What To Do When You Get Spam

When you go to your mailbox and find pieces of junk mail mixed in with important correspondence, you throw it out. It is a mild nuisance and you probably don't even give it a second thought. Unfortunately, most people do the same when spam arrives in their inbox. They just delete it.

While that does get rid of an individual email, more needs to be done to control what can become an overwhelming problem. Liken spam to cockroaches; see one in your cabinet and you know that you likely have an infestation that needs to be dealt with swiftly.

To begin with, do not respond to the spam - ever. There are usually two ways that spam recipients make this mistake. First is the opt-out clause that appears at the bottom of the email. It appears to be a legal statement giving you the right to remove yourself from this mailing list. Unless you legitimately authorized the company to send you mail, in which case this is not spam, do not follow this link. Most often this link is simply a way for the spammers to identify your email address as valid. Now they can sell your address to other spammers and thank you for making their work easier by continuing to send you the spam you didn't want in the first place.

The second manner in which this error occurs is when, out of total frustration, you reply to the sender with a firm statement of your disgust. This usually happens when the spam is pornographic material and despite your best efforts, keeps appearing in your inbox. Sometimes the reply will not work because the sender's email address is a fake one and it will just bounce back to you as undeliverable. Count yourself lucky because the alternative means that they now have a confirmation of your address.

Next, read the email header. The header contains the full path of computers through which the email passed to get to you. Most pieces of email pass through at least four computers - the spammer's, their ISP, your ISP, and finally yours. Since the stated from address is usually a fake one, this is the most reliable way to track down the spammer's ISP, at the very least.

Each computer that the spam travels through will add lines to the header stating who they are, who the mail came from, and where they are sending it. Headers can seem complicated, but in most cases you will be able to at least recognize other ISPs. If your mail is through Yahoo and you see "juno.com" in the mix, then you know that you can report the spam to Juno.

When reporting spam, you will need to cut and paste the full header path into the email to give the experts the opportunity to track down the offender. To read an email header, you typically just right click on the email and then choose properties, options, or header depending on which email program you are using.

Finally, forward the spam to a number of authorities. The first would be the spammer's ISP. If you cannot tell who that may be, send the spam to your ISP. Additionally, several websites are available to help you report spam, like spamcop.net.

Second, forward the spam to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. While they will not take action on your behalf, they will add the spam to a database compiled on known UCE (unsolicited commercial email).

If the spam is a "419 Scam", or Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud, fax a copy of the email and its headers to the United States Secret Service. You will know this spam when you read it - an exiled African leader of some sort needs your help and bank account information. These scams have defrauded many and need to be taken seriously.

Now you may delete the spam.

About the Author:
Lewis Leake
Posted: 20-09-2005
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Spam Guard Your Business

Have you started or are you thinking in starting an easy home business?

Then be carefull because spam guard may harm your business!

I bet that you know that the bulk e-mail marketing technique it's widely used on Internet, it's free, it's easy and it's fast...

But on the long run it can cost you more than you will gain with it!

Many people identify bulk e-mail with spam. Spam used to be referred about posting or broadcasting ads to unrelated discussion groups, but now this term has grown meaning "any unsolicited e-mail" or "any e-mail sent to people that didn't ask for it". And the Internet Service Providers are taking steps in order to spam guard themselves, that can be very dangerous to your business if you decide to use bulk e-mail as your promotional tool.

If the people that receive your unsolicited e-mail, complaint to your ISP and or your virtual host service, you may end up loosing one or both of them. This means that your web site will be shut down, and you will lose your connection to the Internet.

Of course that you can get another ISP and virtual host server, but this will harm you in three ways:

* It will be a waist of time

* It will cost you money

* It will damage your reputation

So this free medium for online promotion, can be the source of too many problems, and the best that you can do, is to do not get involved with it.

But SPAM GUARDS can give you problems...

EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO SPAM!

And this brings us to our next topic...

FREE SPAM GUARD CHECKING

Let's say that you're about to mail out your e-zine...

You can't have an idea of how many will actually REACH your subscribers and how many will get filtered, junked, trashed, or stomped by ISPs, HotMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc., along the way.

Why?

Simple answer... spam guard software.

You know how important e-mail is to YOUR business, right? What if I told you 10%, 20%, maybe 50% or more of it is not getting through?

Spam has reached epidemic levels. So much so that ISPs have been forced to combat it with filtering spam guard software.

Alas, many legitimate marketers are getting caught up and hurt, even though they are not the target.

Now, instead of JUST hoping for the best...

With our spam guard checking feature, you can know exactly what to do to reduce the "spamminess" of your e-zines and promotional e-mail!

As a result, you will know that your e-mail and newsletters are being delivered directly into INBOXES of your clients and affiliates...

... and NOT sent by spam guard software into the Junk Mail Folder.

It's no longer just enough to send the mail...

You must be sure that you can reach the INBOX!

What should you do to protect your honest business from being recognized as spam by spam guard software when it is not?

Send your marketing letters and e-zine issues to my special autoresponder, and you will get a Spam Guard Check Report.

Even if you don't have an ezine or newsletter you should check your e-mail signature file!

Why?

Simple answer... the average marketing sig file can contain enough "spam triggers" to throw you into Yahoo! Mail's Junk Mail folder.

STEPS TO SPAM CHECKING YOUR MARKETING TOOLS

USE THE SPAMCHECK TEST

Send an e-mail to spamcheck-RB@sitesell.net with the word TEST (in caps, no quotes) preceding your subject in the Subject line.

I repeat, because it's important...

* Start the subject line with... TEST .... or the spam guard software will assume it's spam, and follow up with your usual e-mail or ezine's Subject

i.e. if your Subject is:

"The best home business"

you should write:

TEST "The best home business"

* On the body of the e-mail put your ezine's issue content or your marketing e-mail's content

* Send it to: spamcheck-RB@sitesell.net

And that's it, that's all there is to it!...

You will receive an Instant free spam guard checking, and a free Report telling you the results. :-)

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

About the Author:
Dr. Roberto Bonomi is a successful e-book writer that shares his home business ideas at: http://www.easy-home-business.com. And you can post free your own articles, or find free articles for your web site or ezine at http://articles.drbonomi.com.
This article was posted on September 05, 2006
Article Source: articlecity

Do Your Autoresponders Drive Your Customers Crazy?

Writing chained auto-responder messages to sell a product is a good idea in principle, but in practice it can LOSE you clients just as well if you don't get right.

A chained auto-responder is a sequence of emails that gets delivered automatically when someone subscribes to this autoresponder.

It is used in marketing to deliver mini-advertisements, teaser courses, demo extracts, testimonials or stepped sales letters, and all of this is designed to get the client eventually to click on the "buy me now" link for the main product that is being promoted.

There are three main problems with chained auto-responders. Avoid these, TEST your linked auto-responders before you inflict them on the general public, and you should see significant increases in your sales.

Problem No. 1 - No Content Beyond Selling

This is THE most VIOLENTLY annoying class of chained autoresponders - message after message from the same place, trying to sell you something, in so many different words. YUCK!

What marketers who don't THINK seem to forget is that folk who own and manage PCs and email aren't that stupid.

They can read and write, you know, and they are not IDIOTS.

After two or three repeats, they will immediately delete such messages from their inbox and probably put a spam block on the sender domain for good measure.

That's not what the marketeer had in mind, I should wager ...

Problem No. 2 - Too Little Content

I remember one "mini course" which contained nothing but teasers and virtually no useful information whatsoever.

Once again, look, marketeers!

If you want people to "try" the product, you need to give them at least a little taste of it.

Don't hold the glass with the sample wine under their nose, and when they reach out, oops, that'll be $875 dollars please ... but we do have a "money back" guarantee ...

This is just ANNOYING, it's even dishonourable and an angry person does not make a good customer.

Problem No. 3 - Too Much, Way Too Much ...

I subscribed to another auto-responder teaser mini course just a few days ago, and here, the folks in charge had done a 180' U-turn on the two points above, most likely because they got it that those content less/content poor efforts don't work to sell more of their product.

In their desire to have it be known how marvellously content packed the main item was, they created this huge long document, of at least 20, 25 paragraphs for the first instalment of their chained auto-responder.

Gee.

Now I don't know about the rest of the planet, but I'm actually quite a busy person and I get STACKS of emails every day.

I try and cut down the time I spent on dealing with email because it does get out of hand, and on this occasion I was into something else anyway.

I took just *one look* at the plethora of writing and went, "Oh god, I don't have time for that right now ..." and left it.

Have you ever left a non-priority email for later ...?

Yeah, you know what I mean.

But then, the very next day, the 2nd instalment arrived. I opened it and damn me, there's another REAM of goodness knows what, but now I've missed the boat because this is No. 2 and I haven't read No. 1 yet!

I hastily closed it, feeling guilty and moved on.

But then, No. 3 arrived - another book length instalment. I just couldn't handle it anymore.

I deleted the lot.

Now that's a terrible shame because there may have been valuable information I never got, and the guys who wrote this spend AGES doing it.

So, here are my suggestion for chained auto-responders copy.

1. Head it with, "Busy? Save me! I contain important information!" or words to that effect.

2. Keep it SHORT. Pick out ONE USEFUL thing and just - tell me THAT. So I can glance at it and say, "Hey, that's useful! Cool! Thanks, guys!" When I mean short, I mean anything above three paragraphs is way, way too long for an autoresponder email in this day and age.

3. Keep it TOTALLY FOCUSSED on the product you are selling. I'm on autoresponders where you wouldn't begin to guess for all the waffle, testimonials, side tracks and "personal messages" what I'm supposed to be BUYING at the end of the day!

4. Give people a chance to keep up. Space your messages three days, don't inundate us. Or better still, test this for yourself. One hell of a lot of "internet marketing wisdom" is completely out of date now because it was researched back in the days when we got four emails a week, and not fourteen thousand each. Time has moved on and requires NEW thinking, and different strategies.

My last tip on chained autoresponders is as follows.

Subscribe yourself to OTHER PEOPLE'S efforts.

Don't look at them as a marketeer would, but as though you were a human being in front of their computer, if you know what I mean by that.

You can learn what pleases and what works, and what doesn't.

Mark out to yourself what you like and use this in your own efforts, and avoid what really turns you off.

Lastly, keep working at your chained autoresponder copy until you have something that really works, and really brings in lots more sales.

They are a great resource - if handle them right.

About the author:
Silvia Hartmann is the author of MindMillion and you can get a FREE course, delivered by autoresponder (!), the 60 Second Wealth Creator, at http://mindmillion.com/60/
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