Disclosure: I am currently an employee of Earth Class Mail. My statements and opinions are meant in no way to reflect those of my employer, however convergent or divergent that may be.
ReadWriteWeb reported yesterday that anti-spam firm Marshal released the results of a survey recently conducted via their website. Marshal claims that 29% of the respondents reported to have purchased "something" from a spam email.
As RRW states, Marshal probably has a vested interest in promoting the sentiment that spam is intolerable, wasteful and dangerous. It's somewhat hard to argue to the contrary, save for the fact that most of the known world has pretty good spam filtration handily eliminating the problem. I also agree with the RRW assertion that the study itself was conducted in a manner that is clearly less than scientific. In fact, the "study" could be regarded as so potentially skewed that it's debatable whether the statistic is of any value at all. One possible reason that it was undertaken at all was that they are looking to play catch-up or remain relevant in light of their competitors claims.
Whether or not spamming is an effective marketing approach is continually a mater of debate. It's more than apparent that spammers and the filter makers have created an ecosystem that mutually benefits both sides, akin to the tension between anti-virus, anti-spyware crews constantly working to out maneuver one another. Spammers benefit from direct sales of items offered, and filtering firms from the sales of protection solutions. A rather convenient arrangement, don't you think?
Another way to look at anti-spam solutions would be to consider them as aggregators rather than filters. If I were a spammer, I wouldn't want my messages lost in the noise of all that attention-stealing "information & correspondence" in my inbox. If one has interests that they know to be served by the spammers, and according to Marshal apparently 29% of you do (and you know who you are!), then the spam folder could be considered a treasure-trove of goodies of every stripe.
It's probably safe to say that the only folks who are really getting the short end of the stick are those who are actually paying for the problem... entities who host and administer email systems. Further, is spam really a problem anymore for the recipients? It's probably safe to assume that anyone who is still truly annoyed by spam is likely utilizing sub-standard protection. I used to be inundated before the days of contemporary spam filtering, and my email addresses are still most certainly "out there". I almost never see spam unless I go looking for something accidentally caught.
As one who participated in the desktop anti-spam and system security gold rush of early 2000, it's safe to say that the market has matured and spam's not going away any time soon. Perhaps it's time to legitimize communications that are considered spam to the point that it's more effective to do it above-board rather than below. Much of the same has been done to legitimize direct mail with efforts like the Direct Marketing Association's "Do Not Mail" registry, borne out of efforts to curb paper mail that inundates the mailboxes of a great many postal mail recipients.
What's interesting to me, aside from the obvious fact that I work for Earth Class Mail and all this mail stuff is near an dear, is the potential of efforts underway to kill both birds with one stone. "Trusted Postal Email" is a mechanism and a set of global interoperability standards to support a convergent postal communication solution for postal mail and email. Earth Class Mail's Ron Wiener recently stated in Earth Class Mail's blog:
"Included in the UPU’s strategy document is reference to the long-awaited “.post” TLD (“Top Level Domain”), which ICANN (the international governing body for the Internet domain-name space) had awarded to the UPU in 2004. For a variety of reasons the signing of a Registry Agreement between the UPU and ICANN, and the deployment of “.post,” has been delayed for several years; however, now appears to be the ideal time for its debut – just in time to save the business models of many national posts from aggressive cannibalization by electronic substitutions."
Converging the world of physical postal mail with that of the digital world and email, in and of itself, is not the entire solution to unwanted mail advertising. But creating a trusted electronic messaging exchange does create some possibilities for making spam obsolete. Imagine if you were given the choice to receive correspondence, whether physical or digital, only from sources whom you "trust". imagine if spammers HAD to pay to get their messages to you, just like direct mailers do today. It might seem cumbersome on it's face, but there's probably a better-than-good chance that a trusted electronic exchange would go a long way towards curbing the "Junk".
Disclosure: I am currently an employee of Earth Class Mail. My statements and opinions are meant in no way to reflect those of my employer, however convergent or divergent that may be.