Autoresponder Spam and Proper Use

Autoresponder spam could get you into trouble with the “spam” laws. Ant-spam laws are laws that you must follow when sending out emails, even if they were requested.

The anti spam laws require that each commercial email that you send must include your name or business name, your street address, city, state, zip code, and phone number. You must also include instructions that will allow the recipient to remove themselves (opt-out) from your mailing list. Failure to do this could mean you are essentially breaking the law (creating autoresponder spam), no matter what state or country you live in!

You need to protect yourself from spam complaints in any way that you can. Include a check box on the order form asking for permission to send your customer periodic emails. Make sure that when a customer requests any type of information from you that an email is sent requesting confirmation before any other email is sent. Never send unsolicited commercial email. These are keys to avoiding autoresponder spam.

Because of the over abundance of spam, most email clients now have spam filters installed. Spam filters catch emails that they consider to be spam and either move it to a ‘spam folder’ or automatically delete it. It would be a shame to find out that the majority of the messages that are send out end up in the spam folder or get automatically deleted as spam. All your hard work and time was wasted.

There are two ways to avoid the spam filters. Whenever someone opts into your autoresponder or requests email from you, ask them to add your email address or autorsponder address to their white list and give them instructions on how to do it. Email clients maintain an actual white list where the owner of the email client can add specific addresses that should never be considered spam.

There are words and phrases that trigger the spam filter, making them think (think is not the right word, as they are strictly rules based software) that your email is spam. You can solve this problem by running your email message through a spam checker. Spam checkers check your email for words and phases that may trigger the spam filters, allowing you to change or fix them. Spam checker programs are often web based (do a web search for them), and free to use. Don’t send out autoresponder spam messages without doing a spam check first.

An autoresponder is a powerful internet marketing income tool, but it can be misused.

One autoresponder responding to another autoresponder can create chaos, and in some cases, it can overload servers. This can happen when you sign up for something, using your autoresponder email address. You sign up, and a message is sent to someone else’s autoresponder, which responds to your autoresponder, which responds to that autoresponder. This continues on and on until it is manually stopped and straightened out. This could be very nasty, and it could get you into trouble with your hosting service or autoresponder service. Avoid using your autoresponder address to request information.

Some people use their autoresponder address on purpose when they sign up for discussion lists. This causes their autoresponder message to be sent to the entire list, or to one person on the list, each time a person sends a real message to the discussion list. The discussion list owners do not like and will not tolerate this practice. They will ban the member from the discussion list and may report them to the spam authorities.

Avoid these problems and use your auto responder responsibly. It will be one of your favorite and most useful tools for your internet marketing success.

This is part two of a series on autoresponders. You may read part one by going to Autoresponders and Internet Marketing.

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