What's wrong with this marketing strategy?

spam = unsolicited email - period.

I've always had a problem with this definition myself. Broadly speaking, unless specifically requested, everything you send out could be defined as spam.

Once upon a time, I sat at the computer pouring over local directories and compiled myself a database of 600 or so local businesses. These were all businesses that chose to list themselves, including email address on the internet. I then put together a "generic" letter but used the abilities of MS Office and mail merge to create 600+ individual, personalized email messages. Each was personalized to the degree of discussing their individual business type. Each including all my contact details - name, address, phone number, email.

Genuinely feeling that I was on the right side of that fine line between legitimate business to business contact and "spam", I hit the send button. I got about half a dozen solid leads out of this (1% is better than I've done on paper mailouts!), one nasty email effectively calling me a lowlife spammer and one complaint to my ISP.

It was really this ISP complaint that has kept me from trying it again. Effectively, the ISP philosophy is: "if someone complains, it must be spam."

Other than this, the return was good enough to justify another attempt. The contacts that I got out of this mailout were real "snowballers" and quite frankly, got my business going.

Conversely, I have NEVER had so much as a nibble from conventional mailouts. Go figure.

Actually, classified ads aren't always so incredibly expensive. Maybe in the NY Times or WallStreet Journal, but in your local newspaper, it's likely affordable.

Let me warn you about the use of automated submission tools - I never recommend you use them. Submit by hand to the top search engines/directories (Y!, FAST, DMOZ.org, Zeal, Google, etc.). You only have to do it once and it doesn't take a long time.

The problem with submission software is despite it's "better than sliced bread" claims, search engines are known to ban people who they find using them because so many work in an abusive way.

For example, if Google suspects you using software, it'll ban you from Google. Not just your site, but YOUR IP, hendering your ability to even visit the site!

Taff's 100% on the money insofar as being accused is as good as being guilty.

Someday there maybe real laws and/or court rules (heaven help us then!) but until such time it's a dangerous game. Totally unfair IMO, but still dangerous.

The spam argument never ceases to amaze me. In my job I make around 50 cold calls per day to people directly out of business directories to flog them web design services. They have heard of my company but not necessarily that we do web design. I get about a 10% hit rate which develops into new business. If, however, one of those calls results in a DEFINATE "No, I'm not interested" I NEVER call them again.

Apply the same principle to email and its spam. Hmmm...This smells of double standards to me...

Thank you for your suggestions.
Please, be kind enough and tell me what else
this web site needs:
http://foryouwebservices.com

This website needs:
1) Description
2) Keywords
3) Meta Tags
4) S.E. optimization
5) Initial submission
6) Monthly submissions
7) What else

Well for starters, it is Sunday morning and I just woke up. Your intro music almost put my coffee in my lap!

Beyond that, I suggest you start a new thread in the web site critique forum.

Phil,

You're 100% correct. Very double-standardish!

Direct marketing to qualified leads is a well established, well used and time honored practice. With but a few restrictions it is a legal method in the non-internet world.

My first comment from a SEO point of view is to loose the splash page!!! There is nothing useful there for a search engine spider to read. You may be lucky that the spider will follow the link to the main page but it does like (in my experience) the index page to be full of content with navigation to all (most) of the other pages within the site. Splash pages are also annoying to the surfer IMO.

As far as the title is concerned it should have around 6 words including the main keywords in a conherant sentence. The meta keywords are less important now but should contain the main keywords without repitition. The description should also be a good grabbing sentence containing the keywords as this is what is used for the SE results listing generally.

As far as submission is concerned, submit by hand to the main SE's and then decide whether you can afford to pay for the PPC SE's and set a budget.

Hi ForYou,

I'm in the early stages of doing almost exactly the same as you - I could have written your first paragraph myself So more competition on the way

Some points not covered so far:

Quote: 3) All softwares submit to thousands of FFA. Is it worth?

Absolutely not! Nobody reads them [do you?], and the attached auto-submit technique could easily get you banned or penalized in the goos SEs as someone already said.

Quote: I'm planning an email marketing campaign

IMO, probably a waste of effort. Have you noticed how spam has gotten seriously worse in the past 9 months, and is forecast to continue worsening? I think email is close to becoming useless as a business tool, it's already tough enough as a personal tool.

I get a number of hosting/web services emails each day - they all go in the bin unread. So my advice is to put your offer in your sig and leave it at that.

Quote: So let's buy the opt-in lists.

Be very careful. There's no guarantee at all that you still won't be complained for spam. People who opt in often forget, or won't recognize your offer as related to whatever they opted in to. If your ISP won't even listen to a defense...

The above is the upside - ie assuming you could find a reliable fresh opt in list. Very difficult to find one - maybe PostMasterDirect are the best. I don't know though, as I wouldn't touch this method.

Some other points:

If you do advertise, start with small cheap classifieds in local papers. Any business this brings is gravy - the real purpose is to test and refine your ad wording. Don't try to sell in the ad - try to get inquiries. Are you familiar with AIDA?

Have you considered setting up mini-sites for each of the services you plan to offer? They would score much better in SEs and directories since they're focused around 1 theme.

Essentially they're marketing sites. You would keep all the key or changeable info on your main site - plans, prices, terms, contact, helpdesk etc. Anyone who's interested in one service thus will arrive at your main site anyway, and be exposed to your other services.

One point about marketing campaigns - they bring in spikes of customers. Will you be set up to handle 10 new customers in the same week? IMO a mistake almost all small businesses make is not controling the inflow of customers. Then service goes awol, and your reputation follows.

A much better strategy IMO is to plan for a slow but regular customer inflow - sure it'll go up & down, but on average... Give them excellent service, and you'll never have to worry about marketing again. How bad could that be?

Quote: Originally posted by Mike Feury
Be very careful. There's no guarantee at all that you still won't be complained for spam. People who opt in often forget, or won't recognize your offer as related to whatever they opted in to. If your ISP won't even listen to a defense...

You are 10000000% correct!!

We used to run an opt-in monthly newsletter on my e-commsite. Had that trouble from day-1.

People would subscribe then email us "Stop sending me this sh*t!". We would of course remove them from the list, but reply saying them wanted to get it in the first place!

Then some people would email to be removed but they weren't on the list to begin with! Maybe they subscribed via an email alias or redirect. But how are we to know that?

We finally gave it up when someone complained via SpamCop to our provider. We would have been glad to remove the person from the list but we didn't even have the chance. Our provider didn't even care to hear us. We had verydetailed records of when someone signed up for the newsletter. All we wanted to know was the email addr so we can check to see if infact they had signed up. Nope, couldn't tell us that - THEY had a right to privacy!!

The whole affair left a very bad taste in our mouths. That's why I get on such a soap box when people start complaining of spam and "There ought to be a law!" Just give me the tools to defend myself and I'll go quietly.

(off my box now)

I just had to reply mostly to taff's post about collecting address and sending out messages.

I used to do the same thing. I would would look for small business sites, take a look at the optimization and make a few notes. Then I would contact the company in a friendly way and explain how I could help them.

My experience was almost the same, but I was lucky noone contacted my ISP.

Then about 6 months ago I started hanging out at forums like this one. I started posting and answering questions and offered advice that was beyond the scope of the professional services we offer.

While it took 2-3 months, we now have almost more business than we handle. I've been working 60-70 hour weeks for about 2 months.

So my advice is this:

1) Get involved, give advice, help people, keep your ego under control, act professional (not as in professional loser...), and DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING IN RETURN. Just help people. It will return to you in time. If you expose yourself(grow up, please...) and don't MARKET yourself, your business will increase. For sure.

2) If you have a web site, get your picture up there and put some FACTUAL info about you and your business. ONe of the biggest problems we have is getting people to trust us. If the only thing you have is an AOL email address, guess what? You better have a fantastic offer of some kind...

On the site promotion questions:

Hand submit is best, program submit can work but don't expect as much. OPTIMIZE your site using scored keyword phrases and basic standards. Make sure your site isn't crap and you have the copy somewhat optimized for humans and robots and you should do ok.

Good luck,
Christian

I thought I was done, but to respond Jaiem's post..

The industry has it backwards, IMHO.

If someone gets my email address,
sends me an honest offer,
doesn't hide who they are,
DOSN'T MAKE ME FRIGGIN UN-SUBSCRIBE,
but offers to sign me up,
and promises to never ever bother me again because they realize how much crap I get and one more thing will cause me to not only use spamcop.net but also forward it to uce@ftc.gov because while I COULD just hit delete I resent the intrusion and the waste of bandwidth.... where was I?

Oh yeah, if they do that then it's not so bad. I may delete it but if I feel I have a little respect for my time, I won't report them.

By the way, those of you that do SEO consulting...

Spammers are my #1 source of new leads. Not the crap spammers, but the ones that don't know any better or who think it's ok.

The only problem (chuckle...) is trying to contact them before their ISP shuts them down...LOL! Ooops, another mortgage offer, I just refinanced, but I gotta run...!!

(hristian

Quote: Originally posted by mjames
For example, if Google suspects you using software, it'll ban you from Google. Not just your site, but YOUR IP, hendering your ability to even visit the site!

this is not entirely accurate - they may ban ur IP but how can they ban ur site? Imagine ur (malicious) competitors submitting ur site over & over again :eek:

they can ban the site easily from their db. I'm sure they would consider appeals, however, especially if they can see that your IP is not the one that submitted the spam entries.

frankly, however, I would think that few companies have the time to engage in such frivolous methods of sabotage.

Quote: Originally posted by Suzanne
they can ban the site easily from their db. I'm sure they would consider appeals, however, especially if they can see that your IP is not the one that submitted the spam entries.

I am sorry, this is is still not right:

here's an excerpt off their fact and fiction page

Quote:
Fiction: Sending automated queries to Google will result in the removal of your web page from our index.

Fact: Sending automated queries to Google is a violation of our terms of service. This may result in blocked access to Google from your IP address, but not in the removal of your web page from our index.

Quote: Originally posted by Suzanne
frankly, however, I would think that few companies have the time to engage in such frivolous methods of sabotage.

that's not the point of my comment and it was an example how simple it would be to get a site banned if it were true

... CAN. Are able to. Which is how they can helpfully provide a page like this: http://www.google.ca/remove.html

Some people claim they ban some sites for politics: http://www.bowmansbrigade.com/google1.htm

Not necessarily will, and not necessarily because of spamming.

Also, that relates to queries which is not the same as submissions.

Further to submissions, http://www.google.ca/addurl.html indicates that submitting a site doesn't guarantee its inclusion. But there is no comment on what could prevent that inclusion.

From http://www.google.ca/webmasters/2.html#B3 :

"Your page was manually removed from our index, because it did not conform with the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees about if or when we will re-include your site."

Sorry for the dribs and drabs...

From: http://www.google.ca/webmasters/facts.html

"Fiction: A website will be removed from Google's index if it's 'over-submitted'.

Fact: We do not require submission nor do we penalize sites for 'over-submission'. You are free to submit as often as you wish. However, given the nature of our inclusion process, your time is better spent improving the content and links of your site."

So it would appear there is no danger from a competitor repeatedly submitting your site, et cetera.

However...

http://www.google.ca/webmasters/dos.html

[Don't] "Send automated queries to Google in an attempt to monitor your site's ranking."

****

So there are a number of ways to end up getting your site banned from this particular search engine, but no real way a competitor can do it. Given the speed at which search engine companies and directories need to adapt to the attempts to manipulate them, this could change any time.

I hope that it only changes to reinforce that honesty, not trickery, will get you better rankings.

I think that your home page needs to be a little more user friendly. For example, instead of having all your links on top, have one also on the bottom that says something like "click here now" and have the link go to your pricing page. Just an example.

About Zeus. I have used this software before. actually I still use it a little. I do not upload the link pages to my site. reason 1: it looks very cheap anf unfrofessional. 2: who is going to look through all the links? I find you get verry little traffic from it. 3: search engines don't like them too much.

About submitting, I would suggest submit by hand for the first few times. Not more than once a month. Once you are listed for sure you can start using some software. All this doorwaypages stuff does not help much either. If you have good content on your pages you do not need it!