Please Help Me Prevent My Company From Spamming!

[frustrated email marketer]

Some of my colleagues are somewhat cynical and view the service offered by
esp’s as an unnecessary additional expense. The question I am continually
asked is “why should we use an email service provider when we could simply
dump the letter into outlook and send it for nothing".

Assuming for the sake of argument that they are not interested in following
up the data that using an esp provides – ie who clicked what and how often -
to enable them to sell more effectively – what is the “down side†to using
outlook for email marketing campaigns.

An example (which occurred whilst I was away last week) is that 20,000
emails were sent via outlook to a list of emails sourced from a variety of
exhibition catalogues & trade association membership lists. It was not
de-duped against our CRM database (to check for do not mails) nor was it
checked against any external mailing preference list. In addition, the age of
the data was not checked (much of it would have been at least three years old
if not older)

Assuming for the sake of argument that we have not breached any form of
copyright law, what is the worst that could happen to us, how often does
happen in reality and can you give me an example of a company that it has
happened to?

I’ve come to the conclusion that “fear†is the only way that some of my
colleagues will be convinced to do things properly. The company that helps me
win the argument will have my eternal gratitude!

 

[Roady [MVP]]

I'm not really sure what your real question is and how you are trying to put
Outlook in this context.

Most countries have anti-spam laws and in general they all require that the
recipient has agreed upon you sending them an email via an opt-in with an
additional confirmation of the subscription to the mailing list. Within each
mailing there should be instructions on how to opt-out again as well.

Buying/selling addresses is usually not allowed unless specifically stated
in the conditions at sign-up.

Harvesting email addresses from websites to send out a mailing is also
usually not allowed.
It is of course allowed to send out emails with genuine requests to an
address you found on the web. It is usually determined by scale in which you
are doing this and the frequency of it to determine if it is spamming what
you are doing or not.

Whether you eventually send this email via Outlook, another mail client or
an ESP is irrelevant. Usually convenience decides that part of your mailing.
Individual tracking links can also be send via Outlook by using a mail
merge; it's just another field holding certain information in that aspect.
See http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/mailmerge.htm

You'll have to check the laws for your countries to find out what exactly is
allowed and by which process. Usually there is also an indication of the
punishment if you indeed get prosecuted for your offence.

Even without prosecution, a company can get a bad reputation on the web by
users complaining about your unauthorized mailings and it is hard to get
away from that.