Thread: Would I be spamming?

Hello all..

I'd greatly appreciate any advice or views ye might have on this.

The story is... i've developed a classified ads type site and would like to do some email marketing to get it on its feet, but at the same time i really dont wanna over step the mark to the point of spamming. My intention was to email all potential cleints under each category of my site (covers all the categories you'd expect from such a site).

Here's the thing... from carzone.ie alone i've come up with 1500 email addresses.. if i was to cover all categories of the site in a similar manner i feel i be hitting the 10's of 1000's. I intend to mail each address only once.. simply just informing the recipient of the sites exsistence.. will this be considered spam??

In case your interested the sites Ads -*-*Trade Ireland (not spamming.. honest)

Ciarán

Most definitely would be spam.

From A Consumer Guide to Dealing with Unsolicited Direct Marketing - Data Protection Commissioner - Ireland

Electronic mail (i.e. a text message, voice message, sound message, image message, multimedia message or email message) for the purpose of direct marketing cannot be sent to you without your prior consent unless it is from someone with whom you have a current customer relationship.

Unless you own carzone.ie you do not have a current customer relationship with any of those email addresses

Yes it's spam. Don't do it.

Spam is lazy.

If you want to market something without spamming there are plenty of ways of doing it.

Thought as much.. thanks for clearing it up for me.

If you want to collect email addresses legitimately try to do something different. Run a competition or something

Thanks blacknight... i'm gonna have to put a little more thought (and work) into it.

Think i might avoid the whole email marketing area until i get some registered members of my own.

Great forum btw!)

Thing with spam is it works. I did it a couple of years ago - 1 mail only - sending from the uk to uk at the time and the guidelines there at that time saw this as legitimate marketing.

In Ireland your ISP will pick it up.

I think this question could refer to the age group you are targeting. Some people like very much to be kept up to date. Others (and they are often older, on average) have very little interest in reading the contents of their in-boxes, even when they are from people they know well. This is not meant to be an ageist comment, BTW (I'ts Anti-Ageism Week at the moment). It's just that society has become much more extrovert in the past twenty years and tactics that would be considered rude or intrusive in the past seem to be the norm now.

Originally Posted by Anouilh

I think this question could refer to the age group you are targeting. Some people like very much to be kept up to date. Others (and they are often older, on average) have very little interest in reading the contents of their in-boxes, even when they are from people they know well. This is not meant to be an ageist comment, BTW (I'ts Anti-Ageism Week at the moment). It's just that society has become much more extrovert in the past twenty years and tactics that would be considered rude or intrusive in the past seem to be the norm now.

So you're trying to excuse spamming scumbags by saying we're all old?