How to Secure a Website from Hackers [10 Step Guide]

As a website owner, is there anything more terrifying than the thought of seeing all of your work altered or entirely wiped out by a nefarious hacker?

We see data breaches and hacks in the news all the time. 

And you may think, why would someone come after my small business website? But hacks don’t just happen to the big guys. One report found that small businesses were the victims of 43% of all data breaches.

You’ve worked hard on your website (and your brand) – so it’s important to take the time to protect it with these basic hacker protection tips.

5 Easy Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers

You may have worried when starting this post that it would be full of technical jargon that your average website owner would find baffling. Some of our tips further down do get technical, and you may want to bring in your developer for those.

But there are a few things you can do on your own first that don’t involve that much technical know-how.

Step #1: Install security plugins.

If you built your website with a content management system (CMS), you can enhance your website with security plugins that actively prevent website hacking attempts. 

Each of the main CMS options have security plugins available, many of them for free.

Security plugins for WordPress:

iThemes Security

Bulletproof Security

Sucuri

Wordfence

fail2Ban

Security options for Magento:

Amasty

Watchlog Pro

MageFence

Security extensions for Joomla:

JHackGuard

jomDefender

RSFirewall

Antivirus Website Protection

These options address the security vulnerabilities that are inherent in each platform, foiling additional types of hacking attempts that could threaten your website.

In addition, all websites – whether you’re running a CMS-managed site or HTML pages – can benefit from considering SiteLock.  SiteLock goes above and beyond simply closing site security loopholes by providing daily monitoring for everything from malware detection to vulnerability identification to active virus scanning and more. If your business relies on its website, SiteLock is definitely an investment worth considering.

Note: Our Managed WordPress hosting plan has SiteLock built in, along with other features to help secure your site.

Step #2: Use HTTPS

As a consumer, you may already know to always look for the green lock image and https in your browser bar any time you provide sensitive information to a website. Those five little letters are an important shorthand for hacker security: they signal that it’s safe to provide financial information on that particular webpage.

example of green lock for ssl certificate

An SSL certificate is important because it secures the transfer of information – such as credit cards, personal data, and contact information – between your website and the server.

While an SSL certificate has always been essential for eCommerce websites, having one has recently become important for all websites. Google released a Chrome update in 2018. The security update happened in July and alerts website visitors if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed. That makes visitors more likely to bounce, even if your website doesn’t collect sensitive information.

Search engines are taking website security more seriously than ever because they want users to have a positive and safe experience browsing the web. Taking the commitment to security further, a search engine may rank your website lower in search results if you don’t have an SSL certificate.

What does that mean for you? If you want people to trust your brand, you need to invest in an SSL certificate. The cost of an SSL certificate is minimal, but the extra level of encryption it offers to your customers goes a long way to making your website more secure and trustworthy.

At HostGator, we also take website security seriously, but most importantly, we want to make it easy for you to be secure. All HostGator web hosting packages come with a free SSL certificate. The SSL certificate will be automatically applied to your account, but you do need to take a few steps to install the free SSL certificate on your website.

Step #3: Keep your website platform and software up-to-date

Using a CMS with various useful plugins and extensions offers a lot of benefits, but it also brings risk. The leading cause of website infections is vulnerabilities in a content management system’s extensible components.

Because many of these tools are created as open-source software programs, their code is easily accessible – to both good-intentioned developers as well as malicious hackers. 

Hackers can pore over this code, looking for security vulnerabilities that allow them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses.

To protect your website from being hacked, always make sure your content management system, plugins, apps, and any scripts you’ve installed are up-to-date.

If you’re running a website built on WordPress, you can check whether you’re up to date quickly when logging into your WordPress dashboard. Look for the update icon in the top left corner next to your site name. Click the number to access your WordPress Updates.

Step #4: Make sure your passwords are secure

This one seems simple, but it’s so important.

It’s tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. That’s why the #1 most common password is still 123456. You have to do better than that – a lot better than that to prevent login attempts from hackers and other outsiders.

Make the effort to figure out a truly secure password (or use HostGator’s password generator).  Make it long. Use a mix of special characters, numbers, and letters. And steer clear of potentially easy-to-guess keywords like your birthday or kid’s name. If a hacker somehow gains access to other information about you, they’ll know to guess those first.

Holding yourself to a high standard for password security is step one. You also need to make sure everyone who has access to your website has similarly strong passwords. One weak password within your team can make your website susceptible to a data leak, so set expectations with everyone who has access.

Institute requirements for all website users in terms of length and types of characters. If your employees want to use easy passwords for their less secure accounts, that’s their business. But when it comes to your website, it’s your business (literally) and you can hold them to a higher standard.

Step #5: Invest in automatic backups.

Even if you do everything else on this list, you still face some risk. The worst-case scenario of a website hack is to lose everything because you forgot to back your website up. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you always have a recent backup.

While a data breach will be stressful no matter what, when you have a current backup, recovering is much easier. You can make a habit out of manually backing your website up daily or weekly. But if there’s even the slightest chance you’ll forget, invest in automatic backups. It’s a cheap way to buy peace of mind.

5 Advanced Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers

All of the above steps are relatively painless, even for website owners with minimal technical experience. This second half of the list gets a little more complicated, and you may want to call a developer or IT consultant to help you out.

Step #6: Take precautions when accepting file uploads through your site.

When anyone has the option to upload something to your website, they could abuse the privilege by loading a malicious file, overwriting one of the existing files important to your website, or uploading a file so large it brings your whole website down.

If possible, simply don’t accept any file uploads through your website. Many small business websites can get by without offering the option of file uploads at all. If that describes you, you can skip everything else in this step. 

But eliminating file uploads isn’t an option for all websites. Some types of businesses, like accountants or healthcare providers, need to give customers a way to securely provide documents.

If you need to allow file uploads, take a few steps to make sure you protect yourself:

Create a whitelist of allowed file extensions. By specifying which types of files you’ll accept, you keep suspicious file types out.

Use file type verification. Hackers try to sneakily get around whitelist filters by renaming documents with a different extension than the document type actually is, or adding dots or spaces to the filename.

Set a maximum file size. Avoid distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by rejecting any files over a certain size.

Scan files for malware. Use antivirus software to check all files before opening.

Automatically rename files upon upload. Hackers won’t be able to re-access their file if it has a different name when they go looking for it.

Keep the upload folder outside of the webroot. This keeps hackers from being able to access your website through the file they upload.

These steps can remove most of the vulnerabilities inherent in allowing file uploads to your website.

Step #7: Use parameterized queries

SQL injections are one of the most common website hacks many sites fall victim to.

SQL injections can come into play if you have a web form or URL parameter that allows outside users to supply information. If you leave the parameters of the field too open, someone could insert code into them that allows access to your database. It’s important to protect your site from this because of the amount of sensitive customer information that can be held in your database.

There are a number of steps you can take to protect your website from SQL injection hacks; one of the most important and easiest to implement is the use of parameterized queries. Using parameterized queries ensures your code has specific enough parameters so that there’s no room for a hacker to mess with them.

Step #8: Use CSP

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are another common threat site owners have to be on the lookout for. Hackers find a way to slip malicious JavaScript code onto your pages, which can then infect the device of any website visitors exposed to the code.

Part of the fight to protect your site from XSS attacks is similar to the parameterized queries for SQL injections. 

Make sure any code you use on your website for functions or fields that allow input are as explicit as possible in what’s allowed, so you’re not leaving room for anything to slip in.

Content Security Policy (CSP) is another handy tool that can help protect your site from XSS. CSP allows you to specify which domains a browser should consider valid sources of executable scripts when on your page. The browser will then know not to pay attention to any malicious script or malware that might infect your site visitor’s computer.

Using CSP involves adding the proper HTTP header to your webpage that provides a string of directives that tells the browser which domains are ok and any exceptions to the rule.  You can find details on crafting CSP headers for your website here.

Step #9: Lock down your directory and file permissions

All websites can be boiled down to a series of files and folders that are stored on your web hosting account.  

Besides containing all of the scripts and data needed to make your website work, each of these files and folders is assigned a set of permissions that controls who can read, write, and execute any given file or folder, relative to the user they are or the group to which they belong.

On the Linux operating system, permissions are viewable as a three-digit code where each digit is an integer between 0-7. The first digit represents permissions for the owner of the file, the second for anyone assigned to the group that owns the file, and the third for everyone else.  The assignations work as follows:

4 equals Read

2 equals Write

1 equals Execute

0 equals no permissions for that user

As an example, take the permission code “644.”  In this case, a “6” (or “4+2”) in the first position gives the file’s owner the ability to read and write the file.  The “4” in the second and third positions means that both group users and internet users at large can read the file only – protecting the file from unexpected manipulations.

So, a file with “777” (or 4+2+1 / 4+2+1 / 4+2+1) permissions is readable, write-able, and executable by the user, the group, and everyone else in the world.

As you might expect, a file that is assigned a permission code that gives anyone on the web the ability to write and execute it is much less secure than one which has been locked down in order to reserve all rights for the owner alone.  Of course, there are valid reasons to open up access to other groups of users (anonymous FTP upload, as one example), but these instances must be carefully considered in order to avoid creating a website security risk.

For this reason, a good rule of thumb is to set your permissions as follows:

Folders and directories = 755

Individual files = 644

To set your file permissions, log in to your cPanel’s File Manager or connect to your server via FTP.  Once inside, you’ll see a list of your existing file permissions (as in the following example generated using the Filezilla FTP program):

The final column in this example displays the folder and file permissions currently assigned to the website’s content.  To change these permissions in Filezilla, simply right click the folder or file in question and select the “File permissions” option.  Doing so will launch a screen that allows you to assign different permissions using a series of checkboxes:

Although your web host’s or FTP program’s backend might look slightly different, the basic process for changing permissions remains the same. Our support portal has solutions for how to modify your folder and file permissions using chmod permissions.

#10 Keep your error messages simple (but still helpful).

Detailed error messages can be helpful internally to help you identify what’s going wrong so you know how to fix it. 

But when those error messages are displayed to outside visitors, they can reveal sensitive information that tells a potential hacker exactly where your website’s vulnerabilities are.

Be very careful what information you provide in an error message, so you’re not providing information that helps a bad actor hack you. Keep your error messages simple enough that they don’t inadvertently reveal too much. But avoid ambiguity as well, so your visitors can still learn enough information from the error message to know what to do next.

Protecting Your Website from Hackers

Securing your site and learning how to protect against hackers is a big part of keeping your site healthy and safe in the long run! Don’t procrastinate taking these important steps.

At HostGator, we have created a set of custom mod security rules to aid in the protection of your website. If you’re looking for a new web hosting provider, you can click here to sign up for a great deal. For new accounts, we’ll even transfer you for free! After you’ve created an account, you just need to fill out the form here.

matribusters online business HostGator 2053836

Jose

Email Marketing Experience

Savvy business owners realize the importance of email marketing even if they do not know how to run an effective email marketing campaign. 

Simply stated this means a business owner may realize it is imperative for him to run an email marketing campaign to help him meet the needs and expectations of his target audience but he may not know how to orchestrate an email marketing campaign which is truly effective. 

Fortunately for these business owners they do not have to know a great deal about email marketing because there are plenty of Internet marketing consultants who can assist them in planning and running an effective email marketing campaign. 

This article will provide some tips for finding a consultant to assist you in orchestrating an email marketing campaign.

One of the most important criteria in seeking a consultant to assist you with our email marketing campaign is experience. Specifically it is experience which has resulted in past success. This is important because one of the best indicators of how well a consultant will perform for you is how well they performed in the past. 

This means if a consultant was able to help a variety of past clients to attain their goals through email marketing, the consultant will likely be able to assist you in the same way.

Another important criterion when hiring a consultant to assist you with your email marketing campaign is the opinions of past clients. Before committing to work with a particular consultant you should request references from past clients. 

You should not only request these references but also contact each of the past clients provided and question them about their experiences with the consultant. 

It is important to keep in mind the consultant will likely only provide reference he is confident will offer a positive opinion of his services. However, you can still learn a great deal about the consultant’s style, personality and techniques through these references. This is important because the consultant’s personality as well as his skill and abilities is also very important.

If you do not get along with the consultant and have difficulty talking to him, it can be difficult to work with him. Additionally, it might be hard for you to meet your business related goals because you are likely not providing the consultant with enough information or offering feedback which could help him to adjust his strategies to better meet your expectations. 

While it is true that skill, knowledge and ability are all important sometimes none of these matter if personality conflicts prevent you and the consultant from communicating adequately. 

Therefore your personal opinion of the consultant should always be carefully considered before making hiring a consultant.

Although consulting references is a good idea, you should also consider contacting the Better Business Bureau (BBB) as well and also seeking out independent reviews of the consultant you are considering hiring to assist you in your email marketing campaign. 

The BBB can provide you with a great deal of information regarding the past performance of the consultant. If the consultant has been in business for a number of years and does not have any unresolved complaints with the BBB, this is a good indication the consultant performs adequately and treats clients fairly. 

Conversely a consultant with a number of unresolved complaints against him is not likely going to be a good choice. 

Similarly a consultant who has a number of independent reviews raving about the quality of his service is likely a good choice to assist you in your email marketing campaign while a consultant who has a number of poor reviews on the Internet is not really a good choice for assisting you with your email marketing campaign. 

Likewise, you can assume if past clients were not happy with the services he provided, you will likely also not be happy with these services.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose

Email Marketing Content

Email marketing may include sending email advertisements to a large distribution list, publishing and distributing an e-newsletter and sending informative emails with a soft sell approach to encourage recipients to make a purchase or visit your website. 

Whether you opt to utilize one or all of these email marketing techniques, you will be faced with one specific dilemma and that is writing the content which will appear in these emails. 

This is critical because these emails may be the first impression potential customers are receiving for your products and services. Superior content will give the potential customers a good first impression which may make them more likely to purchase your products or services. 

This article will discuss some proven techniques for ensuring the content you use in your email marketing campaign will reap the maximum benefits.

The importance of hiring a professional writer to assist you in your email marketing campaign cannot be stressed enough. 

It is one of the most critical elements to the success of your campaign. You may be a decent writer or you may have a staff member who you think can do a good job creating the content for your email marketing but unless you or your staff member is a professional writer by trade, the quality of the work will likely not be of the same quality as a professional can produce. 

This can be very damaging especially if your competitors are hiring writers to create their content. Your emails will likely not be viewed as favorably as the emails written by professionals.

The content you decide to include in your email marketing efforts is largely a matter of personal preference but there are some methods which have traditionally been more successful than others. 

The type of content which may be effective often includes informative articles, short useful tips, links to relevant websites, advertising for complementary products and even some subtle forms of advertising which are meant to persuade the recipients of the email to either make a purchase or visit your website.

Full length insightful articles which are likely to be of interest to the members of your email distribution list are an excellent idea for your email marketing campaign. 

These articles are a good idea because they will likely contain information which the recipients of your email will appreciate. Additionally, these articles give you the opportunity to include information about your products or services in the copy of the email. 

This can be a subtle form of advertising when it encourages the recipients to purchase a product or service or visit the website without actually asking the recipient to do so.

Short product reviews can also be very useful and helpful when you include them in your email marketing campaign. 

These reviews can help to attract a great deal of attention especially when the reviews focus on the products you offer and provide favorable reviews for these products. 

This type of information can either be subjective in nature or can remain objective by simply specifying the features of the products and offering other concrete pieces of information as opposed to opinions of the products.

Advertising is often a quite important part of an email marketing campaign. 

This advertising may either be direct or indirect in nature. 

Direct advertising may include banner ads or other graphical advertisements which encourage website visitors to click through the link to reach either your website or a sponsor’s website. 

Indirect advertising may apply to content in the copy of featured articles which subtly encourage visitors to make a purchase or visit your website. The indirect marketing in an email marketing campaign is usually supporting the products or services you offer while direct marketing will likely promote products and services offered by sponsors who paid to receive advertising space on the email.

Email recipients are usually well aware these graphics are part of an advertisement and will choose to click on these links when they have an interest in the products or services being offered.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose

Don't The A spammer

Email marketing can be very effective as long as it is not viewed as spam. This is critical because when your email marketing is viewed as spam, it will not likely be read by the recipient and may not even reach the recipient if it is trapped by the Internet service providers spam filter. 

For this reason it is critical for business owners to work hard to ensure the email marketing they use is not viewed as spam by either the recipient or the recipient’s Internet service provider. This article will take a look at email marketing and specifically how business owners can ensure their emails are not viewed as spam.

The distribution list for an email marketing campaign is one of the critical elements which can help to ensure the emails sent by the business owner are not viewed as spam. 

Before this can be accomplished it is important to understand exactly what spam is. 

Spam is essentially email which is unsolicited and sent for the sole purpose of advertising or promoting a product or service. Internet users receive mass quantities of spam on a daily basis. For some Internet users this quantity of spam is a huge source of frustration. Other Internet users have become so used to the amount of spam they receive that they barely even notice these emails. 

Neither of these scenarios bode well for business owners who are using email marketing campaigns to promote their products or services. Internet users who are angered by these spam emails may react harshly and report your emails to their Internet service providers. Internet users who do not even notice spam are likely to either automatically delete your emails and may block your email address to prevent future emails from getting through to them.

Paying special attention to your email distribution list and only including recipients who had specifically asked for additional information will help to keep your emails from being viewed as spam. One way to acquire email addresses for the purposes of orchestrating an email campaign is to ask interested customers to register with your website and specify whether or not they wish to receive future emails with additional information, advertisements or other useful tips. 

This ensures the recipients of your emails are genuinely interested in your products and services and are not likely to view your emails as spam.

Another way to ensure your emails are not viewed as spam is to offer recipients the option of being removed from the distribution list with each email. This is important even when the recipients specifically asked to receive these emails because they are entitled to change their opinion at any time. 

Offering the email recipients the opportunity to remove themselves from the email distribution list whenever they want is worthwhile because it allows recipients to have some control in the situation. This is a stark contrast to spam in which the recipients feel as though they have no control over the situation and no way to stop the spam from bombarding their inboxes on a daily basis.

Finally, business owners can help to ensure their email marketing campaign is not viewed as spam by including quality content in the emails they send to the recipients on the email distribution list. 

This may include providing feature articles, product reviews or a series of short useful tips which will likely be of interest to all who receive these emails. These emails may also include a soft sales pitch but this sales pitch should not be the focus of the emails. Putting too much attention on the advertising is likely to lead the recipients to assume the email is nothing more than spam. 

Conversely, providing quality information which is useful to the recipient and subtly urging them to perform an action such as making a purchase or investigating the details of a product can make the email seem much more worthwhile and less like spam.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose

Does E-mail Marketing Still Work?

This is a question which is on the mind of all business owners who participate in an email marketing campaign for the purposes of promoting their business. 

In fact questions regarding the effectiveness of any type of marketing endeavor should be asked regularly to ensure the marketing efforts are producing the desired results. 

Asking these questions on a regular basis and continually evaluating the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign will help to ensure the email marketing campaign is working well and remains effective whenever changes are made to the marketing strategy. 

This article will highlight why it is so important to evaluate your email marketing strategy often and will also provide a few tips for evaluating your email marketing strategy.

Evaluating your email marketing strategy on a regular basis is very important because failure to do so may result in your efforts being essentially a waste of time. 

Email marketing may be a cost effective way to advertise your business but there is some time, money and energy involved in planning and executing an email marketing campaign. 

If the campaign is ineffective and nothing is done to attempt to make the email marketing campaign more effective your business is wasting resources by continuing to invest in this type of marketing strategy when it is not generating profit for your business or even interest in your products or services.

It is important to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy but it is even more important to set goals before you begin the process of evaluating your marketing efforts. 

This is important because without these goals it can be difficult to determine whether or not the email marketing efforts are effective. 

For example your goal may be to increase the number of sales you make per month. Evaluating whether or not you are generating more sales each month is a fairly simple process. However, if your goal is to generate more interest in your products you would use website traffic as opposed to sales to evaluate the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign.

Once you have determined how you intend to evaluate you progress you should be able to easily determine the effectiveness of your current email marketing strategy as long as this is the only marketing you are currently doing. 

This is because if you have more than one marketing strategy in use at once you cannot be sure which strategy is driving customers to make purchases or visit your website. 

When you decide to evaluate your email marketing strategy according to specific goals you should take care to ensure you are not currently running other types of marketing in conjunction with your email marketing effort. This will help to prevent confusion about which type of marketing is producing the desired effect. 

It will also help to prevent business owners from mistakenly believing email marketing is producing a desired effect when it is actually another marketing strategy which is helping to product the desired effect.

Customer surveys are very important for evaluating the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Asking customers how they heard about your products or services is an excellent way to determine whether or not many of your customers are being enticed to make a purchase based on your email marketing efforts. 

Additionally, these surveys can be used to obtain more detailed information about the email recipient’s reaction to the email marketing campaign. Customers can provide valuable feedback about topics such as the layout and appearance of the email to the ease of readability of the content included in the email. All of this information can help a business owner determine how to design future emails to achieve a desired effect. 

Armed with this information the business owner can design subsequent emails which incorporate many of the qualities previous customers found to be useful and avoid qualities which were viewed as useless in the past.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose

Conceptual E-mail Marketing

Deciding whether or not email marketing is a good idea for your business can be a difficult process. 

The concept of email marketing is very simple to understand the process of determining whether or not it is right for your business can be significantly more complicated. This is because you have to consider a number of different factors before making your decision. 

You should consider your target audience and their propensity to use the Internet, whether or not your message can be effectively states in an email and whether or not your message is likely to be misinterpreted as spam. 

All of these factors are important and can help you determine whether or not email marketing is right for your business.

One of the most important factors to consider when deciding whether or not to invest your money, energy and time into email marketing is your target audience and how likely they are to use the Internet regularly. 

This is important because an email marketing campaign is not worthwhile if members of your target audience are not likely to use the Internet to purchase or research the products or services you offer. 

Even if the use the Internet for other purposes it is not worthwhile because they will not be likely to become online customers for your products or services. 

However, if you have a target audience who is very likely to use the Internet to purchase the products or services you offer and to research these items, an email marketing campaign is a good idea. In this case it is absolutely worthwhile because you will be providing information which the members of your target audience will find useful and which they may already be looking for elsewhere.

Next you should consider the products and services you offer in an attempt to determine whether or not your message can be effectively stated in an email. 

This is important because if you offer a product or service which is difficult to explain the emails you use for marketing are not likely to be understood or well received by the recipients of your email distribution list. This is important because you want to be able to convince potential customers of the need for the products and services your offer, not make them feel more confused.

Finally, an important concept to consider is the possibility that your email messages will be viewed as spam. This is a very important concept because emails which are viewed as spam are not likely to be well received by the recipients and may not ever even make it to the recipients if their spam filters tag these emails as spam. 

Even if the emails do reach the intended recipients many Internet users have grown accustomed to weeding out spam rather quickly and will be quick to delete, without reading first, emails which are suspected to be spam. 

In determining whether or not your emails are likely to be viewed as spam, it is important to consider the subject of your business and therefore the emails you send out. This is important because certain subjects such as weight loss pills are likely to be viewed as spam more quickly than other items. 

If you are in the business of marketing products or services which would likely cause your emails to be deemed spam, orchestrating an email marketing campaign may not be worthwhile.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose

Advertising Through E-mail

The subject of whether or not it is acceptable to use advertising in email market is hotly debated with some Internet marketers being strongly in favor of placing advertisements in email marketing while others are strongly against the use of advertisements in email marketing. 

Still others take a more neutral stance and are not either firmly for or against the use of advertising in email marketing. This article will take a look at both sides of the argument and allow the reader to formulate his own opinions on whether or not this subject is worthwhile.

There are some Internet marketers who are strongly in favor of the use of advertisements in emails distributed for marketing purposes. 

Those who favor the use of advertisements view the sale of advertising space on email marketing materials such as emails or e-newsletters as a way to generate profit from the email marketing itself. 

They also believe this tactic puts less pressure on the Internet marketer to meet the expectations of the members of the email distribution list because the emails are already generating a profit even if they do not entice the email recipients to make a purchase.

Those who are firmly against the use of advertising in email marketing feel as though this makes the advertisements seem more like spam and less like marketing materials or useful information. 

Those on this side of the fence feel as though any advertisement in an email marketing campaign should be subtle advertising for the products and services offered by the distributor of the email and not advertisements for businesses who have paid for an advertising spot on the email. They believe the original emails are acceptable but additions to them are spam.

Still others are someone in between on the debate regarding whether or not advertising in email marketing is acceptable. In most cases these individuals believe it is acceptable for there to be advertising as long as it does not overshadow the original intent of the email. This middle of the road concept implies the Internet marketers are not firmly for or against the concept of placing advertisements on emails distributed fro marketing purposes.

The information in this article is rather vague by intention because it leaves more of an opportunity for the reader to form his own opinion. This is important because the subject is largely a matter of personal preference. Each reader must decide for himself whether or not he agrees with one side or the other or chooses to take a middle of the road stance. 

The opinions of readers of this article may be influenced by whether or not they are considered to be marketers or consumers. This is significant because it can impact the preferences. 

For example consumers may be less likely to appreciate advertisements in emails intended for marketing purposes because they feel it distracts from the original products. 

However, marketers may be more apt to be accepting of advertising because they can understand the financial gain which is possible. When evaluating opinions about the use of advertising, it is important to note whether or not the individual offering the opinion is involved in advertising. 

It might be more worthwhile to seek out opinions from consumers only as they are more likely to share the beliefs of your potential customers.

Mail marketing outbreak list

Jose