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A few years back, I had the opportunity to manage
a telemarketing group selling long distance services and one of our problems
was generating enough leads for our telemarketing representatives. The
company had about 600 representatives who should make outgoing calls and one
can imagine the number of leads we needed to keep them calling and selling
in a normal telemarketing six-hour day. At normal phase, a person can dial
about fifty numbers per hour. With automatic dialing, this is increased
fifty to sixty percent or about a hundred telephone numbers an hour.
Multiplied by the number of people, we needed at least 60,000 numbers to
call every hour or 360,000 in six hours. With these numbers, I can assume
that you may have received one of the calls our representatives may have
made. How we got those numbers ?-- that is the company’s responsibility
and whether solicited or not, I had no idea.
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On another scenario, how often do you receive
mailed offers from business opportunity brokers, credit card special offers
and many other mail (others call them junk) from direct marketing companies?
I receive them as regular as the sunset every evening. And by the way, how
they got my name and traced my address—they have their means.
Now, we are in the high-tech era. We have grown
to live with the unwanted direct mail and have considered them a regular
content of the mailbox everyday. In fact, we already formed the habit going
straight the trashcan and gave it a name—junk. Some business opportunity
offers, I can already memorize because they keep sending the same one.
On the other hand, the telemarketers have more difficult time
connecting with prospects nowadays because the line is being used in the
computers all the time. Nobody complains anymore.
As the
technological breakthrough begun in the 1990s with the
introduction of the Internet, direct marketing and MLM (otherwise
known as multi-level marketing) discovered a much easier, faster
and cost effective way of promoting their products and special
offers. What used to be a market nearing saturation, suddenly
opened up like the rays of early morning sunlight reaching out
markets wherever that electronic signal reaches. Here, in the Internet, they can reach anyone who
has an Internet connection as long as they have an email address.
No stamps—just a few dollars for Internet connection and a phone
line. The service is instantaneous—no waiting and fear of losing
the mail in transit. A wrong address is returned in an instant.
In the same contention as we have complained and
complained and complained and still complaining about unsolicited
calls and filling up the recycling box with
“junk” mail,—we now have a new “cancer” at hand
and a new issue to complain about invasion of our sacred
privacies. The mailing list industry immediately took advantage of
the situation and email addresses became readily available at
remarkably cheap prices.
Unsolicited e-mail otherwise defined by almost
everyone as “Spam”
Unfortunately, I cannot provide a definition of
the word because Merriam Webster did not have the opportunity
to list the word in one of the Webster’s Dictionaries so we have
to settle with the definition provided by the Internet Service
Providers or the web hosting companies and agree with however they
interpret or define the word. Anyway, the word will automatically
assume its meaning as everyone understands it to be. But my
contention is that, as long as there is sales and marketing going
on around our world, no matter in what type of endeavor you choose
to be in, unsolicited announcements or solicitation will always be
there. How about complaining to your church minister or parish
priest for sending you an unsolicited email for a church donation?
Now, I must confess that maybe I am different. I
take time reading the “unsolicited” emails, and I purposely
opened a separate email account where I can receive all these type
of email. And so far, I have been lucky that all the messages I
receive comes from individuals who wants me to “Be a
Millionaire.” And tells me that I can only become one if I
replied and ask for more information.
Of course, occasionally, a guy writes a sales letter better than I do and I
make the mistake of replying. And lo, I get the deluge of
follow-up letters sent automatically by an
autoresponder—expertly timed in between a number of days until
maybe he /she assumes that I will be fizzed off and will sign up. For
those who are not familiar with the word, the auto-responder is
some kind of a robot that is programmed to “respond”
automatically—that’s why it is called that.
To avoid this autoresponder harassment—you can
“kill it” by replying to remove your name by following the
removal instructions which is always written somewhere in the
message. That autoresponder is programmed to do that.
But I love the spammer!
Why? Of course, as an Internet businessman and I
gain one email address every time. In fact, I set the “bait”
as others before me may have already done. I reply to one or two
of those sales letters and the flood of emails in the same
category automatically rushes into my address.
Now, when it is my turn, I cannot be accused of
spamming. I am just responding!
The Internet spammer is an individual or maybe a
group of individuals, who are definitely new in the Internet,
lacking or short of friends, no connections, and somewhat urging
to do something mischievous or possibly a “con artist” lurking
around searching for a victim or a new “netpreneur” trying out
his newly purchased email addresses from those database companies
who made assurances that the email list is “Spam free”. One basic characteristic of a “spammer” is
his defensive positioning of himself which he conveniently writes
either at the top or at the bottom of his message. Messages like,
“you are receiving this because you subscribed, someone
subscribed for and on your behalf,” and several other
reasons -— all for his defense.
In my opinion, if I was sure that I am sending
this newsletter to real subscribers, I don’t see the need to
post that statement. I can use that space for more advertisements.
However, as an Internet businessman, there is also a chance that I
may have inadvertently included one or two email addresses which I
copied somewhere else, so, I also placed this defense at the
bottom of the page.
No matter what law is passed against these
practices, the solicitor will always try to find a way to go
around that.
And lately, I noticed a new disclaimer posted by the
MLM marketers, chain letter senders, and other e-zine publishers. Here it is:
“This message
is sent in compliance of the new e-mail bill: SECTION 301. Per
Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618, http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail/S771index.html
Further
transmissions to you by the sender of this email may be stopped
at
no cost to you by sending a reply to this e-mail address with the
word
'REMOVE' in the subject line."
Being a spammer lover, I clicked on the
URL above and this is what I got:
(A
statement from Senator Frank Murkowski)
If
you have been directed to this page, you have probably received spam from an
Internet marketer. I was the author of anti-spam legislation in the 105th
Congress since I believe that spam is a burden upon citizens who use the
Internet. Although my bill passed the Senate, the House of Representatives
took a different view of the issue by merely recommending self-regulation.
Ultimately no legislation was adopted into law. I will shortly be
re-introducing similar anti-spam legislation in the 106th Congress.
If
the spam you received contains illegal and/or offensive material,
I encourage you to forward the spam to the Federal Trade
Commission at uce@ftc.gov. The FTC is beginning to take legal
action against these abusers of the Internet and is seeking
examples of spam to initiate its investigations and prosecutions.
Spam
is a burden that needs to end. I look forward to seeing the day
that this occurs.
Thank
you,
Senator
Frank Murkowski,
U.S. Senate
Someone may
have advised them to use that notice to show the recipient some semblance of
knowing the law. Do
they really know what they are talking about in the first place?
But,
as I said, these guys are only trying to earn a living.
As a note to our MLM and chain letter friends, I say,
no matter how you want to argue with it, the ISPs and the web hosting
companies have the final say to decide whether you are spamming or not.
Sometimes, when I have time to review their policies, it seems like they are
not in the Internet business. But if you want to stay in the Internet, I
recommend that you keep in line.
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