I need some help with a request I got yesterday from our marketing dept. I walk into work yesterday to find that marketing, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to start doing email marketing. Of course they didn't involve any technical people until I stumbled across the rumor of such activity. They want to use various data sources (like those bowls you drop your business card into at a restaurant to win a free lunch) to send out announcements, promotions, special offers etc. I quickly told them that before they do anything like that they need to sit down and listen to what some of the ramifications of doing this are.
So here is my dilemma: These people are VERY non-technical and my greatest worry as the mail admin is that some "bright" marketing person is going to sit down with Outlook, plug a bunch of customer names into their address book and start sending out spam. I know we fight external spammers but how do you combat the possibility of one of your users doing so? I know the benefits of a well-run email marketing campaign, but as we all know, the difference between that and SPAM is a very thin line. For example, I have no idea if we state anywhere that by dropping your business card in the bowl you agree to receive commercial messages from us (and therefore I won't let them use that as a source for this.) I know on our web site we ask permission but we have never done anything with these lists of customers before and frankly I don't know the best way to proceed with this. How would you go about explaining the technical ramifications of proceeding with email marketing (ie: potentially getting blacklisted, setting up a good double opt-in/opt-out mechanism, etc.) to a set of users that won't understand it if you tell them that you can't just sit down and start sending away. Thanks for the help in advance! Andy Ognenoff Online Systems Administrator Direct: (262)250-2860 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------- Cousins Submarines, Inc. http://www.cousinssubs.com --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.
