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Create/Send E-mail Newsletter and Marketing Service
Create/Send: The Basics of "Permission"
By far the most important aspect of e-mail marketing is the concept of permission. It's the only thing separating you from the spammers of this world. For many it remains a grey area, but it doesn't need to be.
First of all, let's clarify what spam is, and then what kind of permission you will need to use Create/Send. This is important, because not only will you land yourself in legal trouble if you don't comply, we (as your e-mail service provider) can end up at the wrong end of the law too. And we don't want that!
Forget the legal "mumbo-jumbo" - Here's our definition of spam
While the recent introduction of Anti-Spam Laws is a step in the right direction for classifying and reducing spam, we don't feel they go far enough. Our definition of spam goes beyond the legal definition in most countries and forms the basis of our service to provide you with ethical, permission-driven e-mail marketing.
Spam is any e-mail that you send to someone who hasn't given you
their direct permission to contact them on the topic of the e-mail.
Permission, however, can be a fuzzy word open to interpretation. So let's get into some specific scenarios so it's clear what does and doesn't constitute permission.
The type of permission you MUST have
You can only e-mail subscribers using Create/Send if you obtained their permission in one of the following ways: Anything outside the examples shown immediately below does not equal permission.
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They opted in via your web site
This could either be through a newsletter subscribe form or by ticking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be checked by default and it must clearly explain that checking it will mean you will be contacting them by e-mail. |
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They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be e-mailed
If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by e-mail AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted. |
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They gave you their business card
If someone gives you their business card and you have explained to them that you will be in touch by e-mail, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by e-mail. |
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They purchased something from you in the last 2 years
By making a purchase from you they have provided their permission implicitly. Feel free to e-mail them but at the same time, we think it's always better to ask anyway, so why not include an opt-in checkbox as part of the checkout process. |
Scenarios that DON'T equate to permission
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You obtained the e-mail addresses from a third party
Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor's customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to e-mail them and they will consider your e-mail spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot e-mail them with Create/Send. |
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You scraped or "copy and pasted" the addresses from the Internet
Just because people publish their e-mail address doesn't mean they want to hear from you. |
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You haven't e-mailed that address for more than 2 years
Permission doesn't age well. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won't remember giving it to you. If you haven't sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you can't start now. |
How we'll know if you don't have permission
Create/Send has numerous layers of approval and monitoring to ensure you comply with our anti-spam policy. Here's a few of them:
- Our software is directly integrated into the spam reporting systems for some of the biggest ISP's like Hotmail and AOL. If you don't have permission and someone marks your campaign as spam, we'll know about it the moment that button is pressed. If you receive a complaint rate greater than 0.25% of all recipients (that's 25 complaints for every 10,000 recipients) your account will be terminated. This is a generous figure that takes into account false spam reports.
- We monitor blacklists and our abuse accounts all day every day. We can pinpoint who is causing us delivery problems or attracting complaints very easily.
If we do discover that you're emailing people without their permission, we will terminate your account with Create/Send immediately.
In the end, it's really common sense. Take off your marketing hat and put yourself in your recipient's shoes. If they don't recognize who you are or aren't interested in what you're sending, they'll think you're a spammer.
Please don't be put off by all the legal stuff - we have to tell you to comply with the appropriate legislation! If you would like us to set you up with a free account for Create/Send, please fill in the form below.
Like to request a Create/Send E-mail Marketing Account?
If you would like to signup for a free account, please complete the form below.
So you can seen how easy the system is to use, and how powerful it is in delivering professional email solutions for your clients or customers, you can send out up to 5 e-mails per campaign without being charged for using the service. We'll keep your details on file however because we are sure that you'll be impressed with the service and want to use it more!
When you sign up, your details will be sent to us via a secure connection (SSL) and stored securely in a password-protected and encrypted database until we set up this service for you. Why do we use Image Verification?
In the past, our office has received significant amounts of unsolicited e-mail via our "Contact Us" and product sign-up pages that has been sent by spam-bots, programmes that crawl the web and use online forms to send junk mail. These programmes find it difficult to read letters in images such as the one above while humans generally can, hencing confirming that the messages we receive from this page are most likely to be from an actual human, rather than a computer script trying to sell us pharmaceuticals!
We are currently working on an audio version of our verification for people who are visually impaired. We hope to roll this out shortly.
If you have any difficulty reading the image above, please don't hesitate to contact us in person - all our contact details are listed at the bottom of this page. |
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