SPAM is perhaps the most reviled, irritating, and generally upsetting aspect of Internet use in the world today, right up there with so-called "pop-up" ads which appear whenever you visit certain websites.  We all know the feeling when we open our email boxes only to find dozens of "junk" mails and often offensive materials smothering the one note from Aunt Kathy in Brookhaven... which sometimes gets deleted along with all the garbage in our haste to clean out our box before it become inundated again.

The problem with spam is growing at a phenomenal rate, despite federal and state guidelines and laws in place.  Spammers, organizations whose sole business is to mass-email to so-called "target" audiences, skirt the spirit of the law by following only it's letter... and even THEN sometimes performing unethical acts in the process.

One such unethical practice is to offer a "remove" link or button on their email, to supposedly unsubscribe you from their service... except when you press it, all it's doing is CONFIRMING that your email address is valid.  They then take this information, "remove" you from the email list you were on, but ADD you to perhaps DOZENS of others!  This certainly tries the patience and trust of so many email users, that ALL spam or even emails that LOOK like spam cause immediate feelings of anger and violation.

It is into this atmosphere you must tread if you wish to market your products by email to ANY group, including and perhaps especially ours.  The majority of our members are savvy businesspeople, busy entrepreneurs, artists and inventors and mentors... and all of them have a thorough understanding of the IBI Forum teaching, "NEXT!"  The idea is not to blanket our membership with emails (which is not only unethical, out of integrity, and illegal, but IBI Global's policy under contract with it's members strictly prohibits this and is severely penalized), but to very carefully pick your audience and make it as PERSONAL as possible.

One good way to handle it is to start small, and start with a disclaimer:

"My name is Joe Courteous and I attended IBI as a grad of Class 899, and I obtained your email address through our online network.  My company, ABC Products, Inc., would like to introduce some specials ONLY for IBI members and special guests.  If you find you don't have an interest in the products, services or opportunities we have sent you, please contact us immediately to be removed from our mailing list, with our apologies (see end of email for instructions).  If you feel you know of someone else who might benefit from our products, services or opportunities, please forward this on to them with our compliments!"

Basically, you get the idea.

A disclaimer saying more or less what this says is NECESSARY at the outset, and it's mandated by federal law to offer the reader a quick and easy way to "unsubscribe" from your email, although the law only requires they be removed within 21 days.  It's always a good idea to get them off immediately, of course, so you don't accidentally keep sending them stuff and they start screaming.

If you begin with this kind of disclaimer, and end with the removal instructions you promised, then you're on the right track; you're also far less likely to be accused of spamming.

The only other suggestion I have for you, other than concentrating your efforts to posts on the Web Community Forum boards rather than mass emailings, is to be very judicious and methodical about your email groups.  This means, send to perhaps 100 people at a time, wait a week, then send to a DIFFERENT 100 people.  Meanwhile, clean out your first list of all the unsubscribers and bad email addresses.  Wait a week on the second batch while you clean them out and send a new email to the first group.  Keep repeating this process for each group you send to and slowly build up third, fourth, fifth groups, one each week.  Eventually, you will end up combining the first, second and so on into one group because of all the folks who drop off.  The way to build a TARGETED MAILING LIST without doing a demographics study or going through an advertising agency is to build it slowly like this.  This way, everyone who remains on your lists either WANTS to be on there or simply doesn't care enough to bother asking to be removed.  You don't CARE about the latter (email is free), but you can also remove them automatically once a year or so by sending out a quick boom-boom-boom email series (over three weeks, say) saying if they want to continue receiving your emails, they need to reply with "YES" in the subject line or something.  Anyone you don't get a yes from after the third week, remove them.  If they missed it and want to resubscribe, they'll tell you.

Using this method... if you start with a total group of 1500, then it will take you 15 weeks to email all those people.  By the time the 15th group is sent, you've probably already sheared your first three or four lists down into a single one.  By the end of a year, you'll be able to KNOW that the majority of the people you're emailing to (by this time, perhaps 250) are potentially valid.  Do the end-of-year winnowing and you'll probably end up with 100 to 150 SOLID, KNOWN, VALID customers who WANT to hear what you  have to say. 

And that's pretty good!

If you have questions or comments about this FAQ, or about email advertising to IBI Global members, please contact the Webmaster or your local IBI Global Club President. .