Fax marketing?
 

Is fax marketing legal?

How would you approach this to sell mobile sites?

Re: Fax marketing?
 

It is only legal if you get their consent to send the fax first, which means you have to call them *gasp* before hand... and then you need to follow up with them too... John Durham talks a lot about this method in the offline section of this forum lately.

You can't just blast out a ton of faxes randomly.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Marketing faxes are also faxes sent for basically commercial-type purposes. Even if a fax could also ordinarily be more considered to be fax marketing and it will not be regarded as a marketing fax for the purposes of the Act unless it falls into the definition specified in this Act.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

I haven't seen a fax machine for years. Are they still around?

Re: Fax marketing?
 

It does work, I received a fax the other day at my business on really cheap Hp's and I ended up buying 4. So give it a try

Re: Fax marketing?
 

I am not sure where you got this definition from, but it almost word for word a very good definition of spam. As said above, if you do not have permission, it is spam.

And just about all businesses HATE spam faxes. It costs the business both paper and toner for the fax. And some toner cartridges cost several hundred dollars.

We had a policy in our insurance agencies that nothing was a good buy if it came from a spam fax.

Oh, by the way, if you get one do not use the respond at the bottom. If you send them a notice that you do not want to get faxes, you have just confirmed a good fax number. Faxes will increase.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

I don't know if it's legal, but I doubt it would be productive / cost effective / good to build your reputation or much else. Thinking on a first impression level, it might not look good / suggesting that that is the level of innovation of whatever product you'd be selling.

Just a thought.

Hmmm. Good luck with it though :).

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Holy Camoly! Have you ever gone to a Pharmacy to renew a prescription?....from either a Doctor, Dentist, Chriopractor or any medico?

Guess what they use 100% to connect to the Pharmacy? Yup! FAXES!

So...phone any Medico's office and ask for the Office Manager. Tell her/him that you'd like to FAX them some info on a "new way to bring them more patients"....and....if they will give you their Fax #....you will "Fax It Right Over"!

If they ask you to "explain" what it is, just say; "It's TOO HARD to explain on the phone! That's why I'd like to FAX IT to you....first....then...if you'd like more info....I can then, explain it on the phone! FAIR ENOUGH!"

I've found that to "get an agreement"....I use the phrase, "Fair Enough"!

What's UNfair about asking permission to send them a Fax?

And....waay baack in the early 90's, when Faxes were just getting going...
I started a Fax Business where I'd phone local business offices (insurance offices, accountant offices, mortgage offices.... ANY business or profession that had employees IN AN OFFICE.

I'd ask for the "Office Manager" and I'd tell her (they were usually females), " Hi....I'm putting together a Fax Program where I will FAX, Restaurant Daily Specials to your office every day....making it easy for those in your office to decide where to go for lunch or have food delivered." The service is totally Free and if you'll give me your Fax No. I'll put you on our List. You can candel at any time."

When the "dust settled"....I had 42 restaurants and deli's paying me $100 a week!

This is STILL a very viable business. Most businesses have a Fax and restaurants and deli's STILL have a need to "sell" their Food.

Don Alm

Re: Fax marketing?
 

The "Fax Business" was so out of hand in some cities, that some states had to make new laws regarding sending faxes. If you send a fax that is advertising something and the recipient of the fax has not opted in, you can be fined or legally served a bill for the cost of a toner cartridge/roll or ream of paper as these costs add up to some businesses that get hit up on a regular basis for things they do not care for.
I know one office manager who kept asking a marketing company/restaurant owner to stop faxing over their menu and daily specials because they kept faxing due to having different people being hired to do it. Finally the office manager called up and said, " OK here's your option, we are out of toner, you can either send over a large pizza with everything on it for free or a new toner roll." A pizza showed up after a two days because the restaurant owner realized that his business license would now go before a city review board before it was renewed if there were excessive or unusual complaints coming in about his business. Be careful, you could gamble and send 1 fax asking if it is Ok to fax offers on occasion, hoping they reply with a fax back saying yes.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

it works but you have to have the consent of the person who you are faxing.
John Durham has a nice idea as to how to do it.
you should ask him or look for the thread that he has already mentioned it. he has some really good ideas.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

i guess it works for some marketers, i got in on a trip for 2 straight to the sunshine state about 3 months ago.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Interesting form of marketing, never read anything or heard much about it.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

The way I would do this is to find the restaurants who are already faxing their specials to local businessess and demonstrate to them how much more effective mobile sms would be.

(By George I think I'm onto to something) ;-)

Re: Fax marketing?
 

This is relevant to us because we have been debating whether or not it is worth doing a fax campaign. The member who said, "Do they still have fax machines?" makes a good point. I know that offices still use them, but do people actually read the spam faxes?
When I worked in a office with a fax machine, we positioned the feeder right above the recycling bin because it was all garbage.

Any other opinions?

Re: Fax marketing?
 

In the U.S. Federal law prohibits sending a fax to anyone without their consent. The penalties are substantial and you also have to pay the winner's legal fees, so there are lawyers who specialize in tracking down and suing fax marketers who don't follow the rules.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Why would you seriously want to market via Fax? It seems silly to me and very backwards. Whatever happened to face to face communication? Why is everyone so scared of it nowadays? There is no surer way of selling a product or service than with a face to face meetings.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

There are some grumpy people out there who will curse you out for putting a flyer on their door or calling them when they don't want to be bothered. I can only imagine that you would get some very angry responses back when you're sending out illegal faxes that use up their paper and ink.

My fax number now sends faxes to my email so it's not a problem at all, but it was VERY annoying when I would get back home each day to find a medical insurance flyer printed.

I would never get upset with someone putting flyers on my door but those faxes were incredibly annoying.

I suppose if you could find some way to get their consent first then it would be a pretty effective way of reminding them about your service.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

I will definitely stay away from Fax Marketing. It is very outdated and people that receive Fax advertisement usually get really mad!. There are hundreds of other ways of marketing out there that work just fine. Fax Marketing looks like a desperate way of marketing more that it does professional and people that do fax marketing usually are those that never get their online business off the ground. This is just my opinion...

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Do not send unsolicited faxes. The Anti Junk Fax Law was passed in 2005 and it states that you cannot send faxes to people you are not currently doing business with. (More info here: Fax Advertising | FCC.gov)

Secondly, one of my businesses is a list brokerage firm and we have not sold/rented fax numbers for years because the list compilers cannot scrub them or keep them up to date - for the simple reason that it's illegal to fax these people... (Does that make sense? What I mean is that while postal lists and email lists can be scrubbed and updated, fax lists cannot).

So even if you want to break the law and send junk faxes to people, whatever fax list you get your hands on will be very unreliable.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Fax marketing = Welcome to 1985! ;)

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Interesting!! :)
Fax marketing? How it works? I even don't know, how the machine is looking like. I doubt, this media is probably the only non-used media for marketing.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

I didn't see fax in ages.

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Yeah,, I did fax marketing way back in about 95-96-97... It actually worked,, but just like anything,, it was a numbers game.

100 faxes = 1-3 responses,,, but like I said,,, 1995-1997

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Never heard of fax lol

Re: Fax marketing?
 

Before my time but please indulge us with a tale ;)