Pixel Designz: Advertising Web Design Services to a Purchased List?
Pixel Designz, a custom web site design firm, is sending email advertisements to two spamtraps, neither of which has been live since before 2006. Neither spamtrap has received email from this company since exiting their timeout period and being turned into spamtraps. Since the domain pixeldesignz.com was created in 2010, neither of these email addresses could have subscribed to this company’s list when they were live. The only explanations I can come up with for this are two separate typoed email addresses (not likely) or a purchased list. The ESP is Sendgrid.
Sending IP: 50.31.38.196
Spam Sample:
Actual Headers:
Received: from o1.email.pixeldesignz.com (o1.email.pixeldesignz.com [50.31.38.196])
by <xxx> (Postfix) with SMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
Received: by 10.8.xx.xx with SMTP id <xxx>
Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
Received: from 127.0.0.1 (unknown [<xxx>])
by <xxx>.sendgrid.net (SG) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="<xxx>"
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: Brent Nicholson <brent@pixeldesignz.com>
To: <xxx>
Reply-To: brent@pixeldesignz.com
Subject: RE: Website Promotions
Message-ID: <<xxx>@<xxx>.sendgrid.net>
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:xx:xx -0600 (CST)
X-Sendgrid-EID: <xxx>
X-Sendgrid-ID: <xxx>
list-unsubscribe: <xxx>
Readable Email:
From: Brent Nicholson <brent@pixeldesignz.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: RE: Website Promotions
Reply-To: brent@pixeldesignz.com
Hello,
My name is Brent Nicholson. I work from my home in Los Angeles and I specialize in web design and Internet marketing. I work closely with a local web developer who also specializes in Internet marketing and script development. Together we created a few online marketing services that are designed to help businesses gain maximum online exposure and ultimately increase their profits. I wanted to know if you’d be interested in any of our services.
Social Bookmarking (manual submissions):
- 200+ social bookmarking submissions ONLY $29
- 400+ social bookmarking submissions ONLY $54
- 600+ social bookmarking submissions ONLY $75
- 800+ social bookmarking submissions ONLY $99
- 1,000+ social bookmarking submissions ONLY $119
Click here to read more – http://pixeldesignz.com/internet-marketing-specials.html
<removed>
Please call or email me if you have any questions or comments.
Brent Nicholson
PixelDesignz.com
www.pixeldesignz.com
(310) 910-1002
Sorry but I dont spam nor have I ever purchased an email list. I have a small email list from current clients, previous clients (a larger number from eBay and previous websites) and people who have signed up on my mailing list throughout the years. Pixel Designz has been around since 2010 but I’ve been doing online marketing and sales since 1999. My web sites and services may have changed over the years but I always let my clients know they may be getting another email from me UNLESS they ask to be removed. I’ve always used my real name, real address and real phone number. Anyone who requests to opt-out is NEVER emailed again. You might want to hone in on your investigative skills before writing about something you’re extremely ignorant about. Good try though.
-Brent Nicholson
Alright, then you believe that these spamtraps might have been gathered by you before you were using the domain “pixeldesignz.com”, under a different domain? Would you have not contacted your list since 2006? (Six years is a LOOONNNGGG time not to contact an email address.) Or have you ignored SMTP rejections and failed to remove the dead email addresses from your list?
*MAYBE*, if you have a list that is many years old and that you have not contacted regularly or maintained properly, you could have hit two spamtraps, although I admit that I’m sceptical. Even if that’s the case, however, you are hitting my spamtraps, which suggests that you are probably hitting spamtraps at other sites that have more of them, such as blacklists and reputation services. You need to clean and then repermission you list as a matter of urgency, before you face something a great deal worse than a cranky antispammer blogging about spam from you.
Using your own name and providing an unsubscribe link, while good business practices in many ways — do not make unsolicited bulk email (spam) into non-spam. And, as unfair as this might seem, assuming that because somebody asked for your email many years ago means that you can continue sending to that email address in perpetuity is unrealistic.