Whats up with webmail?

[Karenwhe]

I have been contacted so many times by webmail in the last 3 months, to sell me [for a small fortune] mailing to their DB. The thing is ..... that they don't stop .....

Has anyone experienced this lately? Do you also get contacted by them? Did you use their service?

P.S. Oh, and now they get sneaky the try to find the founder of the company and they say it is personal or private, then they do the same thing and change their stance and say - it is primemedia and so on. I think I am starting to see spam as easy to deal with compared to this.

Many thanks,
Karen

[Dave A]

They're selling their DB of email addresses?

Ouch for all webmail users!

[SilverNodashi]

I told them straight that if they don't stop spamming me I'm going to press charges, and it stopped

[IanF]

Karen
I told them their webmail service is so lousy I won't be associated with them. Try sending an email to a webmail address with a 50 kb attachment it bounces. I now ask for an alternative address and recommend gmail.

[Karenwhe]

They're selling their DB of email addresses?

Ouch for all webmail users!

Not exactly like that. What they do is ask you for a fortune some 30K to send a message for your business to around 100K users. Which you will ever know if it was ever sent nor have stats nor do they affiliate with correct businesses.... anything and everything goes (I know because they contacted me via a few businesses I have with different concerns/subjects)

I am not sure what they are up to, but they keep harassing me to buy this. And I am not interested. And they are aggressive about it also.

I was wondering if they are approaching every business with this... and keep harassing them .

Of course .... not to mention users, which is a different subject..... if they do this all around the country with all sorts of businesses.

[Karenwhe]

I told them straight that if they don't stop spamming me I'm going to press charges, and it stopped

Now this is interesting..... how often did they spam you and with what subjects?

They claim that is how they do marketing for a big short term insurance company... I find it hard to believe that a reputable company would agree to something like this. But then again you never know.

The reason I ask is because that means that companies are getting sucked into this crap. Which is also not so very good.

P.S. Do you have a contact number to tell them that I will press charges if the call me ever again .

[Dave A]

What they do is ask you for a fortune some 30K to send a message for your business to around 100K users.

That works out at 30c per email. If I think that I've just paid 10c per copy for front page advertising in print media, that rate seems pretty steep.

The next problem, as far as I know, is no profiling information is collected when you get a webmail account. So I'd expect the campaign isn't targetted.

Thinking about it - if you wanted to spend that kind of money, Google Adwords would surely be a more effective spend. You'd only be paying per click (ie. at least there was some interest), and could compete very well on most keywords at 30c per.

[IanF]

I see webmail and easyinfo are owned by Interface IT media. After a fiasco with easyinfo I will never deal with them.

The Interface Media (Pty) LTD group houses the www.easyInfo.co.za, www.webmail.co.za, www.jobs4u.co.za, www.gifted.co.za, www.carkey.co.za, www.earningsonline.co.za, www.mobilegateway.co.za.

The head office function is run through Interface Holdings (Pty) LTD. The businesses are separate from each other with certain people being directors in multiple registered entities. The businesses compete and work separately in the marketplace.

From their website http://www.interface.co.za/default.php

[Karenwhe]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for that I am actually going to check those links when I will have a few spare moments.
<hr />-
Dave,

You are absolutely 100% correct. There is no relationship with their customers, so in essence it has no real value.

If I put 30K -- which on the net is a massive amount of money --- and I have my strategy correctly aligned in a sales funnel, I can put this money on content writing alone, will get more natural customers and leads than they can ever provide, or of course do AdWords as well.

Anyway, I hope that not many SA businesses will fall into this sales pitch and that one day the just stop harassing me.

[twinscythe12332]

hahahahaha, just found this:

Privacy is a major issue and junk mail grows by the day.

To this end we commit:

* Never to sell your address
* Should advertisers wish to communicate directly we will do so on their behalf once we are certain that your interest profile matches the deal and that it offers true value.
* That we will constantly monitor and protect your inbox from unwanted mail.

To this end we suggest that you give out your address with care, particularly to other websites.


it is literally on the webmail site. http://www.webmail.co.za/protection.htm

so much for caring about interest profile. either that or you don't get a full 100K users emailed to.

[Jabu]

Hi

I am a webmail user and I have a strange problem. I never get the confirmation email when I register here. But I see my message got through about the problem because now I am a member.

Also, to correct the information. When you register for webmail they ask questions about what you are buying, how much you earn and things like that. So I think they do have a profile of each person.

[Dave A]

Great to see you made it, Jabu.

I'm going to have to take a closer look at webmail - you're the second webmail user today that has had an issue with the confirmation email not arriving.

[Jabu]

I thought I must let you know. The email arrived. It just took a long time.

[Dave A]

Thanks for letting me know, Jabu. I was getting quite worried there.

I assure you, the confirmation email is sent straight away. So obviously it just takes a little while to find its way to your inbox.

[Ann Williams]

More on Webmail and their business model

Webmail is a fascinating business model - particularly in how they make money (and really huge amounts of it) from online advertising and e-mail marketing. (I use them as a mini case study in my e-mail marketing workshops.)

The basic model is that they provide free e-mailing services (mainly to the SA market). To get your free e-mail account, you have to fill in a fairly extensive questionnaire on a three monthly basis. This will include questions about who you are (age, income bracket, sex, whether you own your business, where you live etc), as well as long section on what products you are looking at buying in the next six months.

Of course, what this basically implies, is that although you will get the e-mail account for free; it still comes at a price - that you will be sent advertising e-mails on a regular basis.... (and they also sell online advertising space of course, but more on that in another post).

WebMail then approaches businesses and offers them the opportunity to reach a huge database of people (all those who have signed up for the 'free' e-mail accounts) with marketing e-mails.

The thing is, that with Webmail you can't start small!!! This is a major problem because you can spend tens of thousands of rands (general they try to sign you up for a contract for am absolute minimum of R5 000 a month for at least a year) before you even know whether you are getting results.

And quite frankly, from what I have heard from companies who have used them, the results are quite dissapointing (and that's from an e-mailing perspective, rather than from an uninformed perspective).

Some of the reasons why this is happening, is because as free e-mailing has become more widespread there is a definite trend to move to Gmail (in particular).

Secondly, because their actual e-mailing program isn't as nicely laid out, handle pictures etc as GMail (and others) now are. (It was great when it was the first in SA, but now it's 'old hat' technologically.)

Thirdly, because more and more users are just ignoring the marketing messages that appear in their in-boxes.

The result has been that WebMail is getting more and more desperate to get business. Previously, all they had to do was be a big player with the Online Publishers Association and wait for the advertisers to flock.

Then they had sales reps around the country who specifically went out and found business. At more or less the same time they decided to start with call centres where potential advertisers were invited to presentations showing how the model worked.

Lately, it has been a case of heavy-duty call centre pressure and heavy-duty e-mail marketing.

The only way that I eventually managed to get rid of their really pushy call centre operators (who didn't listen and who just went on and on pushing), was to tell them that I already was a potential client and was in contact with one of their sales reps in the area. (True. Because I have been following their model and how they manage the business for a while now - and because I originally had a look at using them but found the results to cost ratio most definitely not acceptable to me.)

I must admit to also having rather a personal objections to the hard core (very smooth, but not really giving you all the angles) sales tactics that seem to now be employed by the bigger online advertisers (including Ananzi and the Yellow Pages) to get you to take out long term (1 year or more) advertising contracts.