Spam Is In The Eye of the Beholder(s)

I came across an article the other day in the New York Times Bits, reporting that global spam traffic has crept back up to about 94% of all email volume, after a steep decline last year attributed to the shut-down of a rogue ISP.

94% of all email volume equates to a large body of illicit email exhibiting an expanding set of practices and patterns that ISPs and consumers are taking account of. This ups the ante even further for permission email marketers, because if you don't take active steps to clearly differentiate yourself from a spammer, you will have very little success delivering emails, or eliciting positive responses from consumers. No matter how legitimate you think you are, if you look like a spammer and quack like a spammer… you will be considered a spammer by ISPs and consumers alike. So, forget (rhetorically) the FTC and CAN-SPAM - for practical purposes, it's the evaluation of the ISPs and the consumer that matter most.

When I have introductory discussions on email delivery with prospects/new customers I start with a very simple description of the context surrounding email delivery. It goes something like this: “ISPs have a very large sample of data – known spam attacks – to reference constantly. Smart people and smart programs analyze this data and establish clear patterns and flags that say ‘This Is How Spammers Behave.’ They apply the patterns and flags as algorithms that inspect every piece of email the ISP receives and make a simple comparison – does your email look like spam, or does it look like legitimate email.”

At least the ISPs are a bit more objective and formulaic. Less predictable is the consumer, who may already be on your house email list. Though without an analytical approach, the consumer is making similar evaluations every day.

There is a great study released by MarketingSherpa last year that I use in many of my presentations. Co-sponsored by MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive, the study indicates consumers’ interpretation of “spam” is far different than that of marketers and even ISPs. Here’s some humbling data: 86% of the consumers in the study clicked the “spam” or “junk” button for one of these three reasons:

“Email received was not of interest”
“I receive too much email from the sender”
“I receive too much email from all senders”

None of these reasons have anything to do with the sender’s reputation, their opt-in practices, their authentication protocols, accreditation or certification, or how the ISP evaluates the legitimacy of the email.

Instead, this has everything to do with legitimate emails actually looking a lot like spam to the consumer, because the marketer sends too frequently and won’t invest the time or care to create relevant content that stands out.

The consumer, through thousands of experiences with inbox-cluttering spam, has established their own pattern of association, which goes something like this – “If you add to my inbox clutter with volume and don’t respect my time by sending relevant content, I see you as nothing more than part of the problem.”

There are few loyalties in the inbox. The respect of the consumer has to be earned over and over again, and can’t simply be assumed because of a previous opt-in. Spammers do not try to earn the respect of the consumer, and are out to make a quick buck. If your email practices match more closely to this pattern, in the eyes of the consumer you are a spammer.

A sobering thought.

The Lunch Pail