Study: Spam Is A Part Of Life

  • February 17, 2004
A study released by Nielsen Norman Group found that email newsletter subscribers now accept spam as a fact of life and have developed behaviors that enable them to identify and benefit from legitimate newsletters. The study found that:

  • While users show a better ability then they did in the past to differentiate legitimate opt-in newsletters from unsolicited messages, they're feeling increasingly stressed dealing with their inboxes, and now have even less tolerance for newsletters they feel waste their time;
  • Rather than un-subscribing to newsletters they no longer want, users will use their spam filters as a shortcut to avoid the newsletters;
  • Users have a "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately" attitude about email newsletters, which means that newsletters constantly have to justify their space in the inboxes;
  • The three most frequently mentioned reasons that users subscribe to email newsletters are that they are 1) informative; 2) convenient; and 3) timely, qualities that are often lacking in newsletters put out by big companies.
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