Archive for March 14th, 2010
March 14th, 2010 | 
Author: Vet Your Email Addresses Carefully
Spammers need large numbers of email addresses to make their little schemes profitable. If the pool of email addresses large enough a small percentage of people may respond to their email and send a littlemoney their way. Of the millions of emails they send out only a small fraction of responses help them generate a profit.
One of the ways spammers obtain email addresses is through email harvesters programs or low wage Internet user scouring the web for emails hanging out in the clear where anybody can see them. These harvesters gather up all the emails they find in whois entries online forums social networks and business websites all over the world. They then sell these lists to spammers and unfortunately many entry level email marketers looking to make a buck.
In order to minimize the help identify the harvesters and the spammers that use harvested emails some black hole database administrators post email traps out on the web. These are bare email address showing out in the clear just waiting to be picked up by harvesters. They know that if anybody sends an email to that address theyare basically sending email without permission in violation of all sorts of antispam laws and good practice guidelines.
Those who send are then added to their black hole list. More reputable black hole listings have thousands of subscribers and may block email senders who end up on the list. Unfortunately many beginning email marketers do the same thing the spammers do and purchase these harvested email which probably have a high percentage of traps included. The first email campaign they send out puts them on the black holelist and the next thing they know they tarnish their email reputation.
Recently one vigilante antispam group began signing up thier harvested email addresses on thousands of website subscription forms. Those who did not confirm the addresses became inundated with these bogus email address but the problem was they were only bogus sign ups the addresses themselves were real and complaints against those sites skyrocketed causing untold damage to their reputation.
It is true that the CANSPAM act of 2003 does not require a subscription confirmation but all legitimate email marketers do so to protect their highly regarded email reputation. If you want to do things right and communicate with your customers via email it is important to vet your email addresses in every way possible. Don’t buy lists unless you know for certain they are confirmed and clean and always confirm your subscribers to verify they really want to receive your emails.
About the writer: James was born in Billings Montana in the late Sixties. He grew up in Cody Wyoming just south of Billings and learned to appreciate small town life. After joining the Army for a three year stint he found himself in the big city of Denver where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. At the earliest opportunity he returned to Cody and settled down taking small writing jobs while learing about email marketing and other Internet technologies. He enjoys helping people through the written word.
How Good Web Design Can Turn Bad
Recently we were asked to quote on a website for a dentist just across town from our Perth web design studio. Now this dentist already had a website which was ranking extremely well. In addition the design of the website had been professionally put together. But despite being in the top five listings and attracting a significant amount of traffic the amount of new business generated from the website was meagre.
I had a sense very quickly as to what the problem was but needed to do further research to confirm. For more details go to www.10websiteprogrammingtricks.com. Through my research I discovered that my client was not alone in his industry with the overwhelming theme for dental websites being one of cheesy smiles from all ages and flashy changing graphics.
From my point of view many of the dentist websites simply came across as fake and full of stock photography. They left me feeling worried that if I went to see that dentist that I was dealing with somebody who was all about marketing and may not be the best dentist around OUCH!.
The real underlying issue here is trust or more to the point a lack of it. You must understand that when you design a website you must make sure that you do everything you can to generate the maximum amount of trust from your prospective customers.
If the website generates trust then it will give the customer the confidence required to commit to making a buying decision In this instance making an appointment. Now what had gone wrong is that the web developers had focused more on trying to get across the fact that this dentist was technologically advanced by putting together a flashy website. More flash = more impressive: WRONG!. What the end result was however is that the website completely undermined trust in his services because it gave the impression of an over sell and in the medical profession this is a definite nono.
Interestingly to back up this suspicion the dentist then told me a story about someone who was referred to him by a patient. “Go and see my dentist because he is excellent” was the referral from the existing patient. But before acting on the referral the prospective patient checked out the dentist’s website which prompted him to ask his friend. “Are you sure about this guy?”.
What had happened is that the website had undermined the trust that had been set up by the friend of referral. You can also visit us at www.29webdesigntricks.com. Fortunately in this instance he had checked with his friend who told him to forget about the website and go and see the dentist. But how many other referrals were scared off by a website that appeared to oversell the person or service?
The lesson here is to make sure that when you are designing a website that you take into consideration your specific target markets expectations about your industry and design to the psychology of that market and its expectations. Medical professionals should definitely not try to oversell themselves and be aware that an overuse of flash and stock photography can undermine trust and be detrimental to your business.
We subsequently found out that the clients wife had hated his web site. Maybe next time he will listen to her.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;www.instantwebsitesecurity.com
