• by Paul Gough , October 13, 2003

An explosion in bulk e-mail hasn't yet turned consumers off to permission- based e-mail marketing but a new study finds marketers might be better served going easy with it. The report, released Monday by DoubleClick at the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference in Orlando, Fla., found consumers are overwhelmingly concerned about spam.

In fact, more than half of the respondents to the survey say they are now using bulk folders that divert spam-like offerings, while 36 percent say they use their e-mail program's spam filter and 15 percent claim to have downloaded spam-filtering software. Thirteen percent have created a second e- mail account to make online purchases, DoubleClick said.

The report also finds there is slightly more e-mail per week this year compared than in 2002, but the overall percentage of spam is about the same: 56 percent.

Perhaps most alarming of all to bulk e-mail marketers, 65 percent of DoubleClick's respondents said they delete spam without reading it compared to 60 percent in 2002, while only 4 percent read it first, compared to 5 percent a year ago.

Scott Knoll, vice president of marketing solutions at DoubleClick, said for the most part, consumers don't mind getting e-mail from companies they have a relationship with -- what's called permission-based e-mail in the business. Conversion rates among relationship-based consumers are still pretty high. Yet Knoll said marketers are in danger of drowning consumers in a spate of mail that causes anger and, in many cases, opt outs from the e-mail list.

"They're getting tons of offers and that's really bothering them," Knoll said.

He suggested marketers do a better job segmenting and targeting the market instead of just blasting out e-mail because it's easy and cheap. Knoll added that many consumers are going through e-mail fatigue. E-mail marketers would be wise to take a lesson from traditional direct marketers, who have been using purchasing and other data to make better decisions on whom to send e- mail to.

"E-mail marketers are going to have to do that or they will lose customers or lose permission to send e-mail to customers," Knoll said.

Knoll advises marketers to think about how often they are sending permission- based e-mail, and consider less e-mail as more.

"There's definitely still a desire to receive it, but at the same time, everyone has their own preferences and it's very clear they don't want to receive everything," Knoll said.

E-mail remains a popular marketing channel, with 91 percent of the consumers in the survey receiving some type of permission-based e-mail.

They include:

52.7 percent receiving e-mail from online merchants.

55.4 percent receiving e-mail from traditional merchants.

48.5 percent from cataloguers.