SPAM CAN BE YOUR FRIEND

I've got a friend who comes from a family with a bad reputation. Because of some of the unsavory things other family members have done my friend is unwelcome at most homes, and gets treated rudely by just about everybody on a regular basis. It's not fair. And it's about time somebody stood up for my friend's rights. My friend's name is good spam.

Now see, just the mention of my friend's name makes you angry. True, my friend often shows up at people's homes uninvited. But so does junk mail and nobody goes into a rage over them. Even telemarketing, the most intrusive and unwelcome of all promotions gets treated better than good spam. And when was the last time you were interrupted during dinner or your favorite TV show by any kind of spam?

Come on, be fair. Good spam may show up uninvited but my friend always comes bearing gifts. It may be an offer for a free gift from a merchant, or a discount on the purchase price of an item, could be useful information, or maybe even a joke to brighten up your day. Whatever, good spam never shows up empty handed.

And if you don't like the gift good spam is easy to get rid of. My friend knows your time is valuable and won't dog you for attention. Just click on the delete button of your e-mail program and my friend disappears. Try that with a telemarketer! Never, never, my friend good spam warns, ever ask to be taken off the subscription list of most spam messages. That's bad spam's oldest trick to find out if your e-mail address is active. Instead of getting less spam you'll end up getting lots more.

Good spam from local merchants and companies you can trust and tract down, like CStation, are the exception to this rule. Be sure, however, that your dealing with a good spam sender who won't sell or give your e-mail address to anyone else for any reason.

Just as e-mail is the best way for you to reach your friends and family, so e-mail is the best way for organizations and merchants to reach you.

Yes GP (our pet name here at CStation for good spam) helps us out a lot. We presently have two e-mail newsletters, one for local business, and one for Christians, that good spam delivers for us. GP's help has allowed us to reach folks we couldn't otherwise. My friend has also allowed us to remind people to return to CStation. Because we care about GP's reputation if someone requests to be removed from one of our e-mail lists, we try to remove them as quickly as possible. We also try to reply personally with a  friendly follow up e-mail message telling them they've been removed.

By the way you can subscribe to either the Business On Line Newsletter, or Believers On Line Newsletter, with an e-mail message to cstation@cstation.org. Just write "subscribe business" or "subscribe believers" in the message area of your e-mail.

Some businesses who use bad spam, and even those who hide behind the more socially acceptable concept of "permission marketing." will flood your e-mail with daily and weekly messages promoting nothing basically but their own sales goals. CStation's newsletters  come out much less often, usually once a month and try to offer something of use to those on our mailing lists. All good e-mail marketers should show up at your home only as often as they have something your likely will really be interested in.

Good spam advises that having several e-mail accounts can help control your Net communication needs. Use one account, for instance, for public communication needs like signing up for a service, or ordering a product online, or subscribing to e-mail newsletters.  That account will end up  getting uninvited messages. Have another account that only family and friends know about. Even better, Net start up companies like www.quick.dot offer free hosting of e-mail on their sites that only folks you choose can use.

So I hope you feel a little more kindly toward good spam now. Take out your frustrations if you must on the other members of his unruly family, but please give good spam a break. Hey, everybody's got to make a living.

-monty keeling
August 14, 2000