About offers to improve your website – Spam?

by Sue Forde

What is spam?

According to searchsecurity.techtarget.com, “Email spam, also known as junk email, is unsolicited bulk messages sent through email. The use of spam has been growing in popularity since the early 1990s and is a problem faced by most email users. Recipients of spam often have had their email addresses obtained by spambots, which are automated programs that crawl the internet looking for email addresses. Spammers use spambots to create email distribution lists. A spammer typically sends an email to millions of email addresses, with the expectation that only a small number will respond or interact with the message.”

Spams about website design

There is a good example of spam in certain individuals who send out continuous emails about website design, etc. Several names keep popping up: Ed Frez and Sarah Carlson, each with a variety of email addresses, are two examples.

A dead giveaway that you are being spammed is that there is no website address or phone number included in their emails, just an email address. When no website address is given, there is no way to go see what kind of work they have done, and what services they have provided for others in the past.

Unsolicited web design and online marketing emails are the worst. Never answer them.

These emails come from a different name every time, but they all follow the same formula. Here’s an example from one, and most are very similar:

“My name is Jason and I’m a website designer. I’m reaching out to find out if there are changes or improvements that you’d like to make to your site. Have you been thinking about updating your site to a more modern look and feel or adding some features to the site that automate some of your business processes? If so, I’d really love to speak with you.
Is there a time we can speak in the next couple of days that would work for you? I can provide you with some suggestions of different things that I’ve done that have made a big impact on my clients’ sales. I’d love to be able to help out.
Let me know what number to call and what time works out best for you and I’ll do my best to make it work.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best Regards,”

Be sure to mark these types of emails as “SPAM”, and toss them.