Basic
"Net'iquette
With
millions of people world-wide using the Internet, a whole new
community has been created. Before immersing yourself in this
new culture, it's important to know the ground rules for courteous
behavior. Out on the web, the rules of communication are referred
to as 'netiquette'. The free, unregulated Internet will only remain
so as long as 'netizens' like yourself continue to be responsible!
Email Basics and Netiquette
What
IS Spam?
More
Netiquette Resources
Email
Basics and Netiquette
by A.L Haines
The
new way we communicate, electronically, still has a few rules
that keep our Manners in check. It's critical to have good email
etiquette to promote online communication. Personal styles may
differ, but there are general rules that apply in most situations.
Business
Communication
Generally, business email should mirror your business correspondence
in style, correctness and formality. Use a salutation or greeting,
with the recipient's title (Mr., Ms., Dr.), as you would in a
formal business letter. Use the person's first name if you would
normally write to that person on a first name basis. Otherwise,
use the person's last name.
Keep
it simple!!
Messages
should be concise and to the point. The goal is to be brief, and
effective communication that doesn't waste the recipient's time
is important to THEM. (People receive hundreds of email messages
every day! ....and they get grumpy too).
Too
Much Punctuation…
Don't get caught up in punctuation, especially excessive punctuation.
You'll see lots of email messages where people put a 1/2 dozen
exclamation points at the end of a sentence for added visual emphasis.
Why????? If something is important it should be in your text,
not in your punctuation.
Wrap
It
Keep
the number of characters per line below 80, with 60 characters
being a good all around line size. Some email programs don't handle
longer text well and don't have word wrap. Some recent email packages
have a built-in feature that automatically word-wraps at a specified
character limit so the problem may be essentially solved, but
if your software does not support this feature, you'll need to
remember to use the Enter key.
Formatting
Formatting your text is not the goal - plain text is it where
it's at. Period. Trying to include fancy fonts only creates headaches
for you and problems will arise. Count on it. There are lots of
email clients that can't handle messages in these new formats.
The message will be received as utter gibberish and may even crash
the recipients email client. Think how impressed would you be......
Your
goal is communication, not style. But, if you know your recipient's
email client has HTML capabilities, you can be as fancy as you
want (especially with internet marketing materials). If you're
trying to grow your business, it's best to be up there on the
top with the latest technology.
So,
1. Send text email to people who receive text,
2. AOL to people with AOL.
3. HTML to people who can receive HTML.
Abbreviations
Abbreviation usage is quite rampant with email. In our quest to
save keystrokes, we've all moreoften than not, traded clarity
for confusion. Never even knew it was happening did you?
We
recommend using only abbreviations that are already common to
the English language. Anything more than that is only confusing
your email recipient. Since there's no visual or auditory cues
with email, users have come up with something called "smilies"
or "emoticons." They are simple strings of characters
that are interspersed in the email text to convey the writer's
emotions & feelings on the subject.
The
most common example is :-).
(Turn your head to the left and you should see a happy face)
A wink is ;-). Neutral or indifferent is :-|.
There are others, but you get the idea. They are typically found
at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the prior
statement. These should be used sparingly and are NOT appropriate
for formal business correspondence.
Signatures
In a letter or other paper document, it's typical to close with
a name, title, organization and so leave room for a signature.
Since we don't yet sign emails with an actual signature (but will
soon, with the official approval of digital signature legal standing),
senders often include name, title and organization but leave no
signature space. It's also polite to include your contact info
beneath the name of the organization. Signature files can also
be an effective means to get a quick offer in to your correspondence.
One rule you should follow is keeping it to 3-4 lines of text
and an address (url/email)
Keep
Threads Connected
Once you send that first email, you will probably get a response.
If you want to reply to that response, the inappropriate thing
to do is to start a new email message. This breaks the link (called
a "thread") between the original message and your soon-to-be-created
response. Without the link, it can be difficult for the users
on each end to follow the sequence of messages, especially after
several exchanges.
This
becomes an even larger problem when your dealing with newsgroups
where several people may be replying to messages and trying to
follow the thread of exchanged information. The correct thing
to do is to reply, which is essentially the
same
thing as creating a new message but maintains the thread content.
Quotes
Nothing is more wasteful than to reply to an email by including
a complete copy of the original with the words "I agree"
or "Ditto" at the bottom. What's the point? The correct
way of replying is to use quoting. The key with quoting is to
include enough material in the quote so that it will be relevant
to the recipient and to leave out the other (50? 100?) lines that
aren't even relevant to your response.
(Lack
of) Privacy
Remember: Although efforts might be made by some organizations
to respect email privacy, generally it is not a private medium.
Email can be monitored and read in a variety of contexts, and
you may also accidentally send or receive an email meant for someone
else. In addition, hackers can access your email if they try hard
enough. No security measures are completely effective, so it's
best to bear in mind the potentially public nature of the correspondence
you create on email. Ask around at the office and you will find
everyone has a story about an embarrassing correspondence made
public.
Flames
To be "flamed" means that you've sent an email to a
person that has caused him or her to respond with angry words.
It's basically a verbal attack in electronic form. In the email
arena, you can never predict what effect your words or an unexpected
email will have on the recipient, and the lack of verbal nuances
and cues (voice tone, sighs, pauses) can easily leads to hassle
(or a possible nightmare) The best response to being flamed is
no response at all, otherwise the flaming escalates, just like
a real fire!
Spam
- ungodly meat byproduct??
Spam is the "trash" of electronic marketing; message
boards or opt-in lists are considered "Permission Marketing"
and becoming quite popular. It is definitely going to put you
in the Email Etiquette Dance Corner, and your messages could accidently
be perceived as spam.
One
solution is to create a permission-based club or group that gives
consumers control over whether to receive your emails or not while
you demonstrate your respect for their privacy.
For
correspondence that is in the gray area between spam and non-spam
(such as initial contact), you should include a disclaimer that
provides opt-out and acknowledges your desire to be spam-free
at the same time. For example, if you're sending an initial contact
email to a newsgroup or message board, you could put something
like the following in your post or in your signature:
---
"If you think this email content is not appropriate for this
newsgroup, please send notification to the email address mailto:you@y..."
---
Good luck, thanks for reading this far and I hope you find these
tips useful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.L
Haines is the editor and publisher for several useful online Internet
Marketing newsletters. How to get 250,000 FREE classified ads
http://swap.at/TheSwapShop.com
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What
IS Spam?
by
John Botscharow
Well,
that's not any easy question to answer. It all depends on who
is doing the defining. Below are several major Internet providers,
one's that are very popular. I've also included the definition
from the Terms of Service (TOS) of my local ISP, as well as two
of the major SPAM watchdogs, the Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial E-mail (CAUCE) and SpamCops.
From
AOL's Rules of Conduct: "By posting information in or
otherwise using any communications service,chat room, message
board, news group, software library, or other interactive service
that may be available to you on or through this site, you agree
that you will not upload, post, or otherwise distribute or facilitate
distribution of any content -- including text, communications,
software, images, sounds, data, or other information -- that:
constitutes unauthorized or unsolicited advertising, junk or bulk
e-mail (also known as "spamming"), chain letters, any
other form of unauthorized solicitation, or any form of lottery
or gambling; You also agree that you will not harvest or collect
information about the users or members of this site or use such
information for the purpose of transmitting or facilitating transmission
of unsolicited bulk electronic e-mail or communications."
From
Yahoo Terms of Service: "You many
not upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited
or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk
mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid
schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those
areas (such as shopping rooms) that are designated for such purpose."
From Hotmail's Terms of Service: "You agree to abide by all
applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations
and are solely responsible for all acts or omissions that occur
under your account or password, including the content of your
transmissions through the Service. By way of example, and not
as a limitation, you agree not to: Use the Service in connection
with surveys, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters, junk email,
spamming or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial
or otherwise). Advertise or offer to sell or buy any goods or
services for any non-personal purpose. Harvest or otherwise collect
information about others, including email addresses, without their
consent. Create a false identity for the purpose of misleading
others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message."
From
my ISP's Terms of Service: "The customer agrees to refrain
from inappropriate or multiple postings of the same message ("spamming").
The customer agrees to refrain from sending mass, unsolicited
e-mail messages. The customer agrees to post advertisements only
in areas that specifically encourage or allow advertising. The
customer agrees to respect the conventions of news groups, mailing
lists and networks to which the customer is posting, including
those more restrictive than, but not limited to the above. Complaints
received regarding non-compliance will be treated as grounds for
termination or suspension of the customer's account"
From
CAUCE's Web site: "Junk Email "We all get junk mail
at home. It's an accepted fact of life, at least in the U.S. So
why is Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) -a/k/a "spam"
or "junk email" -- a problem? "To understand the
problem of UCE, you must first understand what is most often advertised
via UCE. There are many places on the Internet where copies of
UCE are re posted by recipients and system administrators in order
to help notify the Internet community about where UCE is originating.
Surveying mailing lists like SPAM-L@EVA.DC.LSOFT.COM and USENET
news groups in the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy, you will
see that there are very few reputable marketers using UCE to advertise
goods and services. To the contrary, the most commonly seen UCEs
advertise: "Chain letters Pyramid schemes (including Multilevel
Marketing, or MLM) Other "Get Rich Quick" or "Make
Money Fast" (MMF) schemes "Offers of phone sex lines
and ads for pornographic web sites "Offers of software for
collecting e-mail addresses and sending UCE "Offers of bulk
e-mailing services for sending UCE "Stock offerings for unknown
start-up corporations "Quack health products and remedies
"Illegally pirated software ("Warez")"
From
SpamCops web site: "What do I need
to know to get started reporting spam? First of all, you should
know the difference between spam and email that is not spam. "Not
all bulk/commercial email is spam. Bulk email can be split into
two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that you requested
(or at least agreed to receive), and this is what legitimate bulk
emailers use (microsoft, deja.com, etc.) Opt-out is a system whereby
the sender finds your address in some nefarious way(harvesting
addresses from web-sites or public discussion forums), then asks
you to request removal if you do not want to receive email. Most
people find opt-out email to be offensive and classify it as spam.
"Legitimate"
looking spam "In general, email from reputable companies,
such as Microsoft and Amazon are opt-in, and if you receive email
purporting to be from a company you would normally consider to
be legitimate, you should consider carefully the possibility that
you did agree to receive it sometime in the past. If you are sure
you did not, then it may be someone attempting to appear to be
a representative of the company in question, but who actually
does not have the consent of the company. Once in a while, a large,
otherwise reputable organization will "accidentally"
send out some unsolicited email. The main domain-name registry,
Network Solutions, is a notable example of this. It has in the
past sent outright spam and has been widely criticized for this
action among spam-fighters. In any case, if you are sure that
you did not request the email, then you are well within your rights
to report it as spam.
"Hoaxes
and form letters "Often, people receive email warning them
of a dire threat due to new viruses or offering amazing rewards
for continuing a chain letter. Even innocent seeming emails like
petitions can circulate for years. Any email asking you to make
and distribute copies of it should be viewed very skeptically.
However,
this type of email is not normally considered spam. Usually the
sender is an acquaintance - not someone you want to report as
a spammer. It is much better to simply reply to these "clueless
newbies" and explain the situation to them - "this email
is a hoax, please don't send me this type of thing" - or
whatever applies. Be sure to reply only to the sender of the email,
not to the sender and all the other recipients as well."
As
you can see, the definitions vary greatly. They are also vague
and open to interpretation. AOL and MSN/Hotmail have the strictest
interpretations of all Internet providers. SpamCops has an extremely
restrictive definition - be very careful when dealing with them.
Too many ISPs will terminate your service without ANY opportunity
for you to explain or defend yourself. Make sure you READ your
ISP TOS carefully. If you have any questions or are unsure how
they interpret SPAM, talk to the manager of your ISP. Many of
them are reasonable and will work with you.
(A
personal suggestion from experience: most of the major Web-based
e-mail accounts are NOT conducive to doing business via e-mail.
They will close your account without explanation and trying to
contact them to discuss the matter is a waste of time. Stay away
from them. There are some that are good for small businesses -
if you want some recommendations, contact me at john@3r-marketing.com.)
The
most important point about all of this is that there is NO consistent
definition of what constitutes SPAM. e-Crucible is working on
a very detailed definition of what constitutes Spam. We will lay
out explicit and clear rules of what type of commercial e-mail
should be acceptable. We will work with the major Internet providers
as well as smaller ISPs to persuade them ALL to accept one UNIVERSAL
definition of SPAM that cannot be misinterpreted by ANYONE!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John
Botscharow is co-publisher and editor of the Web Street Journal.
He is also one of the partners in 3 R Marketing. Visit them at
http://www.3r-marketing.com and subscribe to one or more of their
marketing newsletters.
This
article is Copyrighted 2000 by 3 R Marketing. It may be reprinted
in its entirety only and with the above source box attached. This
article provided by the Marketing-Seek Archives at: http://www.Marketing-Seek.com
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More
Netiquette Resources:
Common
Sense Netiquette Rules
ZDNet
Help & How-To
The
Netiquette Homepage
Dark
Mountain's Netiquette Guide
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