How To Convince My Boss Not To Spam?

An anonymous reader writes "The small travel agent that I work for recently received an email from one of our competitors with several thousand of their potential customers in the 'To:' and 'Cc:' fields. My boss now wants to use these addresses to send unsolicited advertisements. I would like to convince him not to do this, as I believe that this practice is morally wrong and legally dubious. However, morals don't go very far in the business world, so I'm asking Slashdot: what business-oriented arguments can I use to dissuade my boss from spamming?"

my $0.02

[tomalpha]

I reckon you've got a few options:

1. point him towards your country's relevant legislation: UK [opsi.gov.uk] (and in non-legalese [yourlistblueprint.com]) or US [ftc.gov]
2. explain why spam is so annoying because it's intrusive and it makes it harder to read wanted messages [sciencedaily.com] in your inbox
3. explain that spamming 1000 people may get him 1 extra sale, but it will piss off the other 999 to the extent that some of them will go out of their way to avoid trading with you

Ok, so you're dealing with a sales-focussed person here, the only one likely to carry any weight is going to be last one and even then, you may be onto a losing streak. Assuming this person controls your pay packet, you're either going to have to put up a token resistance and then keep your mouth shut; or perhaps if you have the option, consider whether you want to be working for someone like that...

Spamhaus

[j_sp_r]

Explain that sending spam might put your email server on the Spamhaus blacklist, OR pissing of your provider, so you cannot send email again to existing clients.

consequences.....

[tloh]

I've not participated in business operations involving high volume email. But even as a private individual, I've gotten in hot water before when I've sent out messages to large a number of recipients. Some of my intended (consenting) targets have reported my stuff ending up in their Spam folder. As such, you may convince your boss that it would hurt his business goals in the long run as he risk getting "black listed". Maybe even to the point that legitimate communication gets denied by filtering software that has been trained through exposure to the business's email address.

Spam gives a sleazy image

[paai]

I do not know what firm you are working for, but really well established companies do not spam. Tell your boss that he puts himself in the same league as Viagra sellers and email scammers.

Show him how it will not make money, only cost him

[blanks]

There is very little you can do other then point out how it's illegal (if it is in your country) and or how it is morally wrong; which as it sounds isn't a problem with your employer. Since he was all ready signed up for their mailing list specifically to undermine any sales/services etc they might have to offer this is just another way for them to try taking business away from them.

Contact your ISP and ask them what their policy about sending spam which will most likely be that they do not allow it, and tell the boss that the ISP will cut service if you try it. As long as he will lose money it might keep him from going though with it.

Re:You can't. Spamming them will make the company

[drmerope]

And is the right choice, if done smoothly. Don't mass email. Investigate each contact send a personalized note targeted at them and their business.

Use the information, just don't abuse it. Spam is quick and dirty, but a poor substitute for the elbow grease of real salesmanship.

Re:my $0.02

[Saint Fnordius]

That might look like fun, but in reality it has two things going against it:

1. It's work setting it up. Who wants to spend time making it so that it isn't an obvious spoof?
2. Spoofing your competitor is a really bad idea, legally. We are talking opening yourself up to lawsuits here that could drive you bankrupt, never mind criminal law.

I realise you probably were trying to be humorous, but you never know who might get the wrong idea reading these threads. Best to state the obvious anyway...

Problems with "advertising"

[91degrees]

The response rate to this sort of advertising is extremely low. He'll be lucky to get a single response, thus making it not worth the time to compose an email.

Most people react badly to unsolicited emailed advertisements. It is likely that some of these people are already customers or potential customers. This will dissuade them from choosing your company in the future.

If any customers are in the EU, you may have a data protection liability. Even if you don't, at least some people will respond requesting to be removed from the mailing list, which is something that will have to be dealt with.

It's very likely to be against the terms and conditions of your ISP.

It is possible that you will be blacklisted by the recipients ISPs (unlikely if he does this once)

There may be some legal ramifications for taking advantage of an obvious mistake by the other company. Even just a baseless legal threat would take time and money to deal with.

Point him at Seth Godin's books

[cliffski]

point him at this:

http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/ [sethgodin.com]

Seth Godin is the marketing guru who advised google on how to succeed in business. he knows his stuff, and he is MASSIVELY anti spam.
Tell your boss he needs to read the guys book before he does something that could wreck his business.

Re:my $0.02

[jambox]

Point 2 is the killer here. A friend of mine works for a firm that got blacklisted in error once. The security company that maintained the blacklist (forget which one) tried to charge them thousands of dollars to be removed!

Re:my $0.02

[simontek2]

I work in a datacenter, its amazing how difficult it is to get off those lists. Love the people that call and say they want to send millions of emails and go "No we are not spammers, we are email marketing", and then want their IP's to change frequently. umm no.

Re:Point him at Seth Godin's books

[tambo]

Tell your boss he needs to read the guys book before he does something that could wreck his business.

Dude, PHBs don't read anything that isn't in cartoon form. I think that's even a prerequisite qualification of applying for a management job. The application forms are usually submitted in crayon, too.

- David Stein

/ reads too much dilbert
// among other things that aren't actually comics
/// like, well, fark.com
//// (obviously)

You dont need legalese to convince him

[unity100]

tell him that spam never works for legitimate companies that dont infect people's pcs and spam out of the zombies made because :

1 - get past some number of Cc:s and your mail instantly drops to spam, or even dropped to blackhole. it may be 10 in some services, 20 in others.

2 - gmail has a very efficient spam filtering. your spam will probably get detected in the 50th or 100th email arriving in gmail and will fall to spam. at hotmail 101th email will go to blackhole.

3 - probably around 500th email you are going to get listed in spamcop.net and hundreds of thousands of private, small web host firm servers that use whm/cpanel will automatically start filtering your emails because they use blacklists. (new auto feature in whm, turns on with a single click and save).

4 - very soon youll isp will be informed of your doing, and contact you to inquire. if you are not able to put a valid excuse, well, youre in trouble.

tell that to your idiot boss. tourism industry people generally think spam works. i have seen it before.

Had a simular problem

[Qatz]

I also had the same problem with one of my employers in the past. I simply explained to him that it was illegal and that they can lock you for it. Lucky for my a had a local example http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080514/NEWS10/720447000 [fosters.com] of what can happen. I find the articles I found of him rather interesting since people around here were told he was locked up. While the articles seem to just say he's nowhere to be found.

Re:The power of information

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Google is a domain registrar. It has access to more data about the IP addresses and ownership blocks etc. It probably has already identified a large portion of the 10 million or so bots. No wonder gmail server beats Thunderbird client. But we are not comparing apples to apples here.

Re:my $0.02

[jollyreaper]

Back in the early '90s, I worked at QuickLogic when Lattice was trying to buy us. The deal went pretty far. We had a letter of intent, and had even shared our customer list with them. I like to believe that Lattice's CEO believed me when I told him most of us would rather fail completely than give up the dream of independent success, all the way to an IPO. The next day, the deal was scrapped.

Lattice e-mailed our customer list to every one of their regional sales managers. Let's face it... business is war. It's not pretty out there.

Didn't you make them sign any sort of NDA to say they aren't allowed to spam your list if the deal falls through? Seems like the obvious sort of corporate fuck job to be wary of these days.

Re:Spam makes MONEY

[lena_10326]

email from one of our competitors with several thousand of their potential customers in the 'To:' and 'Cc:' fields.

Disregard my previous post. I misread and assumed high volume email. The contributor mentioned several thousand email leads. If the leads were opt-in, they would be worth a shot; however, they're not because it would be illegal to market those ill-gotten emails with spam. They did not opt-in and you have no records proving opt-in. You'd be opening yourself up legally for violating current spamming laws. You also have no existing business relationship with these emails so another strike against you.

Spamming these specific email addresses is a bad move. Very bad.

Re:You can't. Spamming them will make the company

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleh, should have proof-read that, $1,600,000 profit (though sometimes minus a few thousand or tens of thousands for a purchased or rented recipient list).

Re:You can't. Spamming them will make the company

[pentalive]

Even if a message arrives in my mailbox, addressed to me, mentions my wife by name, and complements me on the the good behavior of my dog, If they are trying to sell me something or introduce me to something IT IS SPAM.

Your kind of spam is just harder to make, but it is still spam.