In 2003, the Can-Spam Act set a list of rules that business owners have to follow when it comes to email marketing. The general tone of the act was that, spamming clients, both potential and current, was considered an illegal exploitation of private contact information. There are many ways that using spam to promote your business can be harmful. Not only is it, in some severe situations, punishable by law, it can do far more harm than good in promoting your brand. Those pesky squeeze pages, parked websites featuring your ad, webpages flooded with your smiling face or logo, emails blasted to your entire contact list; all of these things can be considered spam. There are a few ways that spam can negatively affect your brand:

1. Spam is a black mark on your reputation. Customers who are spammed by you are that much less likely to want to do business with you. Giving you their email is a generous thing that customers do. The last thing that you want to do is exploit that trust. A customer who does not trust you will not be a customer for long.
2. Spam is rarely effective because of filters. Most email accounts have filters set up that protect the user from spam. Email programs like Google’s Gmail have an intuitive system that pinpoints potential Spam and sends it directly to the Junk folder or the Trash folder. This means that all of those emails that you are sending out go unread anyways.
3. Legal penalties of up to $16,000 per instance can be enacted if you are accused of spamming. The Can-Spam Act makes it illegal to spam, so if you are irrevocably proven to be guilty of spamming, it could carry serious legal and financial repercussions.

Spamming was at its height in the early 2000s when knowledge of what it was did not circulate. Many people were taken advantage of due to spam, but those days are long since past. There are many ways to market to customers without the use of black hat spam.

Have any other questions? You can contact us for more information.