• by Chad White , April 3, 2008

There are still a lot of marketers that just don't understand that they have to send emails that are relevant and not overly frequent unless they want to be reported as spam, even though the people they're sending to opted in to receive those emails. I know that we here at the Email Experience Council find ourselves often saying that the definition of spam has changed and that email marketers have to adjust.

 

Just recently there was yet another study quantifying this shift. A new study by Q Interactive found that 56% of consumers consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is "just not interesting to me" and 50% consider "too frequent emails from companies I know" to be spam.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to ponder this, but how the heck did we end up here? It used to be that spam was (1) unsolicited, (2) sent from spoofed addresses, (3) fraudulent, (4) full of objectionable content, (5) likely to contain viruses or malware -- or all of the above. At what point did it become perfectly acceptable to say that permission-based emails from Sears and Wal-Mart share those qualities? It shouldn't be, as this blurring of the definition hurts our ability as an industry to fight spam, since the solutions required to eliminate true spam are totally different from the solutions needed to eliminate dissatisfaction among people that opted into a legitimate marketer's email program.

We're in this mess for three main reasons: First, many marketers make it too difficult to opt out. Unsubscribe links are almost always buried at the bottom of emails, often in tiny type hidden among a bunch of legalese, and there are sometimes too many hoops to jump through in order to be removed from a list. I applaud marketers like CompUSA that put their unsubscribe link at the top of their emails, where it's easily seen.

Recently, the members of the Inbox Insiders mailing list had a lively conversation about whether clicks on unsubscribe links should be counted as true clicks. Some argued that unsubscribes were negative and should be kept separate from call-to-action and other clicks that are positive. It was pointed out that an unsubscribe is still engagement and is therefore a positive action -- and I wholeheartedly agree. Seeing unsubscribes as something negative that must be suppressed causes us to make decisions that hurt consumers and therefore hurt us as an industry.

Second, too many marketers are playing too loose with their permission practices. Pre-checked boxes. Pre-checked boxes hidden behind links to "communication preferences." Adding sweepstakes participants' addresses to our lists and burying that fact on page four of five pages worth of contest rules. All these practices have helped blur the line between legitimate and illegitimate email marketers.

And third, with the exception of Microsoft's Windows Live with its "unsubscribe" button, ISPs make it extremely easy for users to report spam while doing nothing to help users unsubscribe from content that they no longer want. Users have figured out that by using the "report spam" button they can quickly and easily stop receiving emails that they no longer want. The only problem is that using it in this manner is lying. Instead of telling their housekeeper that her services are no longer needed, they call the cops and have her arrested for trespassing. The ISPs are eerily okay with these false reports. I find it difficult to believe that they really want to spend their resources arguing with legitimate marketers, many of whom have been falsely accused, instead of fighting malicious spammers who generate much higher email volumes.

So my question is this: If you agree that the definition of spam has become overly inclusive and is harmful to both legitimate marketers and to the fight against malicious spammers, do you think that this is an issue that the Email Experience Council should get involved with? That involvement could take the form of public awareness campaigns, lobbying the ISPs to add "unsubscribe" buttons to their email reader interfaces, and other initiatives. Please let us know by visiting our homepage and taking the Two-Click Survey there. Your thoughts, comments and ideas are also welcome below. Thank you.