Email marketing - recognise the trap that floods your inbox

we all know what its like, we get annoying emails that flood our in-boxes and we do not recall subscribing for them at all... what's worse, even if we request to unsubscribe, our request is not always granted. One might think, this kind of cyber behavior is illegal...well, it;s not! Unfortunately...

The anti spam ruling determines that in order to email any content that is commercial - i.e will induce readers to spend money - then one must get permission to do so. Getting permission is usually achieved in two ways.
1 - an non permitted opt in email that contains a short explanation about the offerings and a request for people to register. this is not very effective, and its seen less and less.
2 - an advert or email with a free gift! One must register in order to receive this gift. once you have registered, you have technically given you permission also for commercial emails and the automatic email marketing tools of today have pulled your email into a mailing list that is usually connected to an automatic chain of commercial emails - hence the flooding of your inbox begins.

you are supposed to be able to unsubscribe from this emailing, and all modern emailing tools have an unsubscribe option. This thing is, that all these tools maintain a list of the emails that unsubscribed. So this means the owner of the list can reuse the addresses in another context, and you continue to get emailing to your inbox, even if you unsubscribed! Furthermore the anti spam regulations allow people to send any kind of advertising emails even without permission, as long as you are not being solicited to spend money directly in these emails - they are covered.

It is unfortunate, but the little people are trapped and there is little one can do to stop the flooding.  Here is what you can do

• You can mark certain emails as SPAM and hope that the Gmail and other emailing programs will learn and stop sending messages from such addresses to your inbox.
• You can also unsubscribe consistently - it does eventually lower the amount of emailing you receive. it is advised that you unsubscribe in two ways:

1. Use the link in the email itself, but make sure to read carefully the instructions so that you will indeed unsubscribe and not resubscribe...these mass email services have tricky mechanisms.
2. Write a reply email and request to have them stop sending you emails.

• You can avoid registering your email as much as possible to any free offers and such, and thus not enter the chain at all.

Users of Gmail have a bot of good news, the division of the inbox into 3 categories (primary, social and promotions) mean that usually the promotional mass emails are pushed to the promotions category and you can erase them all in one go! the downside to this new system is that if you  did want to get some promotional information, the email will be indeed found in the promotions section and you need to look for it there in between all the other undesired emailing.

If you are a marketer, remember what its like to have you inbox flooded with junk! using automatic emailing methods is a great way to get exposure to your message and product, I just wish marketers would use this tool with more moderation, so that my inbox would not be flooded with junk, just because I take an interest in what people have to say on the web... lets hope the current flood of junk in everyone's inbox will teach marketers not to flood our inboxes in future.