Being labelled by Email Servers as a source of Spam (unsolicited email) can get your personal email service virtually shut down. Want to avoid being labelled as spam? Pay attention to this advice!
A number of tourism organizations (ie. DMO's) provide inquiry lists generated by phone and email to their membership. These lists of email inquiries are usually distributed by the association to membership based visitors to the DMO web site responding to an inquiry like: I'd like to receive more information by email from "insert DMO name here".
The unlucky individual is then bombarded with perhaps 100 responses from individual tourism business members within a few hours!
This is SPAM – unsolicited email! Members who wish to not be labelled as sources of spam should not reply to these invitations from their DMO. The individual who signed on for information did not request information from you, they requested it from the DMO.
I know, members are thinking, hey, leads this is what I pay my membership for. Well it's time to change that.
For those who have not been paying attention, the world of internet marketing has changed drastically over the past five years. Not only is the current practice not a good one, it is illegal!
There is no sugar coating it. Have a look at the CANSPAM act in the U.S. or PIPEDA legislation in Canada or the E.U. statutes. DMO's engaging in distribution of email lists are breaking the law. Members who use the information are sources of spam.
DMO's need to change this practice or risk harming their membership who unknowingly will be labelled as sources of spam by email servers.
It is time to change these practices. The good news is that not only is there a better way, the better way of handling email, not only avoids membership being labelled as sources of spam, but provides income opportunities for the DMO.
Best practice is for the DMO to respond directly to the email inquiry with links to appropriate members web sites.
Stay tuned to a future post for more. . .
Get more information on best practices for email and avoid being labeled spam at these ISP Web sites:
— AOL: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/
— MSN/Hotmail : http://postmaster.msn.com/Services.aspx
— Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/
— Gmail: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html
— Juno/Netzero/UnitedOnline: http://www.unitedonline.net/postmaster/
— RoadRunner: http://security.rr.com/spam.htm
