You've probably gotten the emails: "Contact 3,000,000 potential customers for only pennies per reach..."
It's generally called SPAM. Some people get enough of it to fill a bucket. Because my email account is set up to receive any email sent to our domain for an email address that doesn't exist, I get tons of it in my mailbox. Some of this has names or addresses on it. Much of it I recognize from my wife's emailbox at home. I get emails with one employee's name on them that hasn't been at Data Guidance Group for 5 years. Another employee must have browsed a lot of sites that marketed products for enlarging certain body parts...most of the email I get for him offers such products.
But I supose it's tempting. With a first-class letter costing $0.39 to mail, the idea that you can reach a prospect for a few cents (or fractions of a cent) per piece is attractive. As I look through my SPAM blocker (which allows me to look at email that the software thinks is SPAM in order to decide whether it really is), I see a certain number of emails that look legitimate. I see others for products that I wouldn't think about buying from an unsolicited email (lose weight, get taller, grow more hair, increase the size of various body parts, buy vicodin, buy viagra, etc.)
SPAM has become a problem. Most businesses that use email eventually wind up blocking SPAM. It's a tradeoff. When the quantity of SPAM in email gets so large that it is hard to delete SPAM without deleting genuine email, it's time to get some type of SPAM detection and elimination software.
If you're thinking about using SPAM to promote your business...don't! You'll earn a bad reputation quick as a wink. Sending email can be a great business tool. But be sure you send it to people who want it.
