A recent post by Mark Brownlow really interested me.  It essentially outlined what Spam actually meant to the recipient. 

I think it is well worth going through what they think as it doesn’t matter if you keep referring to what the laws say - it is what the subscriber thinks in the first place which is Spam as they are the people who are reporting the emails in the first place.

Below are highlights of his post and with some handy advice to minimise the chances of coming up against these same problems.

A Return Path study of consumers showed that 50.9% said they used the “this is spam” button “sometimes” or “all the time” when they no longer wanted to receive emails from a company.

To me, this points towards just recipients taking the easy and hassle free route out of unsubscribing.  I wrote a post on unsubscribe links a while back now, concentrating on the placement of the link to offer an easy way to opt out and reduce the Spam complaints.

Silverpop questioned consumers about what they defined Spam as, with 40% saying “email I don’t want to receive” and 35% “saying email from any commercial entity”

I think these results represent the “short-term fix mentality” of some email marketers out there.  Instead of building there lists up, they have gone out and bought a huge list and just massed mailed them. 

I have stressed previously the advantages of self built lists and I think are a majority of people who this won’t effect but at the moment we are in a situation where a lot of companies are turning there marketing efforts towards the cheaper method of email marketing.  I can’t help but have the feeling that the “short term fix mentality” is about to rise a bit in the near future. 

In the same Silverpop survey, consumers gave there main reasons for reporting an email as Spam as “getting too many emails from a source” and “when they had lost interest in emails they were subscribed to”

These answers show a great bit of advice to email marketers who are thinking of revving up their campaigns a bit to try and compensate for a down turn – don’t.  If you value the responses and income that email marketing brings to your company then don’t attempt the perceived easy route and choose to spend your time making the email relevant, interesting and appealing to your subscribers; that will see you getting closer to that extra revenue you’re looking for. I wrote a post about increasing active subscribers that goes into further depth about the subject.

Though there is more information within Mark’s post, I will end my post with two direct quotes:

“Operationally, we define spam as whatever consumers do not want in their inbox.”

Yahoo Mail

“CAN SPAM lists the minimal standards an email must meet in order to avoid prosecution. CAN SPAM does not define what is spam, it only defines the things senders must do in order to not be violating the act.”

Laura Atkins – Word to the Wise

Read the whole of Mark’s post here

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under list building, email content, Spam, unsubscribe link. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.