THIS ISSUE CONTAINS SOME INTERESTING COVERAGE OF THE problems facing fax marketers.
The first is an article on what to do if your insurer denies your company coverage for unsolicited fax violations (page 41). You may have to go into court and argue that you did invade someone’s privacy.
Then there’s the new list of regulations from the FCC. On page 42 we publish the DMA’s guidelines on how to stay out of trouble.
But there’s one thing we don’t understand: Why would any marketer in their right mind send advertising faxes?
The fax machine is outmoded technology. And as such, it’s useless except in the more industrial corners of the B-to-B market.
Stop faxing now, and you’ll avoid all these headaches. And think of the benefits to the recipient. No more paper. No toner. No toner bandits.
In my business — reporting — we don’t even look at faxes anymore.
For one thing, the machines in our office are temperamental and don’t always work.
But even when the machines are operating, the meaningless documents pile up these days without anyone ever looking at them: Chinese restaurant menus, old travel confirmations that nobody will ever see, press releases that we received by e-mail several days earlier and duplicates of all these things.
Who has the time to walk halfway across the office and sift through these illegible papers 10 times a day? Once every few weeks, someone comes by and throws them all out.
Aren’t faxes good for anything? Well, yes. I once asked a veterinarian to send me a fax at work because that was the only way he could get me a form I needed to complete. But I never got it.
Oh, and if you have your own private fax and give the number out to only a few people, it might work for you.
What should you use for marketing and other communications?
E-mail. It’s a far more immediate and reliable delivery vehicle. And e-mails are more readable and easy to retrieve.
Need to send lengthy documents? Put them in an attachment or a PDF and e-mail them.
The first time I saw a fax machine, I think, was at a heavily capitalized weekly newspaper I worked for in the early 1970s. It seemed revolutionary then. At that point, we reporters received many news announcements by mail.
Today, we don’t even open mailed announcements because they’re old news by the time we get them. As a result, many PR flacks have turned to e-mail.
And the fax? It doesn’t figure at all.
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