BeachDude

After talking to most of my AM's at all the major CPA networks, they all say 80% of their volume comes from "mailers". Well, I am trying to figure out how these so called "mailers" get their email lists, because I want to replicate what they are doing while being CAN SPAM compliant.

Question: Say I go here and buy an email list of 100,000 opt-in subscribers, load them into my email client and send them a CPA offer after scrubbing the list. Is this considered spamming even though they have opted in?

How do the "mailers" get their lists to do $300k days like my affiliate managers say they are doing?

Life is a beach I'm just playin' in the sand.

LooseChange

Anytime you send someone an unsolicited email it is considered spam.

I'm not promoting anything

lgibbon

Yes, of course it is.
They didn't opt in to your list.
Buying email addresses is a mugs game.

rts2271

Wrong
and
Wrong

No cookies for you two.

You are allowed to send a initial offer email.

Don't believe me? How could co-reg operate if not?
How could selling a list be legal if not?
The Mega email marketing companies work almost exclusively by co-reg and have no optin mechanism.

Ralph Smith
New Business Hosting Inc
http://www.list-doctor.com
http://www.soloadsource.com/recommends/NBH

Trent Brownrigg

I would say your best bet, if you are going to purchase a list, is to email them letting them know how and why you got their information and offer them something really valuable for free to try and get them to opt-in to your own list. That way you get rid of those that don't want you to mail them and you get a new double opt-in list that is much more targeted and responsive.

You can find me at http://trentbrownrigg.com

TG12

Oops Need to send that as a PM

Vaoser Link Ninja Software
DHV Delivery Systems FAILING at online dating???

lgibbon

I think you'll find it's you that's wrong.
What might be acceptable in the US is not in most other countries.
Unless you can target your spam to only US addresses,
you will run into problems.

bobby_shahzad

I agree with Trent. Just to add to what he said, also you can put these people in a follow up sequence and buid relationship with them. But no email service provider will allow you to do that even. Like aweber or Get response will shut down your account for 5% bounce rate or 1 % complaint rate after you import your list. For this , you need your own dedicated server and your own software to send out list. But you need to be very expert in email deliverability in order to do that yourself.

BulkResponse.com a Bulk Email Marketing Service

GoldbarTech Email Marketing and Email Delivery Management Company

Bradley J Anderson

It's not worth losing my account over, I can tell you that. And besides, building a list the old-fashioned way makes for a much more targeted audience.

Quibble about the semantics all you want, but I would still consider it spam, as well, and would treat it just like any other piece of garbage.

NestZone

Getting the list is one thing and using it another. Some gets a 100,000 mail list of some one on VPS and decide to use it on shared hosting with limited resources. The account gets suspended for TOS violation.

What may be considered spam in one context in another may not.

To the recipient what is not in the box is not useful, will always be flagged as spam.

myob

The reason providers prohibit this marketing method is because of the rampant ignorance and of course abuse which exposes them to high legal risk.

Here is a summary of the laws governing bulk email (in the US)

The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business

LooseChange

Spoken like a true spammer. The question isn't if it's legal, the question is if it's ethical. Everything is "legal" until you get caught, tried and prosecuted for it.

I'm not promoting anything

myob

Because of this misunderstanding and the much wider problem of systemic abuse, most providers such as ISPs, commercial autoresponders, and email servers outright ban this type of marketing to reduce their legal exposure.

bobby_shahzad

Totally agreed with you. But one of the reasons why ISPs and ESPs ban bulk mailing is their server reputation

BulkResponse.com a Bulk Email Marketing Service

GoldbarTech Email Marketing and Email Delivery Management Company

mrelosa

Opt-in forms have a purpose. A person fills up an opt-in form when they authorizes emails to be sent to them. However, exchanging or buying opt-in list is okay as long as the first email sent will have a brief introduction and a button to activate their registration. If the receiver of the email does not confirm their email ad, then no more emails should be sent again.

nickchou

BeachDude,

Many so called super affiliates actually spent a lot of time to build their legitimate mailing lists. They often offer something valuable free of charge to visitors. Their lists will eventually grow with time. When you have a list with more than 10,000 subscribers, you are a winner.

I hope this helps.

Nick

linxye

In my opinion this is spamming. I think it's take time ans patience to build a list. It,s not worth it...

f1n

Yep, it's spamming man

Michael D Forbes

If you can eat it with Eggs, it's Spam.

website12

It is spam because you need them to optin to your lsit it is very important dont spam.

Black Hat Cat

No, the question is if it is spam. It isn't, whether you like it or not. Just because you call a dog a cat doesn't make it so. And I don't know what planet you live on, but everything isn't "legal" until you get caught. If what you're doing is legal, no one is looking to catch you doing it.

NoviIM

Hey beachdude, if you do that, the emails are unsolicited and not targeted properly.. thus most of them will end up as spam and you will get minuscule conversions.

Paul Myers

[sigh]

First off, there's a difference between the legal issues and the contractual issues involved.

Legally, spamming is treated differently in different jurisdictions. In Canada, coming this fall, it will be outright illegal to send bulk email to anyone who hasn't given express permission prior to the mailing. The thing that should scare bulk emailers in the US is that the new law allows for private right of action.

Note that living in the US does not exempt you from that law. Send to a Canadian address (which is an interesting debate, given that it might include Gmail addresses, for example, which are accessed from Canada), and you could be sued. That makes the whole practice substantially more risky.

The laws in Europe and Australia are matters for others with more specific knowledge to address.

In the US, spam is not explicitly illegal, within certain constraints. However, there is a very clear allowance in the law for providers to make good faith efforts to block email they or their users deem to be objectionable.

There is also nothing in US law preventing service providers from forbidding the sending or support of unsolicited bulk email through their services. That's a contractual issue, and best analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

All of that said, we do not allow the promotion or teaching of the sending of unsolicited bulk email in this forum. That policy has been in effect for better than a decade, so there's no excuse for anyone who's been here for any length of time to be unaware of it.

To be clear on the subject: Promoting email spamming here is a bannable offense.


Paul

LegitIncomes

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Guys, if you went to the site in the OP, you'd see that these are all verified leads, time and date stamps, etc.... these are most likely co-registration, which is 100% LEGAL.

Paul Myers

Ralph,Sure, and your provider is probably allowed to nuke your account for it. That includes, in many cases, including a link to your sites (or a redirect landing there) in spam sent through other services. This is known as spamvertising.

What you're describing is a "one bite at the apple" theory. Given the number of people wanting a bite, that's not a strategy consistent with the long-term utility of email as a communications medium.

See my comment in a previous post in this thread. Anyone considering defending or promoting spamming here should understand that this is one of our less flexible policies.


Paul

LegitIncomes

I don't think anyone is defending spam.

If I register with site ABC, or purchase a product from them, and on the checkout form I check a box that says something like "Please send me product offers, updates, etc... about (insert niche here) from your partner advertisers", or "Please send me product/niche/newsletter updates from Company XYZ" and then I get emails from them....well that's not spam at all. I specifically agreed to receive those emails. It's called co-registration, and LARGE companies such as WalMart, Proctor & Gamble, etc... all utilize it.

Paul Myers

LegitIncomes,

I'm familiar with the sort of thing you're calling co-registration. (That's a common use of the word. There are others which don't involve such iffy practices.)

Many service providers treat co-reg of the type you're describing as spam. We can debate the semantics all day long and never resolve the question to anyone's satisfaction, but that fact remains. Do it, and you may well lose accounts over it.

As far as the legal end of things, the matter isn't nearly as clear. That's a subject best left to the folks who specialize in the field, though. It involves a lot of factors, including proximity of the disclosure to the submit button, whether it is pre-checked or not, clarity of the language, and a number of others that may not apply to any given form.


Paul

pmbrent

This is a good idea I may have to try this.

JPSimplySites

In my opinion it is spamming. If I have not opted into your list and you send me an email even just to ask me a question, I would consider it a spam. I would not click the spam button if it is the first time I received the email from the sender but if I keep receiving other emails from the same sender and I can't find the unsubscribe button, I would have to click the spam button to stop getting any more emails from the sender.

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AaronJones

Lots of things are technically legal. However it's the network that decides what is allowable and what will get you banned.

Aaron

[b] Sig On Vacation

Shazia Mirza

Is it spamming?

Yes it is.

LegitIncomes

That's true.
It's legal, and it's NOT spam...but the network might not like it.

LegitIncomes

I disagree. If it's a co-registration, which is what the link the OP refers to looks like, it's not spam. If you agree to receive emails, and I send you one, that's not spam.