Email marketers face a problem

[Larwee]

Here is what could possibly be some very important information for you if you are an email marketer. Most consumers now have a definition of spam that is a lot different than you might think.

Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa conducted a survey to find out what consumers think spam is, what they believes happens when they report spam and their reasons for reporting emails as spam.

Even when marketing messages are from known senders 56 percent considers it spam if the messages don't happen to be interesting to them.

50 percent consider messages from companies they know to be spam if they send messages too often.

A large number of people use the "report spam" button and their reason for reporting something as spam might come as a surprise to some people.

41 percent report it as spam because it was of no interest to them.

20 percent report it as spam because they receive too much email from everyone.

43 percent use the report spam button hoping to unsubscribe from a list rather than using the unsubscribe link furnished by the advertiser in the email.

There are a lot more interesting and useful details in this survey that you might want to be aware of if you do any email marketing. You might want to take some of it into consideration. This is a link to that additional information http://www.marketingcharts.com/direc...unwanted-3966/

[Del]

In my experiance, unsubscribe lnks don't work too well, that, and I've stopped bothering to open the mails, since all those virus/trogan scares. I have enough viruses and trogans thankyouverymuch.

[s.herzig]

Interesting post :-)! These statistics reflect exactly what I experience in every day life with my websites.

The definition of SPAM seems to be unclear to most internet users. Indeed, if I receive an e-mail from a company that I never heard of, or rather: if I receive an e-mail although I know I never agreed to receive any kind of commercial e-mail, or if it has a phony subject in the lines of medication or ... enlargements ... I, too, press the "This message is SPAM" button, but a lot of people press that damn button just too often.

While it may be understandable, especially in todays times (I believe it was Norton who had some statistics about 75% of all outgoing mail to be spam), it can be extremely irritating in a lot of cases:

For example: I send out a newsletter, upon request, mostly daily, to a relatively small percentage of my users. It happens from time to time that I get e-mails saying "I didnt receive the newsletter since a few days - why arent you sending it out anymore?". Sometimes replying clears the confusion, but ever so often, the people on the other end never receive my reply due to my entire mailserver IP being blocked by the other end. This then again led to angry replies from users, asking why I am not replying to their mails.

I've done everything possible to tell the receiving mail server that I truly am the sending host: correct DNS setup, spf record, domainkeys, etc etc... but it stays an irritating issue.

I'm not going to name any companies here, but one large e-mail provider that I talked to about this problem, offered me that I could pay them a few thousand dollars a year and they would make sure that the mails would never be blocked... hmm...

This, eventually, led me to just include a support ticketing system where my userbase was able to check replies to their created tickets online.

[nixwebo]

I have had no problem with spam as I now use gmail.

I do not sign up for a bunch of stupid stuff as it pops up on my screen, from my experience this is where a lot of the malware out there comes from.

Just cause it say "click here" doesn't mean it has control over your mouse...If I sign up for a weekly email, generally I am expecting to get a weekly email, if they send it daily after saying it was weekly, then I guess that this would change things.

[DJ_B]

This makes sense to me.

A very liberal definition of spam could simply be 'unwanted' email. I signed up to receive Apple updates a couple of years ago. Every now and then I receive an email of importance to me, but 99% are useless to me. I would be tempted to call these 99% of emails spam.

[thomsonbsa]

Another issue marketers could face is that the spam blockers people use could accidentally mistake their mailings for spam. I find that sometimes a friend will send me an e mail and I don't get it. Then I look in the spam folder, and lo and behold, there it is, placed wrongly into my spam folder. As time progresses, and e mail advances, these issues will hopefully be remedied.

[astoneuab]

I agree haha, gmail changes everything, no more spam!

Originally Posted by nixwebo

I have had no problem with spam as I now use gmail.

I do not sign up for a bunch of stupid stuff as it pops up on my screen, from my experience this is where a lot of the malware out there comes from.

Just cause it say "click here" doesn't mean it has control over your mouse...If I sign up for a weekly email, generally I am expecting to get a weekly email, if they send it daily after saying it was weekly, then I guess that this would change things.

[interval]

Originally Posted by Del

In my experiance, unsubscribe lnks don't work too well, that, and I've stopped bothering to open the mails, since all those virus/trogan scares. I have enough viruses and trogans thankyouverymuch.

If a message is a spam, then clicking unsubscribe link could be a mistake. This way the sender finds that the address is real and ... Ignore and set a filter if you can

[vik88]

yes... after this operation you wount be able to receive such messages! =) i agree with interval =)

[Zila1]

It makes sense but I personally don\t get spam at all. the filter works great!

[pathill]

Originally Posted by Larwee

Here is what could possibly be some very important information for you if you are an email marketer. Most consumers now have a definition of spam that is a lot different than you might think.

Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa conducted a survey to find out what consumers think spam is, what they believes happens when they report spam and their reasons for reporting emails as spam.

Even when marketing messages are from known senders 56 percent considers it spam if the messages don't happen to be interesting to them.

50 percent consider messages from companies they know to be spam if they send messages too often.

A large number of people use the "report spam" button and their reason for reporting something as spam might come as a surprise to some people.

41 percent report it as spam because it was of no interest to them.

20 percent report it as spam because they receive too much email from everyone.

43 percent use the report spam button hoping to unsubscribe from a list rather than using the unsubscribe link furnished by the advertiser in the email.

There are a lot more interesting and useful details in this survey that you might want to be aware of if you do any email marketing. You might want to take some of it into consideration. This is a link to that additional information http://www.marketingcharts.com/direc...unwanted-3966/

Your figures are but reflective of the truth and I am one of those who are guilty of hitting the 'Report Spam' button instead of unsubscribing off their mailing lists. Bad habits, hard to break, eh?

[electronic smoking]

I would never hite the "report spam" its just a lazy thing to do. When you report it as spam you have no idea what that can do to the website if anything at all. Just delete the message and get off the mailling list. It wont take as much time as some think it will. It just crazy if that site get in trouble for spamming if they really aren't.

[Del]

Part of the problem is that some places won't actually remove you, or will make it difficult, or will pester you to rejoin. After you have done that a few times, it really doesn't feel pointfull to just click the link in the message to unsubscribe. That, plus rumors that opening a message tells the sender (for real spam) that the account is real and a good target; as well as rumors about bugs being possible to get just for opening them.

I delete, without opening unless I'm getting a lot from the same source.

[12Magazine]

thank you for the info...

[BubbleTea]

is that why email is going down and SEO wins more and more popularity ?