Publication Guidelines:

You may use this article as long as byline, resource box, and links remain intact. If article does not fit your Web site/newsletter guidelines, please request adjustments. mailto:bobette@WebSiteMarketingPlan.com .

Please notify author of use and provide a sample copy of publication.

Word count: 627

Formatted 65 characters per line.

Email questions to mailto:bobette@WebSiteMarketingPlan.com.

Author Photo: Available to copy from Web site. Color: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com Black and White: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/about_bobette.htm

Autoresponder: mailto:EMailMktg@WebSiteMarketingPlan.com

HTML: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/Arts/DirectEmail.htm

Copyright 2002 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.

____________________________________________________________

Direct Mail Advertising; Email Is Not Like Postal Mail.

by Bobette Kyle

One of most popular and potentially effective advertising methods is direct email. If you deliver a well- written message and execute delivery properly you will be rewarded with new leads, sales, and traffic to your Web site. If message is poorly written or you commit a netiquette faux pas, however, your efforts could end in disaster.

If you are new to Internet marketing, you might equate direct email to direct postal mail. The concepts are very similar; in both you broadcast a standard message to a large number of individuals in hopes of receiving positive responses. To uninitiated, it is logical to assume you can approach two in same way. It seems like only difference is means of communication. If you are thinking this way, STOP! STOP! STOP!

Many people perceive unsolicited commercial message (UCE) - spam - differently than junk mail from postal service. The sender pays for direct mail sent through postal service. Not so for UCE. Spam on Internet ties up recipient's resources by using storage space, slowing down systems, and sometimes crashing equipment. For this reason and others, many abhor spam. Some assertively condemn spammers. If you spam you will undoubtedly be reported to your ISP and email provider. Depending on circumstances, your accounts could be closed and your Web site may be shut down. Need I say it? This is NOT result you are looking for from your email marketing program.

That is a lot of email!

With estimates that number of Internet users is nearing 1 billion mark, amount of email floating around Internet is only going to increase and problems will get worse.

Anyone online can tell you that a huge part of problem is SPAM, or Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).

The subject has been beaten like a dead horse and no viable solution is in sight. No, not even federal legislation can stop or fix this problem adequately.

The person or person(s) that do find solution will go down as genuine heroes in Internet history.

Ironically, there is another side to this entire problem that has yet to be addressed. The irony is that it comes to us from established, legal sources, not spammers.

We have all received their email.

The From: field says, "Mail Delivery System". The Subject: field says, "Mail Delivery Failed". And Body: of email begins with, "This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim)."

This is especially true if you have a mailing list.

I send out email to my list of over 7100, 100% OPT-IN subscribers twice each week and it causes me to be bombarded with hundreds of emails daily!

It starts with an email message that states, "WARNING", your message could not be delivered but you need do nothing.

Then they follow up that message with "Mail Delivery Failed", vast majority of those emails simply tell me that intended recipient has a "Full Mail Box".

Finally, I receive another email letting me know that they have still been unable to deliver my email and that it is being deleted from their list.

For each email I send out that does not make it to where it is intended, I get back at least three emails.

My experience has been that at least 5% to 10% of every mailing I send out will come back to me as "Not Delivered".

That means that each time I send out my list of over 7100 subscribers, I get back at least 2100 "Message Not Delivered" emails.