Sunday, May 17, 2020

How Spammers Get Your Email Address


Each minute of each day, there are literally thousands upon thousands of spam email messages flooding inboxes the world over. 

Some of that email even goes out from what appears to be your very own email address! Where on earth do spammers get your email address? 

There are various ways - some are legitimate, and most are not.

Typically, spammers will "harvest" email addresses from legitimate web sites, such as USENET groups, chat rooms, message boards, AOL profile pages and special interest group postings. 

These are sites you have visited and requested more information from, or corporate sites where you may have placed an order.

The spammers collect these addresses using automated programs called spambots. Spambots are designed to harvest the email addresses from these web sites. 

They scan every page on the site, collecting any text containing the symbol "@" they find. The email addresses they collect are compiled into a database, loaded into a bulk-emailing program and out goes the spam. 

Often, these harvested email addresses are also sold to other spammers ; once you email address makes it to a spammer's mailing list, it will make it onto their fellow spammer's lists.

Some websites require you to register before you can place an order or access certain parts of the site. Not all these websites will be as protective of your email address as you may wish. 

Newsgroups are particularly notorious for exposing their users' email addresses to the spam gatherers. Most newsgroups do not take a great deal of care to hide the email of their users, and each and every email member email address is exposed and up for grabs by spammers. 

Some of the wbsites that aask you to register may also sell to spammers.

Another method commonly used by the spammers is to target a domain. They simply guess or make up every possible variation of email address based on the domain name, for example @yourDomain.com

They create a mailing list of these addresses and then spam them. Corporate emails are especially vulnerable, as their emails have a distinct format such as @BusinessName.com.

While most of the spam will bounce, it really does not bother the spammers because they can and do send out millions of this type of junk mail a day. A small proportion of the emails will actually be legitimate and will receive the spam - that is good enough for the spammer. This method of gathering email addresses is called a brute force spam attack.

One way to defend against this is to make it more difficult for the spider to harvest your email. When you place your email address on a web site, remove the @ symbol and replace it with the word "at." 

This makes it far more difficult for the spam harvester to gather your address, because it cannot be gathered mechanically; 

it can only by read by a human who is actually reading the site. Alternatively, you should display your email address as an image rather than as text. DiddlyPay


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

Have a Blog? Don't Do This to Your Email Sig!


If you send out emails a lot, and if you write to a lot of friends and family, then you may be aware of the power of your email signature. 

A lot of businesspersons use their email signature in order to show their contact information, which can save them the effort of having to provide all of it in their email, and which can also save them the effort of having to sign every single email. 

Some business owners also use their email signature to post information about their offerings, or to advertise big discounts or sales that their customers might want to hear about or be updated on.

Even writers need an email signature in order to post their favorite quotes, or even their favorite passages from their own works.

An email signature acts as an identifier, and if used well, it can be a great way for you to post information about yourself and get a lot of people to visit your blog. 

However, you can also overestimate the power of this email signature, and if you do not make your email signature carefully and with your audience in mind, then no one will visit your blog. If you are interested in promoting your blog through a great email signature, then here are a few tips that you may want to take into account when knowing what not to do.

- Be considerate of people who have to work with slow Internet connections: avoid placing multimedia files in your email signature.

Some email software will allow you to place photos and videos in your email signature. If you are working with people who have fast Internet connections, these files can load properly and quickly. 

But if you are working with people who are still using dial-up Internet, then you may put their computers in a whole lot of trouble. Save them this trouble by keeping your email signature to a text-only format.

- Don't overload on the text, either. You may be tempted to put in paragraphs and paragraphs of text, with smilies and other emoticons that you think will make your signature look “cute.”

The thing is, such a signature stops being cute when someone is forced to read through it. Think of how tired your eyes would be if you were made to read through a sea of words; now, transfer that to an email signature, and think of what your email reader would think if you had to post information on your blog using a thousand words!

- Don't just hyperlink: put your blog address down. Some blog owners will often put the words “click here” and hyperlink it to the blog. This may not show up when email readers select a “text only” option when reading their emails, and clicking on a hyperlink while the browser is not open can tax on a computer's resources. Keep your blog address readable.

- Avoid putting colors in your text: the simpler, the better. 

You don't have to overload on the text formatting in order to make your email signature nice to look at and appealing. 

Stay with the staid and simple black, and avoid having to change colors or have words that need to be colored in or formatted. Again, if you have email readers who have the “text only” option on, all your colors and formats will be gone.

- Stay with three lines of text, and avoid going for more than this. Think of the succinct compactness of a dog tag: dog's name on one line, owner's name on the next, and then contact information on the last line. maggielin3


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

Is Your Child Ready for Their Own Email Account?


Are you a parent? If you are, your child may be using the internet, if they aren't already doing so. 

While most children start out just using the internet for school research projects, there comes a point in time when most children want to start socializing with their friends online. When this point in time comes, your child may ask to have their own email address, but are they ready?

When it comes to determining if your child is ready for their own email address, you have the final say, as the parent. With that said, there are a number of important factors that you will first want to take into consideration. A few of these factors are highlighted below.

Your child's age should be taken into consideration, when trying to decide if you should give them their own email account. When your child has their own email account, you need to set rules. If a stranger happens to get their email address and emails them, do you trust your child to ignore the message? 

Will they abide by your rules to do so? 

If you do not think so, maybe your child should just share an email address with you for now.

What your child intends to use their own email address for is also important. If your child is using online chat rooms, they may want to have an email address to give out to those who they meet online. 

As nice as this sounds, it is important to remember that some internet predators target chat rooms looking for children. That is why caution is advised. Make sure that your child only intends to use their email account to communicate with those that they know, like relatives or friends at school.

If you pay for internet, you likely get free email accounts from your internet service provider. AOL, NetZero, and Verizon are just a few of the many internet service providers that handout free email addresses. 

It may be best to give your child one of these email addresses, as opposed to other free ones, like Hotmail or Yahoo. 

Why? 

Because you will typically find that email addresses provided by internet service providers get less junk mail. 

This reduces the chances of your child getting scamming emails or adult themed emails.

Also, if you do decide to let your child have their own email address, you will want to help them set it up. What many parents do not realize is just how revealing an email address can be. For starters, make sure that your child chooses an email address that does not include their full name. 

Next, you may be required to fill out a profile. 

There are many free email programs, like Hotmail and Yahoo, that ask you to do so. Some of this information, like your child's name may be published. So use your best judgment or create a nickname for your child to use instead.

As you can see, there are both a number of pros and cons to giving your child their own email address, especially if they are still relatively young in age. 

If you do make the decision, however, there are some steps that you will want to take to protect your child. Also, just make sure that you use your best judgment.


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

Strategies for Email Marketing


Any marketing to be successful requires a particular strategy to be followed. 

Hence, email marketing also involves using some strategies. 

The biggest advantage of using email as a marketing strategy is personalization and segmentation. 

These advantages are also the most underutilized feature of email marketing, by most the companies. It is very important to make the company's emails as clear and relevant as possible for every recipient because that particular email is competing with the rest of the emails in the recipient's inbox. 

Email can be made relevant by personalizing subject lines, articles, offers, product showcased, and flowing emails depending upon recipient's action.

Before carrying out an email marketing strategy it is best to send out pre-campaign test to uncover problems before actually implementing the strategy. The test results can be monitored by checking ISP filtering, blacklisting and filtering. 

The test messages should be sent to different email clients and platforms. The authenticity can be established by the sender of email by adding SPF code in the DNS record. 

Every email client and platform has a different preview pane and they have different policies for blocking images. 

To deal with this, the emails need to be redesigned so as to be read easily and rendered properly. 

The top portion of the email should deliver the maximum possible information. Also creativity should be increased by playing with HTML colors and fonts. Images should be less relied upon as there is greater chance of them getting blocked the email clients or ISPs.

Everything becomes pass? over a period of time. 

A thing which worked few months ago might not work today. 

Variables such as design, format, copy style, subject line, offers, content types, personalization, product categories, etc., need to be tested constantly.

Email relationship should be paid special attention from the start, because majority of the decline requests comes in the first two months after subscriber's opt-in. A well organized program must be designed which should engage the subscriber immediately. 

A welcome message should be sent out instantaneously, followed by current email including the latest offers and promotions. An email can also be sent which offers the best of the past newsletters along with exclusive offers for newcomers. 

The trust can be build by making things clear such as frequency, proposition, content type, and privacy policies, from the start. Apart from concentrating on new comers it is also important to take care of the long term subscribers. 

Over a period of time nearly fifty percent of the email list becomes inactive. 

This happens when the subscribers do not open the company's emails from a long time. Such subscribers need to be awaken by trying new subject lines, new email formats, and by sending best of newsletters or spicy deals.

Short surveys can be carried out to know about the customer's requirements and to uncover potential trends.

Instead of focusing on metrics such as click through and open rates, marketers need to focus on end goals such as revenue per mail, conversion rates, whether desired action was taken on time or not, etc. 

Format style and the type of articles liked by the subscribers must be concentrated upon. Searching option also helps in acquiring customers to a great extent.

The biggest job is to make a working email marketing plan which actually has specific goals, action steps and success metric. 

The plan should include enough resources and budget. 

The program needs to be improved often by continuous testing and analysis, by increasing segmentation and personalization, and by including the latest technology. 


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

How to Expand Your Email Program


It is very important for the business to diversify and expand for survival. Certainly, increase in the number of emails is a tricky proposition, especially if you are showing your subscriber with emails on different topics than they had chosen in the start. 

The subscriber does give you permission to mail him when he subscribes and registers on your website. You may think just another email about a new product or sales flyer wont hurt and instead will increase the marketing and the email program and in turn the business. 

You would want to get the most out of the subscriber's database by getting maximum return on the member acquisition costs. But it is not as simple as it sounds as you may irritate the present subscribers so much that they wont sign up for new information. In fact you may receive flood of unsubscribe requests or spam clicks or just indifference.

Interest cannot be interchanged with permission. 

Assumption must not be made that you have the permission to message them anything that they had not requested. 

There is a minute point where the email program goals meet the preferences and expectation of the subscriber. 

Instead of increasing the email frequency, emphasis must be made on increasing the quality of the email in order to make each email valuable to the customers. Switching from a bi-weekly email to a weekly one means that the content should be twice as effective. 

The content should be relevant along with being effective. Relevant content is the key point of targeted marketing. The current emails should include more specialized publications in order to make the most out the customer database.

Do not try to impose the company's will on the customers; instead take them to the new information by making it as attractive as possible. 

The marketing program can be expanded by not violating the expectations or the original permission grant, in order to respect the reader's interest. 

Certainly permission must be taken from them. 

Increasing the frequency of newsletters also means increase in expenditure. While emailing we might think that the email belongs to a different category but if the subscribers are not able to differentiate a regular newsletter from the special offer, the effort is worthless.

The emails should always start by a topic in the message category chosen by the subscriber. Always include a link for signing up, which is easily locatable. Many marketers do not realize the value of transactional messages. 

If the buyers are not able to signup for the email program when buying, the transactional email can be send to them to confirm the product purchase and also to promote the company's newsletter.

Since the new subscribers are eager, this enthusiasm must be highlighted in the welcome letter which should also include other offerings which weren't chosen at the time of sign-up. 

The information should be brief and the benefits must be focused upon. A link should be included which would direct to the subscriber's preference page where the sign-up choices can be edited. It is a good idea to create a facility by which they can email the article to their friend. If the information is really interesting, there will be chain of subscribers.


Sample issues can be do wonders to get new customers if they are used properly, otherwise they will result in the spam folder. The sample can be tested initially on recent buyers or current subscribers who didn't respond to emails during a time period. Clearly state on the top that this email is a sample only and the receiver will continue to receive it if they sign-up for it.

Certainly diversifying and branching out the email holdings helps in the growth of the email program and business. 

Success can be attained when the subscribers are given freedom to manage their inboxes. Use the channel for emailing which the subscribers has given permission to. DiddlyPay


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

The Infamous Clickbank Refund Policy


Getting a new product out on Clickbank is always a moment of supreme optimism. 

What we envision is getting a product out there on the marketplace that truly takes it by storm and is one of those big sellers people write books about. And there is not reason to believe that any one product on Clickbank might just get there.

It's good to go into this kind of situation with your eyes wide open though and be aware that one thing can put a monkey wrench into the best marketing plan for a product. And that is the Clickbank refund policy. 

Now a good refund policy has to be at the very heart of a marketplace like Clickbank so people can buy with confidence knowing they can get a refund if the time comes. And since Clickbank is a full fledged merchant account in its own right, they can handle refunds directly.

Unfortunately a refund policy that is iron clad is also an open door for people trying to scam the system. Even for the best of products with a huge army of happy and satisfied customers, you will be asked for a refund from time to time. 

That is to be expected. But when what is happening is someone is trying to get your product for free milking the refund policy from Clickbank, that's just wrong.

The Clickbank extensive tracking system tells us that five percent of sales in their marketplace come back as refund requests. When you give a buyer a refund, you might hear any sort of complaint. 

Some of them are legitimate and others are bizarre. 

And others just won't offer an explanation for why they want the refund. For many of these refund requests, the odds are you are dealing with an unethical buyer.

The problem is that all of ClickBank's products are digital products. That means your e-book, your software product or your music can be downloaded and paid for and then the buyer can ask for a refund, no questions asked. 

And because the product is digital, it's pretty silly to ask for the product back as they have a copy on their computer and perhaps copied to other computers. You can paint it like you want, its just plain theft no mater how you cut it.

This is a tough problem to solve. Even if the entire Clickbank community banned together to fight the problem, about the only possible solution is pretty weak. 

A reference system could be created that recorded users who were habitual customers of the refund policy. Then if that reference system actually worked, you could conceivably refuse service to a refund policy abuser who had been "busted". 

But this is a system fraught with holes at best. 

A refund abuser is intestinally stealing product so they are going to be one step ahead of your tracking list. It simply is not that hard to come back into Clickbank as a customer with a new ID and new credit and your tracking system is out the window.

It would be nice to come to the end of our discussion with an announcement that the problem has been solved. But that is not the case yet. Clickbank is aware of the problem and is putting time and effort against it. 

But for now we will have to wait until Clickbank comes up with a solution. But its still worth supporting a strong refund policy because that is what makes Clickbank a solid marketplace. And if you do have to entire a 5% refund but keep 95% of the sales Clickbank delivers to you, that still is not too shabby. DiddlyPay


Thank you for visiting my blogs.
José

What do business owners need to know about digital marketing? Bob Keplinger ActionCOACH Woodlands TX

What do business owners need to know about digital marketing? Bob Keplinger ActionCOACH Woodlands TX Hi folks and welcome to this week'...