The reality of spam is that it is so common to your mail server is that you don’t get to see a lot of mail.

In the aviation paradigm this leaves me wondering how will any FBO, charter firm, etc. actually get anyone to read mail. We are an industry of spammers. The NBAA lists and empty legs alone are a testament to vacuous mail that has little or no value, but yet swamps your inbox.

When you misbehave with email, it can get serious, since filters will just blacklist your vapid and unwanted content.

For the record, misbehaving means sending email without explicit permission. That one statement encompasses 99% of aviation marketing mail. Have you ever noticed that Netjets never spammed you, nor Pfizer or McDonalds? That’s because their marketing folk have serious accountability for long term damage they cause to their brand.

To a mail server, black listing means you can no longer communicate effectively with your audience, since your audience has been pre-warned: “Yep, it’s a spammer - don’t even show it to them or at the very least quarantine it.” (In my case, this was quarantined until I say, “oh no… I really like this stuff.. let it through!)

While I’ve spent the first 10 years of my aviation career being quiet of the folly of marketeers, today I figured might be one of those moments where I use an actual example of something that caught my eye and trash the competition a little at the same time. Hey, it’s Sunday!

When you click on the following link, be sure to scroll to the bottom to see mail that hit my quarantine box (meaning, I won’t ever read it unless I have time to see who my mail server thinks is spamming me.) You’ll notice that at this link, at the bottom there is an address of aircharterguide@pmcorpsend.com. That’s the mail server for Penton Media, which owns the Air Charter Guide, ACU-KWIK, the Aircraft Blue Book and a host of other pubs.

Here’s the amazing part: The people that bought the Air Charter Guide were, ostensibly pros. But only one client (Panorama Aviation of HPN) uses their, what appears to be a spam services. And, the best part? Panorama is paying Penton Media for the privilege of being sent into everyone’s spam box.

Getting Permission

Any contact tool (such as Constant Contact, etc.) that advertises they’ll do their faxing / emailing for you is actually hurting you unless they do the very unpleasant job we’ve been doing here since 2004 - calling them.

Getting permission to send email to a prospect (especially one that flies fractional, charters occasionally or owns a jet) is a big deal. Don’t take it lightly. And when they do hit reply and click through to you, understand that you own them at that point to the extent you track the inbound phone call or email and very carefully ask them, “Whether or not you use our service today, would it be ok for us to stay in touch with you via email?”

Note that answer in their file and respect it. If you don’t, you’ll just be another Air Charter Guide spam mail, stuck in the spam filter.

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