Timely Tidbits from Media II Advertising, Public Relations, Sales Promotion

In This Issue:

  • Spammers Canned
  • Canning Your Own Spam
  • Not Much Selling Going On
  • Here’s One Way to Make that Sales Force More Effective
  • Merry Christmas from Media II
  • Quote of the Month

Spammers Canned

This got the attention of a lot of bulk email spammers.

A Loudoun County, Va., grand jury indicted two North Carolina men on four felony charges of using fraudulent means to send illegal and unsolicited bulk email. The two were charged under Virginia's anti-spam law, which took effect July 1. It's believed to be the nation's first anti-spam arrests.

"Fraudulent means" include changing the header or routing information to prevent the receivers from contacting or knowing who sent them the spam,” said Virginia Attorney Gen. Jerry Kilgore. A single charge is a class one misdemeanor, but it's a class six felony if one of the following conditions apply:

  1. The volume of spam exceeds 10,000 in any 24-hour time period, 100,000 in a 30-day time period or one million over any single year.

  2. Revenue generated from specific spam exceeds $1,000 or total revenue from all spam exceeds $50,000.

  3. The defendant knowingly hires, employs, uses or permits any minor to assist in the transmission of spam.

These felony charges can result in a one- to five-year prison term, fines of up to $2,500 or both. With four counts, the two spammer’s maximum penalty could run to 20 years in jail and $10,000 in fines each. There are asset forfeiture provisions as well.

Virginia charged the two North Carolina men because Kilgore said that a part of the alleged activity was conducted in Virginia between July 11 and Aug. 9 through servers in Virginia. The spam was sent July 16, 19 and 26, and exceeded 10,000 messages during each 24-hour time period. The numbers are based on customer complaints received by Internet Service Providers.

Canning Your Own Spam

Here are some tips for reducing the amount of unsolicited email that gets into your mailbox:

  • Don't display your email address in public such as on your web site.

  • Consider using software to filter email.

  • Check a web site's privacy policy before you submit your email address. See whether it permits the company to share your address with online marketing companies; if it does, see whether it's possible to "opt out" from such an arrangement.

  • Experts have discouraged Internet users from replying to unwanted emails with requests to be removed from future mailings because that verifies that spam was sent to a valid address. Under the new law, however, marketers are required to honor such do-not-send requests after the first unsolicited advertisement.

Not Much Selling Going On

Salespeople spend too much time traveling, doing paperwork and performing other tasks, rather than actually selling their products and services, according to a recent survey.  Salespeople on average spend nearly 60% of their time on administrative work and travel, estimates Proudfoot Consulting, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., which analyzed nearly 1,500 salespeople randomly selected from 13 different industry sectors.

The methodology used in the study divided a salesperson's workday into six activities: selling, prospecting, problem solving, administration, traveling and downtime. Of the 13 industries studied, salespeople in the paper industry edged out salespeople in the banking and financial services sector for the most time spent doing administrative work, averaging 39% to 38% respectively. Salespeople in the health-care industry spent the most time traveling, averaging nearly 50%.

"The sales force is not engaging customers often enough. They need to improve their time management skills," says Luiz Carvalho, CEO, Proudfoot Consulting. "Time and territory management is missing in many organizations. Missed opportunities or poor resources utilization and not being in front of clients are key contributors to low sales and lack of revenue growth."

Here's a sampling of the survey report's categories, and the percentage of time salespeople in each spend on "active selling": automotive, 17%; electronics, 9%; paper, 4%; chemicals, 6%; textiles, 7%; food and beverage, 6%; manufacturing "other," 8%.

Here’s One Way to Make that Sales Force More Effective

Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. They claim that more companies trust their vital customer and sales data to salesforce.com than any other CRM company in the world.

Why? Perhaps it's because they deliver integrated and scalable enterprise applications for companies of all sizes. Or maybe it's because salesforce.com is a utility-like service with nothing to install, minimal training required and with the ability to be up and running in days—not the months or years required by traditional client-server CRM software. Or it could be the unprecedented speed with which customers are able to begin using and benefiting from their CRM investments.

For a whole host of reasons, more than 120,000 people at 8,400 companies worldwide depend on salesforce.com to manage their sales, marketing, and customer service and support operations. Companies like AOL Time Warner, Autodesk, Avis, Cigna, Daiwa Securities, Dow Jones Newswires, First Union National Bank, Fujitsu, Nokia, Siemens PT&D, Textron Fastening Systems, and USA Today.

Check it out: www.salesforce.com

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from everyone at Media II.

Your present? Follow the link below for a bit of magic from David Copperfield. See if you can figure out this amazing online feat.

http://www.zorstec.net/copperfield.htm

Quote of the Month

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
-- Bill Cosby

The Public Bath?

In ancient times, public baths were places that men of learning and curiosity gathered to exchange ideas. Today those places no longer exist (unless you count hot tubs), so we've tried to adapt the bath's open freewheeling tone into a newsletter. We hope you'll read our Public Bath in just that spirit.

The Public Bath is not "first-thing-on-Monday" reading. Rather, it is more like "fifteen-minutes-till lunch on Friday" or, "on hold" reading. Some material is amusing, some sociological, some newsy and we hope -- all thought-provoking.

We also want to answer your questions and hear your reactions. Have a topic you would like us to explore? Let us know that too. After all, public baths are places for both listening and talking.

About Media II, Inc. – Media II is a full-service marketing communications firm that specializes in serving business-to-business marketers in a wide variety of industries. We offer marketing communications planning, print and email advertising, public relations, sales literature development, graphic design, direct mail, web site development, webcasting, database publishing, and search engine placement services. Like to know more? Visit our web site www.mediaii.com

Media II, Inc. / 34900 Chardon Road / Willoughby Hills, OH 44094 / 440-975-8201 / www.mediaii.com

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