Crafty email spammers and how to avoid them

Spam, it has become the norm if you are running any type of business and website – you are going to get flooded with potentially more spammers than actual customers. These spammers are other people just like you who are trying to get more business. However the way they are going about it to get leads is questionable. I am sure you have seen the following email or very similar pop up in your inbox before:

Rose White apparently specialises in everything and is a “senior marketing manager” for an Australian company but uses a Gmail address to spam “potential customers”. In fact we know which company “Rose White” is lead generating for and it is actually an Australian company. As much as these emails are very annoying we still will not mention who as we do not believe in doing things that can be detrimental to others. However, if you want to know which company is spamming you simply reply to one of these emails as if you were really interested and before you know it you will be speaking to the company that is paying for this poor lead gen. Also whatever you do, do not reply “stop” or “remove” it will show you are active on your emails and they will hound you even more. Also as much as it is tempting do not reply in an angry or threatening way or you may get a call from a solicitor!

It does not end there. These spammers have been increasingly using aliases of other marketing agencies to look more legitimate. For example, someone might be sending emails with the alias of Digital Debut Online Marketing Agency with the emails rose@digitaldebut.online or rose@digitaldebut.marketing. We have not replied to these emails but we have got in touch with a few business owners these spammers are posing as and they have said they do not engage in such a practice. No one will be that silly to send spam using their actual business domain! The only time businesses really use their actual email when trying to cold prospect is if they have taken to time to actually look at your business website, gather some info and try to engage accordingly based on these findings, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Top 5 tips on how to avoid email spam

As we now live in a time of heavy advertising and marketing you just have to accept that you are going to get email spammed a lot if you have a business. There are the top 5 tips on how to reduce some of that spam.

1. Don’t show your email address
   Try to avoid placing your email on your website. Try direct people to a contact form instead.
2. ReCAPTCHA
   Have the latest version of reCAPTCHA installed on your website’s contact form so people will need to confirm they are not a spam bot.
3. Do not enter your email on public domains
   When commenting on a public domain or forum do not use your actual email address as this is easier for spammers to find you or your email to be sold to advertising agencies. Create a different email just for this purpose.
4. Don’t reply to spammers ever!
   Do not reply to any spam emails that come through even to let them know you are not interested as they will know you are active on your emails and come at you even more. This also includes clicking on their unsubscribe links or opening attachments
5. Block all spam emails
   This will not do much because there are so many out there, but if any spam email does get through that is not legitimate simply block the email. It takes the same amount of time as deleting an email anyway so might way block that particular one from crawling its way back into your inbox again.

What are your thoughts on spam? Do you think spam email is fair ground for cold lead generation? Let us know in the comments below. Actually, our website is not open for public commenting as it will most likely attract spammers!