Email - Is it Still a Promotional Tool?

Email, don't you just love it?
What a tool: you can contact anybody in the world without
spending a dime on postage, paper or ink!

All the above are the reasons email is such a formidable
tool to promote your business, stay in touch with your
customers, send out special offers to your lists and
acquire new business.

Of course, if you listen to the naysayers, they will
tell you email's days are numbered and that you had
better start preparing to use some other form of
contact to reach your customers! With all the news
about phishing and other forms of email fraud, it would
tend to give credence to that opinion.

The fact is this: email is here to stay! The ease of
use and the huge base of installed users makes it a
very hardy tool. That's not to say implementation
and distribution will remain the same; not hardly!

Gone are the days you could install and run your own
private mail server and reach 100% of your
customers. As a matter of fact, many ISP's will no
longer allow you to send out email in large enough
volume to warrant the trouble and expense of setting up
your own server.

Another thing that will stand in the way of setting up
your own mail operation is email "whitelisting."
Whitelisting is when you approach ISP's and list your
company as being in compliance with their email
policies, in hopes your email will reach the intended
recipient. Of course, all it takes is for one of your
recipients to "forget" he/she signed up to receive
your email and you are blacklisted for sp^mming.

Email isn't going to go away and I can predict some
ISP's being taken to task for blacklisting responsible
marketers. As it is now, there is no legal protection
for businesses. The bulk of ISP's don't have any policies
in place to give businesses an opportunity to present
their side; some of the filtering has been done in a
true knee-jerk reaction to Sp^m.

The prevailing policy at ISP's is to punish the worthy
and the innocent. Throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Perhaps the government's present policies will be
modified by Court rulings giving businesses access to
review panels that will ascertain the merit of ISP's
blacklisting.

Soap Box Issue:

The alarm should be sent out: Fair is fair! ISP's and
email recipients alike should know there are
responsibilities associated when you sign up to receive
a Marketer's email.

All honest, hard working marketers should be given the
option of presenting their side, in the light of day!

OK, done with the Soap Box!

With all the bad things happening to email, it has
become a necessity for companies to further specialize
and call upon the services of mail processors. They do
nothing but handle large volumes of email responsibly
and efficiently, such as: aWeber, Getresponse, eMail
Aces and so on.

The need for the above services is an obvious one
because they are specialist in email delivery, don't
cost all that much and do a good job. They have
policies in place to make sure all their accounts are
opt in and police their members for compliance.
Besides, who in the world has got enough time to
do their own whitelisting?

Careful planning and due consideration should be given
to how your Web business deals with email since it is
one of the most powerful marketing tools. It will go a
long way to make your enterprise a success.

===============================================

by Francisco Aloy

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy
===============================================
Agreement reminder, not part of the article:
Please include my working hyperlink in the
resource box. Remove paragraph before posting.