Compared to most marketing methods, direct e-mail appeals to qualified customers can be a real winner -- we all know that.

My challenge, since launching a popular resource website (Traffick, The Guide to Portals) in September, has been to increase our newsletter subscriber base. People like the newsletter because it summarizes vital portal-related news and offers exclusive interviews with trendsetters in the new economy. But on some days, I wasn't satisfied with the pace of sign-ups and didn't really know how I could directly reach my target audience, ordinary computer users.

I did notice that most people with whom I corresponded directly about one issue or another were only too happy to subscribe. Compared to even the best search engine positioning, this direct e-mail method was clearly a winner.

So I tried e-mailing a few more people. The rate of signups to e-mails was terrific.

The problem is, this can be considered spam. The rules of spam are clear, or so we think. If you send out e-mails (like a newsletter) to people who have given you explicit permission, it isn't spam. Otherwise, it is.

But what about that middle ground, when you're just starting something new, when you e-mail someone to say "hey, so and so, I see we share the same interests, so maybe you'd care to check out my web site." Few people are offended. I personally receive many such pitches and am actually grateful about 25% of the time. That's what I found when I began sending out e-mails to targeted people who I figured would be grateful to receive the information.

I chose a particular category of people for my appeal (not that I'll reveal this info precisely!): folks who are interested in computers but who would be considered "ordinary" computer users. I found a nice, publicly available repository of e-mail addresses, though I confess I had to collect them all manually. I am not a professional spammer.

I haven't received a single complaint. (Disclaimer: you might! Please be as polite and tactful as you can be, only contact people who would be genuinely grateful for the information, and desist if you get complaints!)

What's more, I found the mathematics of this method to be very consistent. For every 50 e-mails I sent out, about 40 were still good (these were old lists). Out of those 40, something like 5-10 people signed up to my newsletter. Sending out about 100 e-mails a day was a good way of testing this method. It helps if you have an eager 11-year-old nephew or very bored employee to help you out!

For more established businesses, this may be too small-potatoes for you to try. But for people who don't want to wait years to get that first leg up (say, from 200 subscribers to 2,000), this method is dynamite. The great part of it is, these early subscribers can be quite loyal and offer you word-of-mouth referrals for years to come.

If getting over that first hump as soon as possible is important to you - if you're impatient, like me - consider this method. After you grow a bit, things tend to take care of themselves through organic growth and a bigger budget for paid advertising.

I've already thought of several other categories of people who wouldn't be offended by my appeal, and literally tens of thousands of readily available e-mail addresses are attached to these categories. Example: if you sell fly-tying equipment, what could be the harm of contacting the organizers of fly-fishing associations? They may appreciate knowing you, especially if there's something in it for them.

The mathematics of the whole thing have me salivating. I guess you could say I've developed an appetite for spam!

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by Andrew Goodman
Editor-in-Chief, Traffick - The Guide to Portals
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