Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Manually it's referred to as "trolling". Not very popular with the contacts.

Many associations are going to non-link addresses such as williamdotsmithatmymaildotcom.

Will it pick that up?

Michael

How does "list-grabbing" differ from spamming?

If it's a shotgun approach you seek to see what sticks, so be it. But if you want a self-building, ongoing stream of quality leads, this is not the route to go down. I would suggest looking into social networks, SEO, and creative site content to develop your leads.

My two cents..

My two cents also - don't do it. Trolling is the predecessor to spamming what it is called once you send messages to these trolled addresses). Illegal in many places.

I agree with Peter, don't do it. You have no permission to email those people, they have not opted-in to receive your mailings. It is SPAM no matter how you try to defend it. It will damage your sender reputation and most likely get you added to block lists.

You are better off building your list slowly with opt-in subscribers that in the end will be far more valuable to your business.

Hope this helps, Chris

Dear Joel Fernandes,

As well as garnering opinions about grabbling lists from any online source, the subject of your question also appears to be YOUR product.

As far as I'm aware, using this forum's position in the search engine rankings to jack up one's own rankings is either against forum guidelines, or it's frowned upon.

Secondly, trawling for e-mail addresses is a): bad karma, b): bad business practice, and c): ineffective in terms of garnering response because it adopts an atom bomb approach, and it's quite possibly a violation of the CAN SPAM Act.

So, there's my two cents' worth.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA

With respect to the unanimous viewpoint expressed above, I think approaching a person or a company with a business proposition/product information just for once and for the first and last time from a legitimate email id of a legitimate company should not be considered spam... and taking their consent first to do so is impractical! More so, when you're in a small business, cannot afford large scale publicizing, and left with just two options - whether you go out to your customer with your ware, or wait for them to come to you to buy your stuff - where it makes better sense if you reach your customer! However, it should definitely be a spam (and annoying), when you send out the same email to the same folks (maybe from different ids) over and over. I remember my dad getting brochures/mails about new products or services by post from many companies (not a long time back) and always wondered how did they get to know our address! Then nobody complained or even thought of spamming... maybe the thought of cost involved in sending out postal mails was what made people more tolerant about them (ha ha) which is nonexistent in the case of emails. Just because the communication technique has changed and become easier (even for the recipient - it's easier to delete an unnecessary email with a single keystroke than all the time and efforts involved to open and read an unnecessary postal mail and then trash it) we should not consider all unsolicited emails spam... sometimes you may need them, they may have a product/service which you need. BTW, have ever SMS, Direct Marketing or Cold calling been considered spam?
I know it's annoying (very much, sometimes) but making people sign up for something to get their email ids and then send them what they don't need is no less! For example, I sent this link to a friend and when she needed to sign up to read the comments she declined!