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tranfree issue 49 - 21 June 2002
How Changing Email Address Hurts Your BusinessBy Alex Eames I completely understand why people change their email address. I have to delete upwards of 10 spams (unsolicited emails) every morning - plus a whole bunch throughout the day as well. This morning's figures are - 10 Spams [and 5 viruses which were deleted by Norton AntiVirus.] Most of them come in overnight, most of them are either pornographic in nature, or get rich quick schemes. Where did they get my email address? From my web sites, or one of those infamous totally untargeted CD lists with 24 gazzillion email addresses on it. Filtering Can HelpIt is possible to partly automate the removal of some of these emails using filters. Most good email programs have filtering options. But I prefer to filter emails manually because I don't want to accidentally lose a message from one of my customers who may be asking for help. So you have to take the bad with the good. One of the costs of doing business on the internet is that you have to deal with a fair amount of spam. You see, you have to accept the price, because if you don't there are other consequences, which may be worse than deleting a few emails a day. 1.5% of Email Addresses Expire Each MonthLet's take tranfree for example... Every month ~1000-1500 new subscribers join tranfree. But tranfree does not grow by 1500 subscribers every month. It's growing quite slowly at the moment because the rate of shrinkage is almost equal to the rate of growth. The reason is that roughly 1.5% of people change their email address each month. What I mean is that each month, there is a 1.5% chance that any given person will change their email address. When you have a list of ~30,000 you can measure this sort of thing very accurately. This 1.5% has been fairly constant for the last 2.5 years - ever since we had >2,000 subscribers. From conversations I've had with other webmasters with large lists, 1.5% seems to be about the right number of monthly losses due to old email addresses. The reason for this is that email addresses (particularly free email addresses) are very easy to obtain. People use hotmail or Yahoo! and think...
"Oh well, as soon as I start getting too Don't Throw Away Your MarketingWell, what you may not realise if you do that is that you may be throwing away a brand that you have worked hard to build. You mustn't do this with your work email address! You've worked hard to get your details on the agency databases. The value of that 'branding' is hundreds or thousands of dollars of possible future revenue - maybe even tens of thousands. What we discovered a few years ago, when we decided to get a dedicated fax line, is that it takes a VERY LONG TIME for people to update their records. And many clients simply will not do it! Why? It's boring, it's tedious, it's a pain in the butt. It's not revenue-earning work. That's why they don't do it. After two years, people were still trying to send faxes to our telephone. We got thoroughly fed up with it. Do you see what I'm driving at? If you register an email address and give that address to a whole bunch of clients and future clients, when you change it, they won't necessarily update their records.
Changing Work Email Address = Lost ClientsSo if they have an out-of-date email address in their database (whether you sent them notification or not) and they are one of these agencies that likes to contact translators by email instead of by phone (I have several clients who do this) you'll suddenly find you've lost them as a client. This is a disaster! What's the cause of the disaster? The fact that you don't like receiving a couple of spams per day. It doesn't seem like a price worth paying to me for a minor inconvenience. OK, I understand, for those of you on dial-up connections, spam is a real pain and may cost you additional telephone charges. When I go abroad, I find spam a real pain. But when I'm at home on broadband, it's just a question of... 'delete delete delete delete delete' ...simply by judging the subject lines. I understand the issues involved here. But is it worth throwing away hundreds or thousands of dollars of lost future revenue for? Spam Is A Cost Of Internet FreedomMy opinion is that spam is an unfortunate side-effect of being
able to use this fantastic modern technology which enables us to
work at home in relative freedom. Freedom comes at a price. Sad
but true. But I've been enjoying that freedom immensely this week, on the
tennis court, during hours when other people with 'normal' jobs
are stuck in their offices. Viruses Are Another CostThe threat of viruses is another issue and another cost of our freedom. We have to protect ourselves against these and we have to accept this as a necessary part of doing business. Because if you don't, you'll soon end up 'losing the whole lot'. Being forced to reformat your hard disk at an inconvenient time, or worse still, having to pay somebody else to do it for you. Can you imagine the craziness of that? Having to pay someone else to destroy all the data on your computer so that you can start all over again from scratch? It doesn't bear thinking about does it? But it happens to a whole bunch of people. How Do You Solve the Problem?So, back to the email address issue. How do you solve this problem? My personal favourite solution is to buy your own domain name. If you buy your own domain name you can have the emails forwarded to whatever account you like. It won't automatically solve the spam issue, but it will mean that you can change your ISP whenever you want - without loss of service. (Some ISPs offer better spam and virus protection than others). It's not quite having your cake and eating it, because it won't get rid of the spam problem. But if you use an email package like Eudora or Outlook you can set up filters that will allow you to automate the removal of a whole bunch of spam. You can set filters for certain key words and phrases which will only appear in spam emails. I won't specify which words in this edition because it will activate a whole bunch of people's spam filters and they won't get to read this edition. But vulgar words are a good start - as are many of the words and phrases in the subject lines of spam emails.
Using these filtering features you can eliminate a lot of the
time wasted sorting through spam. The Point To This Article?I think everybody should have their own domain name. It gives you control and flexibility and it looks professional. It doesn't cost very much. You can get one for about $20-30 these days. Some services give you email forwarding with your domain name and others have it as an optional extra. Some do not offer it at all. I use totalnic.net for all my registrations, but please note that they do not offer email forwarding services. [I have my own server which handles this for me for all my domains, so I don't need separate forwarding services]. Let Us Know If You Use A Good Forwarding ServiceIf you already use your own domain name and have an email forwarding package, please write to me indicating how satisfied you are with it. I will list the best solutions in the next tranfree. Change Email Address At Your PerilIf you choose not to get your own domain, please think very seriously before changing email address. It could cost you dearly.
Alex Eames is the founder of translatortips.com, |
