Spam can
Canned meat was dubbed with the unfortunate brand name of “Spam” over 75 years ago. Tweet this
My Mom used to make school lunches with Spam (its name a combination of the words “Spiced” and “Ham”) and back then, there were no fancy flavors.
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first introduced in 1937.
The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative.
You may be surprised to learn that this concoction is a very popular product. On average, 3.8 cans are consumed every second in the United States.
There are now several different flavors of Spam products, including the original flavor, hot and spicy, Jalapeno, less sodium, Spam lite, oven roasted turkey, hickory smoke flavor, and even Spam spread.
A while back, another kind of SPAM was invented. No one except bad guys liked this new brand of spam.
A Spam is born
Can spam
In 2003, the United States Federal Government passed a surprisingly well-crafted law called the CAN-SPAM Act, which was intended to drastically reduce the flood of unsolicited e-mails and outlined the parameters for being a legitimate bulk e-mailer.
The SPAM acronym stands for (controlling the assault of non) Solicited Pornography And Marketing (Act of 2003).
How to work with the CAN-SPAM law
My master list of 20,000 (and growing) e-mail addresses is pretty solid. I’ve never bought or rented a list and almost everyone on my list has attended one of my leadership or sales training programs, a keynote speech or purchased one of my information products.
Anyone who gives me their e-mail address agrees to receive my free 5 Cool Ideas newsletter containing leadership advice, communication strategies, and selling tips.
The CAN-SPAM law sets forth a metric threshold of only one spam complaint per thousand before a bulk e-mailer reported as a “bad guy” or spammer. More than one complaint per thousand e-mails and the bulk e-mailer has the right to shut you down, no questions asked.
Sounds simple, so far, right?
But if you send bulk e-mail messages through services such as Constant Contact or Infusionsoft, you’ve learned that things can get a little complicated.
For example, someone can sign up for your newsletter and then forget they did so. This happened to me the other day–and worse.
The absent-minded person not only quit my list, but reported my newsletter–the newsletter he requested– as SPAM.
Naturally, a few people have quit my list over the years, but thankfully most folks don’t report me as sending unsolicited email.
Anyway, you can sign up to receive my free newsletter, as long as you promise not to report me for being a spammer.
Just go to www.MichaelAngeloCaruso.com and sign up for the 5 Cool Ideas newsletter in the upper-left corner of the page.
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Tags: 5 Cool ideas, can-spam, constant contact, e-mail, email, hormel, infusionsoft, Internet marketing, michael Angelo Caruso, spam
