Email Marketing a Thing of the Past?

From what I've been hearing and reading lately, one could easily think that email marketing is quickly becoming a thing of the past for legitimate online businesses. Why?

Well, government regulation of unsolicited commercial email (UCE) is becoming tougher and tougher, and so are the reactions of many ISPs.

Late in 2004, the FTC issued some revised interpretations of the CAN-SPAM act, which first became effective in January of 2004. The rules are getting tougher and tougher.

Clearly, the intent of this is to stop wholesale spammers, especially those who advertise porn sites and the like, but in theory, anyone doing any type of email marketing has a big potential liability if they fail to take all necessary precautions.

Even then, you can't be sure that some vocal complainer won't get your website, and your business shut down. Rumor has it that many ISPs consider you guilty until you prove yourself innocent when there is a spam complaint against you or one of your affiliates or associates.

To make matters worse, the majority of true spam is sent out with false header information anyway, in an effort to disguise the identity of the sender. In some cases, the spammers are using the name and return address of a legitimate person or website operator who has nothing to do with the nasty purpose of the spam.

If the Feds can't find those people, are they going to focus on the easily identifiable "little guys" who send out a few hundred, or at most a few thousand emails? Ouch!

Where is this all headed?

What replaces email? Nothing, really, but blogging and RSS offer a new avenue for getting your message out without anyone being able to complain about having seen it.

In the meantime, I've also developed a direct email marketing strategies site to help educate people to the "brave new world" of permission-based direct email marketing.

If you are a legitimate operator, and comply with the law, you really needn't worry about anything. But you need to keep abreast of current events and change with the tides.

As much as I love blogs and RSS, they are a *complement* to ethical email marketing, not a total replacement for it. Each has its place, and its benefits and drawbacks.

Direct email, and even direct (snail) mail remain viable, even vibrant mechanisms for the savvy internet marketer. You owe it to yourself to learn about and implement these strategies.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to be adding a lot of content to the blog/site mentioned above, including some stuff I've recently learned about the value of direct mail, even for webmasters.

Come on over and check the site out!

source: emarketting blog