Email Marketing
You are selling computer hardware or any type of products or a service and you want to get or collect a large list of email addresses and find a method to send an ad to this large number of email addresses. So, what do you do? There are several methods for doing this, that is, collecting or getting email addresses then sending them all your ad in hope of them buying your product or service. The question is not how to do it, but to how extent this method is effective.
Email Abuse
Think of your email inbox, how many emails do you get per day? Probably many. Do you get emails from people or companies you do not know advertising their products or services? What do you usually do with such emails? If such email has been sent to you without taking your permission first, that is it is unsolicited email. Such emails usually annoy. You did not ask for them, you did not allow anyone to send them to you, yet they still manage to get into your email box and into the email boxes of many others. This is very annoying to you, specially when you get many such emails from different places all trying to sell you something. To get rid of them and 'clean' your inbox you might go on and delete them at once. A better strategy would be to select such unsolicited email message and indicate that it is spam. Usually email providers have this kind of functionality, they may call it Junk folder, Bulk folder or just Spam. Regardless of the name, it has the same effect, the message you got is removed from your inbox and put aside for automatic deletion after a while.
Learning Spam Filters
The interesting thing is that the process does not stop here. After indicating that this message is spam, your email provider not only puts it aside for automatic deletion but also 'learns' that such type of message is spam. When a similar kind of message is posted in the future, your email provider may automatically throw it in the spam folder without troubling you. It does not even pass through your inbox! Not only that, but the message is put in the spam folder for all other members having email boxes with this same email provider. The email provider has 'learnt' that such type of message is spam, because a number of members has indicated that it was spam. Technically speaking, there are many methods to let a computer program learn how to distinguish between spam and legitimate emails by learning from members who have indicated which messages are spam. The most popular algorithm for learning that type of knowledge is a Gaussian algorithm. Other algorithms for learning with artificial intelligence can be used but the Gaussian algorithm seems to be the more effective and practical at the same time because it does not need the huge computing resources of AI operating on a large scale.
The success of such spam filters in Yahoo! email, hotmail, gmail and other email providers is good news for all of us having email accounts there. At the same time, it is bad news for spammers. As long as you keep sending unsolicited email to people who have not asked for it your emails will probably land in the junk folder and go unnoticed.
Opt-In Email
The best method to send emails advertising your products and services to a large number of people is to use an opt-in list of email. This means that the list contains email addresses of people who have chosen to receive such emails. You can build this opt-in email list by yourself or rent one from another company. To build such an opt-in email list, you can do so by providing something in return to users, for instance you can offer them a program to download and requiring them to register first before downloading. While registering, you ask for their email addresses and provide a check box for them to specify whether or not they would like to receive promotional offers or emails in a specific subject. This is how opt-in email lists are built. It is important to provide them with an easy way to unsubscribe from your mailing list at any time by clicking on a link for instance or by sending an empty email to a specific email address. If you do not provide them with this functionality, you will risk marking your email as spam which will make email providers learn that it is spam if a number of members does the same and therefore all your other messages to the rest of the members will go directly to their spam folders. Not something you would like for sure.
Online Marketing Companies
Before hiring an online marketing company that claims to send your online ad to hundreds of thousands of email boxes, ask them first if they use opt-in email advertising or just collect emails from any place and force their messages to their victims, something which is not only ineffective, but also might tarnish the image of your company, as a company that sends spam to people. If spamming hundreds of thousands of people had worked in the past, there is no place for it in today's online world which hates spam and has developed spam filters that learn and get better by the day.