(This is part two of an article on how to do email broadcasting.)
Door #2 says, knowingly violate the rules but do it in such a way that you never come up on their radar screen.
I strongly recommend Solution #2, and it isn’t hard to accomplish. There are basically two ways to do this
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If you are sending to a list of people who really do know you and the list isn’t too large, go ahead send it out through your ISP. Or you can use a subscription service for larger lists. Either way, chances are the percentage of people who complain or ask off is likely to be so low as to not trigger labelling you as spam.
There is an alternative, which works just fine even with huge lists from dubious sources. You send the emails out from a domain other than your regular one; and you send out using an “SMTP service”.
If your emails are all @fatfreds.com, also register fatfred.com (without the “s”) and send your broadcasts from “[email protected]”. That way it can’t come back onto your main domain hosting service.
An SMTP service is simply a barebones emailing service. We use one located in England. If they get complaints, they simply send them to you to unsubscribe.
The problem with any other system is your ISP, if someone complains, will probably NOT tell you who is complaining. They’ll just tell you to knock off the spam. It is so easy for AOL users to report your email as spam, you are going to get complaints. So you have to have a way of finding out who is complaining.
All this adds up to a system which is a bit complex. It is also more expensive than just broadcasting through your ISP or a subscription service.
It is still WAY cheaper than any other form of marketing, and if the list is any good at all, and your email is well designed, it will be VERY cost effective.
(At thirteen05 we have a turnkey email broadcasting system based on the above. We’ve been using it successfully for almost two years. Call for more information.)
