Should you care how much spam gets sent?
Latest posts | Feed | | By Mark Brownlow
Now there's a risky headline for an email marketing website.We know spam is bad for email marketing. Which is why 2007 saw ISPs and the email marketing industry working together to fight it.
Its very existence forces ISPs to build delivery hurdles into their email systems which catch legitimate commercial (and non-commercial) messages, too.
And the amount of spam is important, because spam adds to inbox clutter and lowers trust in the medium of email. None of which helps legitimate messages make an impact.
But these critical impacts on the user experience and user attitudes depend on how much spam gets delivered, NOT on how much spam gets sent.
The volume of sent spam rightly concerns ISPs and corporate IT folk, who have to carry and manage all that unwanted email. But all users need to care about is how much of this sent volume actually reaches their inbox.
Which is why it's highly irritating to see dozens of media articles each month reprinting the press releases of anti-spam vendors with claims of how much email (that's sent email) is now spam.
Today's number of the moment is 95%, as picked up from reports by Commtouch and Barracuda Networks, and widely distributed without critical comment by media outlets, blogs, etc.
You never (or rarely) see journalists or commentators explaining the difference between sent and delivered spam in terms of the email experience (which is what actually matters to the average reader).
But let's not let nuances like that get in the way of another good scare story about spam volumes.
Tags: email marketing, spam
Permalink | December 14, 2007 | 4 comment(s) - add yours!
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4 Comments:
You wrote that "...2007 saw ISPs and the email marketing industry working together to fight [spam]."
Could you point me towards any articles about this?
By 
J.D., on
20 December, 2007
That statement comes more from what I've picked up from people working behind the scenes.
Such as changes in the climate of communication between ISPs and legitimate emailers. Less adversarial and more collaborative.
Other things include the growth of certification efforts and the work of organizations like MAAWG (which includes both senders and ISPs.)
You might also find some of the links here useful...reviews of the FTC anti-spam summit earlier this year which was also characterized by a more collaborative climate.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
20 December, 2007
Collaboration is good, but it seems that the email marketing industry is still only interested in collaboration on so-called "deliverability" issues -- as seen at the FTC spam summit.
When will the email marketing industry start actively working to stop spam?
By J.D., on
31 December, 2007
Well, there are lots of issues there. First though it isn't just about deliverability. Even the most self-centered marketer should realize that spam is bad for legitimate commercial email, too.
The more spam around, the lower the trust in commercial email, the greater the inbox fatigue etc.
So enlightened marketers should be trying to actively fight spam.
What the industry can do to fight spam is to educate more business folk on email best practices, specifically the need to respect the concept of permission. A concept which still isn't firmly anchored in everyone's minds and still abused regularly.
My understanding is that we should see more efforts of this nature in 2008.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
02 January, 2008
