you; mr spammer, here's a proposed solution.
1. Sign up for Twitter - put your website address in the wee "Website" bit
2. Create a background with a little bit about your company. Personalised with your name and photo works wonders.
3. Start searching for and following those people you would like to do business with.
4. Some will follow you back, some won't
5. Then start writing some content that would help these people or little articles about problems you have solved for other clients.
6. Stick that content on a blog part of your site; make sure you have links in your posts to other sections on your website.
7. Link up the blog to Twitter (read this bit here)
8. Over time, keep posting bits and pieces, tell your story, tell the story of who you helped and how you helped them.
9. You might have to post something twice a day. You might get despondent after 130 days.
But don't give up. The effort you put into finding email addresses to spam is way more time consuming than the effort put into writing and posting something unique and valuable about your business and clients.
So Kuldeep the Marketing Manager who spammed me using the email address Ajeta and signed off the email with Kind Regards Ajeta Sinha, this one's for you.
