• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, March 17, 2004

Remember when you first logged on to the Internet? You surfed around for some fun content, you found some sites that you liked and would frequent, and you subscribed to a few different emails from your favorite destinations.

Those days are gone as spam has become public enemy number two (second only to Steroids). Tom Hespos recently wrote an article about spam, and I wanted to jump on the bandwagon for a minute.

All the recent backlash against spam has caused a serious downturn in my recommendation of email as a useful marketing tool for our clients, and I'm sure that many other agencies are feeling the same way. "Opt-in email" has become almost a dirty word. A term that advertisers never speak about in public. All of the conferences spend time discussing search and affiliates and creative, but email is not brought up anymore. One has to wonder how the email industry is going to survive with government legislation and developing technologies all aimed at removing unsolicited emails from the consumer's inbox.

I can't blame anyone for this. Spam has gotten out of control, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. At the height of the sales pitch, I was receiving at least 2 to 3 phone calls from new email vendors every day! Not surprisingly, many of those sales people have faded away and are no longer calling on us, and the ones that we did buys with are asking why our Insertion Orders have slowed down. The pricing on email has dropped and is disproportionate to the amount of legal paperwork that we need to process in order to just get one buy live.

How will this affect online advertising as a whole?

Honestly, I don't think it will have any affect at all. As far as I can see, online spending is still increasing in spite of the spam laws. Just this past week, a number of advertisers came out and stated they are reallocating increased portions of their budgets online. In my inbox it seems that all of the spam is dedicated to about 5 to 7 sources, including one industry-related source (and I use the term loosely) that continues to send out spam. Those folks who continue to send me unsolicited emails are only serving to further deteriorate their own brands and decrease their credibility to me and to other consumers. The tried and true brands have all eased back on their use of email, and have become hyper-aware of the opinions of their consumers. Tom mentioned that he was afraid that these laws would be used to shut down legitimate email marketers. To be honest, I don't see this as a problem because I don't know of too many legitimate marketers who are still using opt-in email.

In the coming year we will certainly see more lawsuits against spammers, regardless of how hard they are to locate and target for retribution, but we also need to speak to the people who are still clicking on this email! BobVila.com aside (since I am sure there is some value to his emails), who is clicking through on every untargeted message they receive? I don't know anyone, nor can I fathom who is possibly receiving an email and saying, "Hmmm, someone wants to date me? I should click through and find out who!"

Maybe we can partner with TheTruth.com and do a co-marketing campaign against cigarettes and spam together? Maybe not, just an idea.