Tip for Avoiding More Spam Email

I thought of this today when I was talking to a client and thought that I should pass this little tip on to all of you that read this blog from time to time. Here’s the basic rule with spam:

If you didn’t opt-in to the email, NEVER click on the opt-out button.

I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t that sound a little backwards? Well, let’s look at the reasons for this a little closer. But before we do this, please understand that I am not talking about things like marketing newsletters that you actually signed up for. For example, if you signed up for a 5 day course about something and that person is still sending you email marketing his product 5 months later, those ones you can feel free to opt-out of because they are more reputable and will probably honor your request. What I’m talking about here is genuine spam, the kind of stuff where you read it and say to yourself, “why am I getting this crap in my in box?”

I learned this trick from a friend of mine who in the past has been involved with a lot of spam marketing. So I guess you could say that I’m passing this information on to you from a spam expert. Here’s what he told me: basically, when you opt-out of a real spam message, you just let the spammers know that you actually exist and now they will be doubling their efforts against your email address. You just proved that your email address has a real person on the other end. If you never respond to those emails they’ll never know for sure that you really exist.

Does this little trick solve your spam problems? No, but it will help them from getting worse. The problem is that we’ve all been told that you can opt-out of any email campaign and they are supposed to honor that request. The problem is that most spammers could care less about what they should do and just focus on bending the laws to get away with things. So save yourself some trouble and don’t opt-out of spam emails. Just delete them and go about your merry way.

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