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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Write Queen Warns Her Readers About Spam

Most, if not all, people who have a computer write emails, and receive them. Unless you are from Outer Mongolia all of my readers have heard of SPAM. I am going to list some of the violations people are guilty of, knowingly or not, when they write emails, along with some comments of my own.

Don’t ever send more than 250 emails concurrently to an AOL address. Speaking of AOL, watch them. If you even breathe near AOL’s website they might charge you for something you didn’t intend to purchase. Then trying to get the charge taken off will almost cost you your sanity and I know whereof I speak. Also, again I know whereof I speak, if you pay for an AOL address, be aware that you are not possibly getting all your email. I have a business where it is necessary to send emails to people who have legitimate AOL addresses, and most of them come back address unknown. Do you get the idea I don’t like AOL. You got it.

Here are some more things to watch out for when you’re sending emails to help you avoid the ‘spam cops’.

Don’t ever use upper case, especially in the subject line. Caps mean shouting in computer vernacular. Always use sentence case in your message.

Don’t use the word “remove” Use “unsubscribe” instead.

Don’t start your subject line with “Dear”.

Don’t put “ADV” in your subject line.

Don’t overuse punctuation, like !!!, …, etcetera.

Don’t use BBC, and certainly not CC, when sending emails. (I’ve done that more than once.)

Don’t overuse marketing phrases.

Don’t use priority option. (I’ve also been guilty of that.)

Something else I have read. Don’t use the dollar sign ($) in either the subject or in the body of your email.

If you get an email with a period where you don’t think it should be, it is the writer just trying to get past the “spam cops” It is annoying, I know, but understandable

One more thing. Anybody trying to solicit you must by law (can-spam act) put their complete contact information at the bottom of the email. This is to protect you from shysters who don’t want to be found after the fact

HAPPY MAILING!

Remember, always, God loves you and so do I.

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