• by august , May 23, 2008

I just attended the Email Insider Summit, and I came back with more than just a sunburn—I gained a little knowledge, too.

One of the most notable things I learned was about the repercussions of marking an email as SPAM. This is a subject Amanda hinted at in her last blog—she mentioned how several of the summit’s attendees found it frustrating that we, consumers, simply hit the SPAM button instead of actually unsubscribing to an email. Little did I know, when I mark an email as SPAM, my email provider actually sends negative feedback to the sender of said email.

This is all well and fine if the email is truly SPAM, but like Amanda stated, the “technical definition of SPAM is much different” than what we consumers actually consider SPAM. We consider anything we don’t want in our Inbox to be junk. In truth, much of that “junk” is legitimate email. For this reason, many legitimate mailers get served a dish of injustice when email providers tarnish their reputation with negative feedback because users mindlessly click the SPAM button. At the summit, I was urged to, instead of reporting SPAM, actually unsubscribe to the email.

While I am a bit empathetic towards these emailers that are getting wronged, I can hardly put anyone at fault. I think most consumers have no idea that marking email as SPAM can taint a company’s reputation. After all, I only learned of it after I attended a summit dedicated to email.