If e-mail marketing is part of your internet marketing plan (and it should be!), use a dedicated e-mail newsletter and auto responder system, like the AutoMagic Mailer,  to make sure your e-mails don't get you into the spam bin. Using a system like this, you can send out smart looking e-mails safely.

Beware of sending e-mail to everyone in your address book

Another issue that can land you in hot water when using your desktop e-mail client for mass mailing is when you forward an e-mail to everyone in your address book.

Very often e-mails sent like this are sent with the best of intentions – you get an e-mail telling you to forward it and money will then be donated to a starving child, for example – but the implications can be dire.

(Side note: many of these tragic sounding e-mails – or the ones offering you a free cell phone for every 10 mails you send -  are actually hoaxes. You can check www.snopes.com for any e-mail that you suspect may be a hoax of some sort - they keep track of the latest.)

Besides the spamming implications mentioned above, many of these e-mails are simply CC'd (Carbon Copied) to the whole address book. People can get extremely annoyed when they see the privacy of their e-mail address has not been kept and that it's been sent to numerous other people.

This may lead them to request removal from your list (and impact your business dealings with them) or they may simply list you as a spammer, with all the negative results mentioned above.

If you absolutely have to contact a few people with the same message, limit the number of e-mails you send at one time to less than 10. Also, BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) all the addresses except one (make it your own) so that the mail goes to everyone but no-one can see anyone else's address. :-)

A dedicated newsletter / mass mailing program avoids all these problems by sending each e-mail individually (very very fast) so you can send your e-mail out to literally thousands of people. It can also personalise each e-mail. (E.g Hi Thabo instead of Hi all or Dear Friend.)

So, while you may want to wish everyone Happy Holidays, make sure your message gets to them by using the right program.

If you'd like to use the power of e-mail in your internet marketing plan, take a look at Newsletters vs auto responders: what's the difference for some ideas.