The Rise Of Second Degree Spam
from the spam-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder dept
While the Direct Marketing Association continues to push for a definition of spam that would make only fraudulent emails spam, they seem to be ignoring the fact that most spam is defined simply as “emails I don’t want” – whether legitimate or not. And, under that real world definition, more and more spam is coming from so-called “legitimate” sources. People are starting to call this email “second degree spam”. It’s not unsolicited, because the receiver signed up at one point or another, but the company delivering the marketing messages has done nothing to make those emails relevant – and thus, in the user’s eye, they’re no different than spam. The marketers seem to be ignoring this because they think it’s to their benefit. They’re wrong. The more that lazy marketers simply blast people with irrelevant emails just because they think it’s okay that someone “opted-in”, the less people will pay attention to these emails. If they actually focused on customizing the messages and providing what people wanted without inundating them with useless stuff, they might actually get a good return. Unfortunately, it’s easier to be lazy and use a “scorched earth” policy of blasting out as many messages as possible – even if it will only work to destroy email as a marketing mechanism.
Comments on “The Rise Of Second Degree Spam”
Oh, we used to do this
I used to work for the National Underwriter Co. (www.nuco.com), where my boss — Peggy Walker — was pretty much clueless about technology. (She would send electronic memos to staff with confidential information “hidden” by changing the background color to black, not realizing that the text was still there.)
She loved to send e-mail to customers. She would order us to send one after another — weekly stuff, special promotions, etc. The tech folks (who didn’t work for her) made all sorts of noise that it would drown out our occasional *real* messages. It didn’t matter.
She would send tech-related messages to non-tech people. She would send conference-related messages to people who bought books from the company. She would justify everything with ‘they’re out customer and they opted in.’
Finally, the people who sent out the messages simply stopped. They told her they were sending them, but didn’t. Simple solution, and now the company can send the occasional mail knowing that (hopefully) she hasn’t spoiled the pot.
more frequent means more annoying
To me, a big part of whether commercial email (from companies I do business with) is objectionable is simply the frequency. A couple of companies send me email several times a year, and that’s fine, even though I don’t always read it. If they started sending it several a week, I would definitely opt out.
legitimate sources
In my experience, most (if not all) of the “legitimate” sources include a valid unsubscribe link.
The problem arrises when I try to explain to others when to use the unsubscribe link, and when its use puts up a neon spam-me sign.