Over the past several months a disturbing spam trend has emerged--spammers exploiting "tell-a-friend" forms.

In most cases, spammers use robots to fill out tell-a-friend forms with email addresses and canned spam messages and send them. Spam sent from a tell-a-friend on your website not only annoys the recipients, but can be a source of spam complaints against your domain.

If your domain registrar (especially GoDaddy.com) receives enough complaints, they can seize your domain and shut down your website. Complaints filed with your web host can result in the suspension of your hosting account.

Protection against these spammers is easy:

• Remove your form, especially if it isn't driving more traffic or customers to your website or email list.
• Add a Captcha spam protection field to your form. Captcha fields require you to enter a series of numbers, letters, or words to prove you are a real person and not a spambot.
• Remove the comment area of your form so users can't add a custom message to the tell-a-friend. Instead, compose a blanket message like "(sender's name) recommends this website to you." then describe briefly what your website does. Let senders know what the message says, so they know what they will be sending.

Apply just one of these suggestions and you'll cut spammers off at the knees.

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Here's a quick tip to improve your email open rates and reduce SPAM complaints:

Study what's in your SPAM folder.

If the emails you send to your lists resemble what's in your SPAM folder, then you're sabotaging yourself.

The hallmarks of SPAM are deceptive subject lines and phony senders (From lines).

Take a peek at a recent screen shot from my Gmail SPAM folder.

Recent screenshot from my Gmail SPAM folder

Notice any patterns?

• Subject lines that don't hide the ads for "enhancement" products, designer watches, or debt relief. (Hey, at least the scumbags are being honest with their subjects.)

• Fake invoices, credit card charge notices, payment bounce notices, and other subject lines meant to alarm the recipient into opening the mail.

• Fake news headlines. ("Obama is ill!")

• "Personalization" of the subject line where your email address is used instead of your first name

• Emails where your own email address is the sender or From line (shown in Gmail as "me")

• "Hello" as the subject line. This is a very common subject line often used in personal email and by clueless marketers -- not just spammers.

• Vague subject lines that could mean anything and offer no specific clues as to the message content. ("You've had a real close look, right?")

• Jibberish subject lines from random word generators. (What idiots think this will work?)

Now take a look at the emails you've been sending. If your subject lines have anything in common with what's in your spam folder, odds are good that you have a problem.

• Do you go too far in trying to arouse curiousity opens that your subject lines in no way resemble your message content?

• Likewise, are your subject lines simply deceptive?

• Do you use a display name and email address (eg., "Karl Barndt" karl@mydomainname.com) in your From line that your subscribers will recognize?

Bottom line: Do your emails build trust and strengthen the relationship between you and your subscribers, or are you trying to trick them?

Tricking a subscriber into opening your email may improve your open rates, but it won't do a thing to improve your bottom line.

So, if your email campaign resembles your SPAM folder, take a step back and try a little honesty. It goes a long way in email marketing.

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Social networking is a hot topic among online marketers and Twitter is currently the place to be.

But what exactly is Twitter? At first glance, it appears to be a chaos of short "texts," much like you'd see on your cell phone.

Join me and my guest Warren Whitlock (co-author of the book Twitter Revolution) as we try to nail down what Twitter is and how you can use it in your marketing.

And if you're interested in learning more about Warren's book, you visit his website at TwitterHandbook.com. And you can find his book here on Amazon:

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Every so often, I'll open an email from an online marketer that gets my blood boiling.

It's not the contents of the message that rile me, but the deception of the subject line:

• "A personal message from Joe Marketer"

Similar subject lines would be

• "Personal Email From Joe Marketer"
• "Karl, personal from Joe"
• "Karl: A personal invitation..."
• "(PERSONAL) from Joe Marketer"
• "(Personal & Urgent) From Joe Marketer"
• "A Personal Message From Joe.  Please Open Karl"
• "Karl, Personal From Joe... About XX"
• "Joe Marketer Is Sending You A Personal Invitation"

I'd open the message and immediately find that it is a not a unique and personal message written by Joe solely to me. Rather, it's a mass mailing to a large part of Joe's list.

And that pisses me off!

Sure, Joe might tell a "personal" story in the message before he launches into his sales pitch, but that doesn't justify his deceptive subject line.

My response to a message like this?

Unsubscribe! Usually with no small amount of swearing and a nasty "personal" note to Joe, too, for wasting my time.

Am I overreacting?

Well, let's ask the truly important question: What did Joe gain?

OK, he probably had a higher-than-normal open rate, which many marketers will applaud. But at what cost?

In my opinion, he burned his list -- lied to them. And that hurts the relationship established between list owner and subscriber.

What's one little harmless lie, you might ask?

For some subscribers, it's a breach of trust. And people like me will unsubscribe immediately.

Others may stay subscribed, but they'll be less likely to open your messages in the future or to trust what you say if they do open them (Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...).

If you want more examples of email deception, take a peek at your spam folder. There you'll find plenty of examples of messages engineered to fool you into opening them. Do you really want to operate at the same level as a spammer peddling enhancement pills?

Keep that in mind next time you craft your subject line.

Remember, your message contents should always deliver on the promise you make in the subject line. Otherwise, you risk confusing, alienating, or even angering your reader.

And, while open rates are important, you need to consider the long-term benefits of having a list that trusts and responds to you.

Sure, crafting compelling, yet honest, subject lines takes some effort and creativity, but the results are worth it.

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Many businesses transform into turtles during economic downturns, pulling their heads into their shells and effectively retreating from the business community. If sales and profits are down, they cut, cut, cut.

Sure all the wasteful spending and some of the less critical expenditures must go -- and that's good. But many businesses slit their throats by slashing their marketing and advertising budgets to the bone. I've watched some businesses cancel ALL advertising in an effort to save money.

While cutting excess spending is always a smart practice, eliminating your means of pulling in new business (marketing and advertising) is just plain suicide. It might look good on a spreadsheet, but the outcome is doom.

So what can a business do if revenue is down and your marketing budget is putting a strain on your bottom line?

First, you need to reassess how you're spending your marketing dollars. Some advertising vehicles may not be the right ones for your business in this (or any) economy.

Simply put, you must demand the biggest bang for your marketing buck.

And that's why email marketing is...

Your Biggest Marketing Bang For The Buck

Because most businesses don't know how to use email properly, they often focus more on other forms of advertising, like Yellow Pages, print ads, and paid search (pay-per-click, like Google Adwords).

Experience tells us that most businesses can triple their website's sales performance by adding an effective email campaign to the mix.

It's the only way to continue the dialog that begins days, even weeks, after a prospect has visited your website.

Now, I'm not suggesting email should be your only marketing activity. You need to advertise and market yourself to get prospects into your email marketing system. Email marketing won't work without a mix of fresh prospects and active customers.

But, given the minuscule cost and effort needed to create and maintain a successful email marketing campaign, I can think of no other marketing method that offers a bigger bang for the buck.

Why You MUST Add Email Marketing:

1. Email costs next to nothing to send. No printing or postage costs. And email infrastructure costs (hosting and service providers) are very affordable when compared to alternatives.
2. Once established, it's easy to maintain an email campaign with as little as a couple of hours a week.
3. It opens a direct and immediate line of communication with your prospects and customers that is hard to achieve outside of phone calls and face-to-face selling.
4. Email is flexible and customizable. There are nearly no limits in how you can use email to persuade new prospects to buy and use it to create loyalty (and repeat sales) with your existing customers.
5. You can test and track your efforts to continually improve the performance of your campaigns.
6. Finally, do it because your competition probably WON'T be using email.

If you've never tried email marketing in your business before, you can't afford to ignore it in 2009.

If you've tried it in the past without the results you hoped for, take another look. I'll help.
And to help you get started or get back on track, I'm putting together a short course on email marketing, let's call it Email Marketing 101.

Sign up right now to be among the first people to get a copy. The cost -- nothing but your email address.

Email Marketing 101 will be ready by January 15, 2009.

Sign up here to be first in line to grab it:

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