How Consumers Define Spam
There are two types of spam. The first being the typical definition, totally unsolicited emails that have no relevancy and are uncalled for, e.g. "add two inches to your member!" The other type of spam is solicited, whether known or unknown, and below is how consumers define spam.
Almost 60% of consumers defined frequent emails from a trusted source, or company that they do business with, as spam. So what exactly is too frequently? It’s really going to be relative for each individual and how well they are being served.
The following information is from a study done by DoubleClick in October 2004 from average Internet users:
- 96% consider email that intends to trick them into opening it as spam.
- 93% consider email from an unknown sender as spam.
- 94% consider offensive subject matter as spam.
- 58% consider email from a company they do business with, but comes too frequently, as spam.
- 57% consider email that they gave permission to receive but no longer wish to receive as spam.
- 38% consider email that tries to sell them a product or service, even though they know the sender, as spam.
The important factor to take note of is the frequency of emails sent. The majority of retailers send one or less emails per month, which is an acceptable amount of emails to send without falling into the spam category. That number seems quite low, but also remember that 58% of consumers consider over-frequent email from a trusted source as spam.
So I have to ask, in terms of emails from either a trusted source or from a source that you’ve opted to recieve emails from, what is "too many" emails to send in a 30 day period? I would agree that one email per month is acceptable, and anything else is just overboard. I would like to add, however, that updates or notification emails are entirely different than emails that advertise a sale or similiar tactic.
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Even more interesting is that 57% consider email that they gave permission to receive but no longer wish to receive as spam. Why don’t they unsubscribe? How is the sender supposed to know that they no long wish to receive the email?