You May Be A Spammer!   You may well be sending spam even though you think it's just smart e-marketing. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.   Unfortunately, the proliferation of spam has caused most ISPs to implement zero tolerance policies. If you mass-mail to or from one of these ISPs, not only will your e-mail be banned but so will the legitimate e-mail from all the accounts on our server.   This ISP policy has caused us to also adopt a zero tolerance policy towards mass mailings.

E-mail and SPAM

We understand how important reliable e-mail is to conducting your business. Depending on your volume of email, SPAM policies of your ISP and whether or not your ISP practices port blocking, we might outsource your processing to a third party company. We do not offer email POP boxes at this time. We do, however, offer email forwarding. If you need WebMail, we highly recommend Google's GMAIL services. GMAIL is free.

Read The Terms of Use

Every ISP has a terms of use policy (sometimes called Acceptable Use Policy). Be sure to read yours so that you know the requirements for compliance.

Definition of Spam

For purposes of illustration, we cite Comcast, a large national ISP. Their policy is VERY strict and can be found at http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp. It includes the following wording:

• "Prohibited Uses and Activities
  Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:
  
  (xi) transmit unsolicited bulk or commercial messages or "spam." This includes, but is not limited to, unsolicited advertising, promotional materials or other solicitation material, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, chain mail, informational announcements, charity requests, and petitions for signatures;
  
  (xii) send numerous copies of the same or substantially similar messages, empty messages, or messages which contain no substantive content, or send very large messages or files to a recipient that disrupts a server, account, newsgroup, or chat service;"
   
• "Electronic Mail
  The Service may not be used to send unsolicited bulk or commercial messages and may not be used to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services that violate this Policy or the acceptable use policy of any other Internet service provider...."

The Bottom Line

Most Web site owners or potential owners do not realize that the items listed by Comcast may be considered spam by all ISPs. These items include but are not limited to:

• promotional materials such as just listed notices
• solicitation material
• bulk mailing of commercial advertising
• informational announcements
• numerous copies of the same or substantially similar messages such as newsletters

You may be able to stay under the radar with small amounts of mail. However, it takes only one complaint to get you in trouble.

Opt-In/Opt-Out

Never include anyone on your mailing list unless they have agreed to receive your mail (opt-in). Every mailing piece must include an option to unsubscribe (opt-out). Whenever you mail, make sure you are compliant with this legislation as well as with your ISP's policies.

Even though you may be completely compliant with opt-in/opt-out principles, the larger your list the more risk you run. Many people sign up for free information and promptly forget they did so. Again - only one complaint can get you banned!

IMPORTANT - AOL   We cannot forward any mail to AOL email accounts. If you have an AOL account you must acquire another email address for business purposes. Gmail (Google Mail) is an excellent FREE alternative.   The reason we can't forward to AOL: they blame the forwarder of the mail instead of the initiator of the mail whenever a message is reported to AOL as SPAM. Consequently, the Sizzling Studios mail server gets blocked at AOL when mail forwarded by us is reported by an AOL user as SPAM.

If You Get Blacklisted or Banned by Your ISP...

Talk to your ISP about opening a commercial or business account. Most large ISPs offer them. Although these accounts are more expensive than personal accounts, they may have different e-mailing criteria. However, this does not solve the problem of being banned by other ISPs!

If you get blacklisted/banned or get our e-mail server blacklisted/banned, we charge you a minimum of $150 per incident per ISP for us to deal with the blacklisting. It's kind of like bail to get you out of jail.

We reserve the right to turn off all e-mail for Web sites of repeated offenders.

The Solution: Commercial Mailing Services

The days of sending mass mailings to lists of CC's and BCC's using names in your address book in Outlook or Outlook Express are over. If you intend to send any or all of the above listed kinds of messages, to be completely safe you must run all of that e-mail through a commercial list mailing service. Mass mailings are not permitted by or from the owner of any Web site on our server unless a commercial service is used to send those mailings. Three commercial services about which we've had good reports are http://www.sparklist.com, http://www.verticalresponse.com/products/email_deployment.html, and http://www.constantcontact.com.

• Sparklist is for very large lists.
• Vertical Response is 'pay as you go' - per email - and they have a whitelist relationship with AOL.
• Constant Contact has tiered pricing and costs less than Sparklist as long as your list is fewer than 10,001 people. More than 10,000 on your list makes Sparklist the better bargain.
• A benefit of Constant Contact: if your list is less than 50, it's FREE. Plus you have a 60 day free trial for lists up to 100 subscribers.
• With either mailing company you get "opened" stats, click through stats, special formatting options for AOL subscribers, easy subscribe/unsubscribe, list management tools, etc.. If you're serious about e-mail marketing and want to stay out of trouble, you need a commercial mailing service!

If You Are Tempted To Send Spam...

An Oregon man was fined $96,000 for sending spam. He claims he earned only $680 from the spam which attempted to sell a book. If his facts are correct, it was a pretty expensive lesson for him to learn. (Sorry - Washington Post article no longer available)
 

Federal and State Anti-Spam Laws

CLICK HERE. As laws get tougher, spammers risk not only paying fines but also going to jail.

Please note: The definition of "large" depends on your ISP. Follow their guidelines and you should be okay. However, it takes only one complaint to get blacklisted as a spammer. Better safe than sorry.