• by Tom Hespos , May 6, 2003

Yesterday, Seana wrote: While this is all well and good, what do we do as advertisers?

We ditch outbound email.

That's not to say that we ditch the email channel altogether. Permission-based CRM efforts seem to work rather well, as do newsletter sponsorships. But the time has come to move away from e-mail "list rental" and indiscriminate broadcast e-mailings.

Broadcast e-mail has become the advertising channel of the sleazy direct marketer who doesn't care about reputation or brand. Why? It doesn't cost anything beyond the time invested in constructing the outbound message and buying the software. Valid e-mail addresses are sold by the millions on CDs that cost less than 20 bucks a pop. All a sleazy marketer has to do is invest a little bit of money in high-volume mailing software and he has a tool that can generate leads and sales consistently, with minimal investment.

If, as Masha documented in her articles last week on the FTC Spam Summit, the big ISPs are truly blocking billions of UCE messages per day, then I suspect that billions more are getting through. If there are only 270 million people in the United States, that's at least three or four pieces of unsolicited e-mail per day per person. And spam is supposedly growing "exponentially."

Now the government is involved - precisely the situation that we wanted to avoid, considering that the Feds have demonstrated pretty consistently that they don't "get" this medium. And, for the most part, these guys "get it" better than their counterparts at the state and local level.

I can't help but notice some parallels between some laws that have been passed regarding spam and touchy issues like gun control here in the U.S. Do we really think the solution is to include "ADV:" in the subject line? Of course not. That will penalize the folks who want to play by the rules. While their e-mail messages will get filtered into the trash, based on the "ADV:" in the subject line, the truly sleazy spammers will continue to put whatever the heck they like in the subject line and will break through the spam filters. State governments will have a difficult time tracking them down because of the anonymity that forged headers give them, not to mention the 'safety in numbers' that comes along with the government's already-stretched resources only being able to do so much when they have billions of UCE messages to contend with every day. When spam is outlawed, only outlaws will send spam.

Seana asked some good questions yesterday. As marketers, what do we do? After all, even consumers can't seem to agree on a common definition of spam. All I can say is that a few common threads run through the various definitions - In order to dodge the spam label with any degree of consistency, a communication has to 1) be requested, and 2) extend value.

While it's feasible to deliver on #2 while renting e-mail lists, it's impossible to fulfill #1. Consumers see the "You are receiving this because you opted in" language at the top of their commercial e-mailings, and you know what? They're not buying it.

My answer to the question? First, let's lay out all the evidence:

• Consumers are growing more impatient with spam every day.

• The volume of spam is growing every day, as is the clutter in everyone's mailbox.

• The channel hosts a bunch of amateur online marketers who don't care if they represent the bad apples that spoil the bunch.

• Government intervention will most likely increase the cost of "legitimate" e-mail marketing by creating many different laws that will need to be adhered to on a state-by-state basis.

• Consumers find it difficult to distinguish between "legitimate" e-mail marketing and spam.

I don't know what everyone else is going to do, but I'm advising my clients to stay as far away from e-mail list rental as possible.