What We Can Learn from E-mail Spammers
Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.
So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.
You don’t know the audience well. So how do you increase the chance that they’ll even open up your email and clickthrough on the links within it? By threading on common ground and leading with the familiar. People might not know who you are but they know Angelina Jolie, who incidentally is the most popular celebrity name used by email spammers.
2.28% of all emails sent in July 2008 contained her name in the subject field. As a personality famous worldwide, she’s an alluring referential point spammers use to breach the walls of unsavvy targets. The familiar is powerful. That’s why you’ll see domain urls that are almost identical to official institutions or receive emails that use the addresses of people you know.
But that’s not all, spammers also love to use current events as bait. Events like political elections, conflicts between nations and major sports events like the Olympics are all fodder used to hook unassuming users into clicking on links or videos loaded with Trojan viruses.
When you want to get someone to do something, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect.
Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus on getting your audience interested first, because if they tune out right from the start, they’ll never absorb your pitch or give you a second chance.
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Funnily, I heard a story of a guy who does cocaine. He hates the fact that he does it and he knows people hate it. So he takes lines of cocaine before hitting starting his programs to ‘numb the pain’ haha
Just be careful not to focus on style over substance.
Attention getting strategies and tactics can be helpful if the product, service or information lives up to the promise.
But that tactic can severely backfire if it is all gloss, and the disappointed reader or consumer finds that there is nothing really valuable
That’s why we make our words sing. By giving our audience our genuine voice, they can connect, recognize what is familiar in our world that relates to theirs, and then stay and see what else we have to say.
Good point. Something to think about; everyone can relate to E-mail spammers. Which is why this makes for a great headline. It grabs our attention and forces an emotion from everyone who has ever been spammed through email (which I imagine is 99% of us).
Hook … line … and sinker. You gave bloggers a great self-test …”is spam more enticing than your blog post?”
“is spam more enticing than your blog post?” is awesome. .
Actually some of the spam copy I get is so good, I kept them for my swipe file.
These are definitely effective ways to grab attention… one however must be very careful to not overdo it. Attention gets you new eyes glued to your offer (whatever it might be - post, email, salesletter, etc.) but it’s your value that creates the long-term relations. The first should lead into the second for long-term success.
If you receive email spam - you’ll clearly see all the stress on attention-grabbing and no solid value so they don’t create any long-term relations (do you have a favorite spammer you await each time in your inbox?), but I doubt it’s what they’re after anyway…
Once again - an interesting read Maki.
I just hate the email spam, it makes me crazy.I always like cleanliness. But I agree with you that somegthing what spammer do is worth to learn, ohoh, but I never want to be a spammer, I will hate myself.
Interesting ideas and I see another way of looking at spammers to learn something.
A spammer’s methodology is to use force of numbers to make up for the fact that they have an unalluring product, have not researched their target market thoroughly, are not offering quality and are basically trying to “trick the unwary” into clicking through to them.
Of course, these are all concepts that can work well enough if one is prepared to play dirty, but I’ll assume that the average Dosh Dosh reader is more concerned with performing quality work.
I also have an assumption that spamers on some level are looking for an “easy” solution rather than putting in the work to market in a more focused, higher quality way. I wonder though whether it really is an easy option? Surely one must have to work really hard at spamming to get people to swallow your bait.
Personally I would prefer to spend the time working out who my customers are and crafting an approach that will help them. To a spammer that may seem like a lot of work, but to me being a pain in the neck to thousands of pople seems like even more work.
One point you make is that the spammer is trying to get you to click a link. So much of what I have read on DoshDosh and other similar sites talks about making money from revenue. For a ‘professional blogger’ that’s the aim. But for many, many other people, the aim of the blog is far more about trying to get people to our websites, where we offer our product. It’s a poster board for our company…”arouse their interest first” through our blogs
That’s exactly what spammers often are trying to do and it’s a technique perhaps not recognized enough in the blogging world.
These days the lines between spam and pushing your links is getting a little fuzzy, and even comment trails seems to get out of hand. In some ways we are all kind of doing the same thing anyway, with the law and our sense of ethics somewhere in between.
Spot on!!
The post is built around the concept of - arousing user interest’ & ‘building on the familiar’ - tricks spammers use . Tricks which we can learn from and apply ..
I guess the crux of the post is here - “Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus………. your pitch or give you a second chance.”
Spamming per se is not being eulogised. Just a point of diffrence with Steve Cook.
Before any actual content, a strong descriptive headline needs to be in place to grab enough attention for the email to be opened. With so many more spam filters out there, most aren’t even making there way to someone’s inbox, and for that I’m glad. Spamming is annoying, but relevant newsletters with quality content is another.
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
Throw in one of the following words to lure in thousands:
obama
iphone
michael phelps
mac
steve jobs
palin
boobs
Great article, but spammers need to get paid too. Have some consideration for spammers, they need to put food on their tables too.
Most of my spam e-mail contains genital related words, which are probably promoting Viagra etc. Is there really anything we can learn from this kind of emails ?
I’m just curious curious about your opinion, Maki
Obama is easily one of the biggest email spammers. And Joe Biden wants to cut down on spam, lol.
I think to add to this, you need to manage your reader’s expectations. The worst thing you can do when trying to gain new subscribers is to disappoint. Make sure that after you get their attention, the content that follows will keep that attention. Be sure that the core of the post actually expands on the buzzword or title so the reader will go away feeling satisfied and not jipped.
Piggybacking on an event or name is a well-known tactic PR peeps use to get attention from the editors. It is effective so yes you are right blogger should use it too.
The fact that you assign it to the spammer catch my attention.
very interesting, thanks!
The most interesting kind of spam e-mail, for me, is viral spam. Stuff that that people willingly forward on to their friends. Back in 2004 / 2005 there was a spam for a brand of male enlargement pill with the headline “Penis Launcher!” and some lurid, hilarious, gut-wrenchingly bad copy. My roomate sent me a copy of this spam, and then suddenly I saw a buch of blog posts making fun of it. Then it hit me and knew that it was in intentional viral piece - written by a conscious copywriter with a knack for headlines and viral marketing… and it totally succeeded.
No, wait. I never placed an order for the “Penis Launcher” pills. So it almost succeeded.
Nice sharing, Maki. But I hope you are not convincing us to be a email spammer.
Spammers are annoying, unless you really need a penis enlager.
But on the other hand, if this will be effective to promote your product or blog why not?
An interesting article Maki. Generally we tend to neglect the things we hate like spammers, when really we could learn from some of their manipulation techniques. (only the legal ones of course).
If anything this teaches us to think long and hard about our chosen domain name/post titles in future. Do what it takes to get the readers attention. As long as your content is not too disappointing it will improve your stats
Cheers Maki
@AD Public Relations
Style is part of substance, to some extent. The packaging and way it is sold influences the actual perception of the product or website’s value. I think the dichotomy between style (presentation) and substance (actual consumable) is much closer and imperceptible than we think.
@ Writer Dad
A genuine voice is definitely important in many ways.
@ impNERD
Thanks. I’m glad the post title was intriguing for you…. -)
@ J.D Meier, Johnny
That’s a great headline actually. Most of the spam I get is poorly written, although their headlines are enticing. I think people who are not very web savvy would actually take the bait easily. It depends on individual exposure, I guess.
@ GuruBomb
But then again, email spammers do not sell ‘value’. All they need is just that one-click, that’ll get a trojan into your system. It’s all about getting people interested and making them act immediately on that interest. That’s their modus operandi
@ Clarky
Heh. I hate spam too because its clutter.
@ Steve Cook
Spammers think in the short-term, they have no concerns with building a reputation.. hence all methods lead towards the end of getting someone (anyone actually) to bite. Like you said, its a massive brute force approach that does work. It’s kinda like throwing a fishing rod into a lake, sooner or later you’ll hook a fish and sometimes, that’s enough to get you enough money for a week or month.
Of course, I think providing a service or product of actual on-going value to an interested and engaged audience is better. It’s not only ethically the right thing to do but I feel that its more meaningful as well.
@ Vernon
Yup. Most bloggers self-market themselves on other blogs or forums in order to reach a bigger audience, that’s perfectly fine as long as its not done excessively…. when people feel that you’re ’spamming’ them, you’re probably pushing it too much.
@ Prakash
Yes, the main point is the power of leading with the familiar and arousing interest first. The importance of getting people interested first before anything else, is something that I’m trying to emphasize.
@ Todd Andrews
Yeah, keywords for search engines. I do hate it however, when I click through from a SERP and find a post thats ranked because it stuffed the keywords in tags.
@ Ditto Rahmat
Yup, like I said.. spammers bridge the barrier of not-enough-trust by using the familiar. That’s the lesson we can learn. I’m not sure what kind of spam you get but I’ve gotten quite a few that reference current events or celebrities… which I’m sure would have fooled people like my mum, cuz she’s not really that savvy.
@ Motivate Thyself
Oh yeah, getting their interest first is the challenge. Afterwards, you’ll still need to deliver with your actual offer.
@ Hendry Lee
I’m glad it caught your attention!
@ Brett Borders
Oh yeah… another version of the viral spam are political smears, which are passed around from one person to another. There have been a few during the current U.S election.
@ Angel Cuala
Nah I’m not asking you guys to be a spammer. Promoting your product/blog means getting the attention of others… and that can be done by using familiar references …. like spammers.
@ Good Blog Guide
Thanks, I saw your link. That’s a good example indeed.
@ Everyone else
Thanks for your comments!
Your ideas are quite original: this is the first time I read an article about what we can learn from spammers.
You were referring to email spammers who just blast emails with catchy, familiar subject lines to get people (total strangers) to open them. I think we should learn from email spammers who actually get good results from spamming. These people actually do their homework — they research their target market and prepare relevant email content to capture their reader. This is what I’ve personally learned from email spammers — relevance.
Great piece of work!
Good article.I get a lot of spam too, but there is not so much to learn from the messages I get.
Excellent article, I’m looking forward using this principle in my posts, I wonder how much influence it has on traffic, comments, ratings or anything…
But Maki, you sacrificed your true identity for the sake of a good post. Now everyone knows you’re an e-mail spammer part-time
What an original way to teach a lesson to us. I always find your articles really helpful. I can’t read them right away so I store them and then set aside a time to “go to school with Dosh”. I’ve told lots of people about you too. Glad you are out there.
I think that one can make style and substance live in harmony on a blog. With that said, I have met few that do it.
Great article.
Interesting atricle here.
Can’t really believe Angelina Jolie is in almost 2.5% of all emails!
From
Dave
http://secrets-of-money-online.blogspot.com/ Ps. Learnt to put my site at the end from you
@Maki,
Well, just another thought… how robust our email service is.. can we avoid getting into the SPAM folder and checking out the titles and clicking on to expand it? It anyways gets out attention. Isn’t it?
…runs off and adds “Angeline Jolie” to Norton Antispam.
Strangely enough, I don’t have a particular problem with spam that includes linkage to a genuine product. What frustrates me are those which incorporate phishing or other similar devious means.
Many who operate outside the norm (spammers, snake oil men, con-artists, … ) are creative and smart. We can learn from those at the top of their ‘game’, but I’d be very cautious about putting them on my most referenced list. I understand your points and just the post title will fair well on search engines — a lesson we need to hear in several different ways. I’ve seen bloggers who learn too well from borderline unethical behavior by creating a menu bar with an inviting word that when clicked opens up an ad instead of content [don't anyone get any ideas from this! LOL]. As some commentors noted, beware of the negative consequences on readership if you don’t give what’s expected. A traffic promotion company is creating subdomain names with people’s blog url — it shows up in your statistics and you automatically click to see who has hacked your blog. Then you see their ad on a page with your name. Brilliant! It only makes me want to track them down and ‘take them down’, legally of course.
Once you get them on the hook, reel them in with content they will appreciate. You did deliver in this post, as we expected you to, and for those who take the time they can apply your advice to make their blogs more exciting and search friendly!
Who would have thought that there is a lesson to be learned from email spammers? Most people certainly don’t see it that way! At least there is some good to come out of their efforts! Great post!
Funny but worthy reading, thanks for the interesting article.
This post is smart as usually. Thanks!
Yes familiarity is important, but trust and relevance are orders of magnitude more important. How many spam messages have you opened lately? On how many of those openned did you acted upon? See what I mean?
Got here from twitter. I am @katalink there.
Email spammers are crafty individuals that’s for sure. Thanks for the info…instead of hitting the delete button quickly now I will look at it from a marketing perspective and use it to fine tune my promotional efforts.
nice, sometime think like spammer is usefull how they workin on, but sending a ton email to a ton email address is not cheap. Nice more bandwith, great software, etc. but think what the victims thinks….. just push “add as spammer” button and done. at least for that moment only.
Email spamming is becoming more and more of a nuisance everyday. One should not doubt the motivation and intelligence of email spamers though. We have al received emails form Nigeria regarding help with transferring trillions. The new thing that seesm to be popular these days is email form bank asking to enter password, etc. The spammers go the extra mile of copying the exact bank’ s website. Although I can spot it startight away I am sure there are many who fall for the trap.
Just dont get the benefit achieved by spamming. It just kills is for all. Quality email marketing using aweber is a great way to build a trusted database.
Email marketing is the ultimate in the funnel concept, you just keep pouring leads into the top of the funnel until you get sales out of the bottom. Personally I hate SPAM but I understand it, a lot like coffee really.
Spammers use something familiar to arouse our interest. Sometimes they play on fear and greed too, like telling us that our bank accounts have been hacked, we are facing possible identity theft, or there is huge amount of money for us, etc.
Really i hate spammers and i want to share that i since i have my website one email of mine ,the one i exposed receives more then 300 emails a day of spam…yeah wtf??!?!?!
Death to them all!!!
lol
Excellent article. It reminds me of something that one of the great marketing giants of the 21st century taught me. He said, “Lance. Why doesn’t spam work?” I knew it was a trick question, he was always doing this Zen sort of thing with me. I thought carefully and replied with something we had recently been talking about, “Because of the principle of specificity,” I said. “It is not targeted to particular person’s needs or wants.” He smiled, “Perhaps you have a point there. But remember, you want to be a welcome guest, not an annoying pest.”
That’s the biggest thing I think spammers, who are intellectual light weights when it comes to marketing, are ignorant about. Anyone who thinks that spamming is a viable marketing tool is someone who has never really made a living at marketing.
You want to create a sense of excitement in your prospects when they hear from you. You want them to be eager to hear from you. You want prospects to look forward to getting a notification in their feed aggregators about a new post on your blog. To do this, you must always strive to be a welcome guest by giving them relevant, valuable answers to the problems they currently have. Annoying your prospects amounts to the door to door solicitor knocking on your door to sell you a vacuum cleaning during dinner time. What do you do? You slam the door in the blokes face.
Lance Jepsen author of Internet Marketing: Profits That Lie Hidden In Your Website - How To Triple Your Web Sales In 25 Days
i hate those spammer and i already delete all email like that. Its not worth to read those email.
I try to make the start of my posts interesting to readers but I’ve never really used it to grab their attention like this, it’s something I’ll start doing. Plus my blog could always use a little more Angelina Jolie!
Current events get me a lot of the time if my spam filter doesn’t catch it. I’m a news and political junkie and anything that is current piques my interest. I might even fall for a subject line with the words Obama, McCain, and Viagra.
One thing I have learned about email spammers is I tend to get them in those national email accounts like hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc a lot more than a personal email through my isp provider. Of course I try to use the national addresses for all the signups and keep my personal one for family only.
hmm.. i think we learn to avoid them and know what’s a spam or not spam email.
hehehe
actually, i once studied how spammers did their job and wanted to apply the lessons to blogging. anyway thanks for this Maks. But it is still unclear to me how could I apply spamming technique to blogging.
Just found your blog, very interesting!
I think spammers are looking for a quick buck
ignoring the bridges there are burning. I would
much rather put my energy into building lists
and building relationships with those lists. The
value in these subscribers is so much larger than
any onetime sale……
Keep up the great work!
Bobby
http://www.bobbywinchell.com/blog
Wow Maki,
That is a great post.
You have presented a very positive way of learning from email spammers.
However, I don’t exactly come to know that particularly what do you blog about.
And also I wanted to ask you that how much money do you make from this blog and how did you start? Did you have to struggle or were you a genius since the starting.
Regards
Laksh
http://makemoneyonline-withme.blogspot.com/