The Kenyan Spammer

I don’t know, sometimes I think everyone in Kenya is a spammer.

We work a lot on Internet marketing projects so we meet a lot of people and hear – or work with – lots of companies dicing into Internet marketing. One of the most popular forms of Internet marketing in Kenya is Email marketing. Rightly so!

However, it disturbs me greatly that almost no Kenyan company gives two hoots about where they get the email addresses that they market to. It is very common to hear “hey, si you give me your list of emails I do email marketing for my business“?

Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.

Just for your information, spamming:

• is actually illegal in some places
• is morally questionable
• almost always gives a bad impression of your company/product
• does not work as well as you think it does
• wastes millions of man-hours each year

Furthermore, the alternative to spamming is, in my opinion, infinitely better (in that it makes more business sense). If you market to an email list that you rightfully own, you will find that your goals are much much much easier to achieve.

Spamming is wrong. Don’t do it.