When is SPAM not SPAM?

Other Articles in this category : Back Up Your Emails!  |  Spam Filters Grab Good with Bad  |  When is SPAM not SPAM?

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When is SPAM not SPAM? When a Customer Is Trying to Reach You!?

Just like the "real world", unwanted junk mail has made its way to your electronic mail box, (e-mail address) and has generated an entire online industry to deal with SPAM. There appears to be many definitions of SPAM including one that simply says, "if it is not solicited, it is SPAM".

However, if we are to consider the value of the Internet as a business communications tool, we need to think very clearly about how we handle our business e-mail as carefully as we think about how we handle customer calls over the telephone. Your business e-mail address if used properly
should be looked at as your first "Universal Telephone Number"

In the "real" world we have come to label our indirect communications systems as "mail", "FAX", "phone" and in recent times "courier service". The most recent addition to this line-up is the "e-mail". In the conventional world we have come to view unsolicited mail as "junk mail",
unsolicited faxes as "junk faxes" and unsolicited phone calls from unknown people or businesses trying to sell something as "violations of our privacy" and perhaps rightly so. After all, they waste paper, fill up our mail boxes, use up our FAX cartridges and clutter up the phones with unnecessary chatter and generally waste our time.

We generally label these kinds of communications based upon the fact they are "unsolicited". E-mail, in part because of its name and in part because of its written nature is most frequently considered as "mail", rather than as a phone call or a FAX or just plain "communication" and if it is "unsolicited" it is viewed as SPAM and tends to be dealt with quite harshly, regardless of its intent, based purely on one criteria, "solicited" or "unsolicited". Again, perhaps rightly so because, if we did allow unbridled
transmission of email over the Internet it would probably choke to death in short order. Unlike the email system however, other forms of communications have been regulated to various degrees either by formal legislation or by the very fact that it costs substantial sums of money to use other systems while the e-mail system is virtually cost free and unregulated.

If we now look at the exact same scenarios as above, i.e., "unsolicited" mail, FAX or phone call but this time look at from the perspective of a customer trying to contact you, then the definition is set aside and it now becomes a "business call" and now it is "OK". Based on this it is clearly not the fact that the communication is "unsolicited" that defines the label we place upon it but rather, it is the fact that in one case it is asking for your business and the other case it is bringing you business.

What then of the "unsolicited email"? When is it SPAM and when is it "a business call" and therefore "OK". Clearly, if we use the Internet to attract business and to expand our business reach, the narrowest definition of SPAM is not adequate or even conducive to conducting business on the Net at all. By definition, a customer will be spamming you if he contacts you without your permission first. Kind of like telling all your customers, "I am in the phone book, I publish my phone number, but don't call my business unless I know you! I don't care if you found our phone number listed in the yellow
pages, I don't know you!"

Read on to see a real world case where neither the definition nor the real intentions of the business communication policies were clearly understood by every one. This situation is not unique, in fact it happens so frequently it is shocking.

One morning we received a phone call from a Pronet member in Europe who proceeded to tell us about email he was receiving that included a threat of "law suit for spamming". This email arrived every time he tried to use the Pronet Quick Send system to "e-page" a company from which he wanted product and sales information. He chose the e-page route because he did not want to go to the websites of 7 individual companies, instead, he could use the e-page service and ask all the
companies to contact him through one quick email that took less than a minute to create and send. We contacted the CEO of the company threatening legal action against the poor fellow in Europe to find out why they had chosen such an aggressive stance. The CEO was completely mystified when
we described the situation and became quite agitated when he realized the his company was treating potential customers in such a hostile manner without ever even finding out what the customer even wanted. On further investigation it was discovered that the company had adopted a policy of " Zero
Spam Tolerance" and implemented "SPAM FILTERING SOFTWARE" to eliminate unwanted "junk email". While it sounded good at the time, what some folks did not know was that this software automatically sent an aggressive "SPAM COMPLAINT" whenever it received an email from anyone not currently on an "approved email" list located on the company's server. This company was unknowingly making automated threats of law suits to people trying to contact them to purchase
their goods. The member who called us originally was not on their known acceptable email address list because he had never dealt with this company before and neither was Pronet. The company subsequently removed their "filtering software."

The Internet is a new environment and filled with good intentions but as business evolves, some of the solutions need to be thought through very carefully and reviewed often so as not to destroy the benefit that the Internet can bring to your business.

Have you assessed your communications plan as it concerns the Internet?

Have you evaluated how your customers or potential customers are treated when they contact you via the Internet?

Are your customers contacting your business or sales peopledirectly or are they being routed through technical or webmasters first?

Are you getting the most out of your first "Universal Telephone Number", ie your business e-mail addresses.

Are you as aware of what face your business is presenting over the Internet as you are about your last advertising campaign? You should be because you will probably be seen by more people.