• by Bill McCloskey , August 17, 2005

Well, I'm supposed to be the E-mail Insider, but there are some things that I see in the e-mail space that even I don't understand. Here is a list:

1. Wacky E-mail Links (part one). On a daily basis, my company reviews approximately 2,000 unique e-mail marketing messages. We see every kind of weird thing there is. For instance, we often see an e-mail come in that uses a particular delivery system that automatically sends a new e-mail if you click on a link. While looking at the e-mail, if you decide to click on the privacy policy it sends you a new e-mail. You click on the link to go to the jump page and it sends you another e-mail. And, these aren't new types of e-mails that say something like, "Thanks for reading our privacy policy." They are the EXACT same e-mail. Why would anyone create a delivery system that would do this?

I don't know.

2. Wacky E-mail Links (part two). Sometimes when we review e-mail messages for a particular market sector (let's say, credit reports), we encounter this scenario: You click on the e-mail once and it takes you to one jump page. Click on it again, it takes you to a completely different jump page for a different sponsor. Keep clicking and you keep going to different products, different jump pages, different companies. Why would you send someone an e-mail, and get them to click on the ad, only to guarantee they will never be able to get back to the offer again?

I don't know.

3. E-mail as Novel Excerpt: We often see e-mails that contain what appears to be random gibberish at the end of the message. I've done searches on some of this gibberish and found it usually comes from some book or other. Once I traced a particular sender's gibberish back to a Web site that provides term papers for high school English class cheaters. Now I know that this gibberish is added to defeat spam filters. What I don't understand is why anyone would buy anything from an e-mail message that contains 90 percent gibberish in it? Why would anyone do that?

I don't know.

4. The Infamous Nigerian E-mail Scam Raises Its Head: Last week there was an article in the paper about a 52-year-old former Pastor names Victor Whitworth who was arrested for depositing a $16,000 check from the town of Ossining, N.Y. into the account of some con artists pretending to be Nigerians. Apparently, Pastor Whitworth received an e-mail from a supposed terminally ill Nigerian woman who had found Jesus and wanted to give her millions to the church rather than her children who had not found Jesus. Of course, in order to get the money processed, Pastor Whitworth needed to send her $40,000 for special homeland security certificates and that's when the town of Ossining's check made out to the church ended up in a con artist's bank account. Why would a pastor - who should be consoling people against such scams - fall for such a big scam himself, despite article after article (including the E-mail Insider) warning him about such things?

I REALLY DON'T KNOW!