Demand for Spam? It exists
Do you like spam? No, I'm not kidding. Everybody knows what spam is, almost everybody seems to have learned by heart simple advice like "do not click ?" "do not respond?" , "do not buy?" but--
On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. "This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.
The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.
Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.
Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine 'live' email accounts, which means more spam. What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.
Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.
Blunder 2 -- trying to unsubscribe to spam using the 'unsubscribe' link in the email -- 18% of respondents
Some users are naive enough to think that spammers really won't send any junk mail to their addresses if they tell them not to. Haven't they heard that spammers use the unsubscribe link solely to identify active email accounts. When individual email addresses or entire domains are found to be active, they are doomed to flood of spam.
Blunder 3 -- What's more: Over 10% of respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. Sending out huge volumes of spam is very cheap, so let's face it--spam is an effective means of advertising. Spam is booming, and these 10% users who actually bought anything advertised by spam, are partly to blame for it.
The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work. Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam. Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users. Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users' exercise bad email behaviour."
Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC-an independent software developing company. This company provides software capable of disabling information-stealing modules, which can be hidden inside spyware as well as viruses, worms and Trojans.Learn more -- visit the company's websitehttp://www.anti-keyloggers.com
5 Ways Spam Is Affecting Your Business And what we can alldo to prevent it.
If you had only just got online, and received your firstfew emails, you may be forgiven for thinking you had hitpaydirt.
You would already have heard how you won millions on aforeign lottery, then some benevolent foreigner wants togive you more millions because a relative has died and heneeds help to get his inheritance, and you're someone hecan trust. And as luck would have it, those personal bodyparts you don't discuss with anyone are actually too small,but a few people can help you with that for a very low fee.And you have all that Cas.h coming so.....
But you're a seasoned veteran, and none of that is worthyour time, it's just so much spam.
You probably don't even see any of it.
Don't give it a second thought.
Maybe you need to.
It is because it is so easy and cheap to send email thatyou as a marketer want to use it,and spammers selling dodgypills want to exploit it. They send out a million untargetedmessages in a few hours, and rely on the fact that even ifonly 1 or 2 % of the people they sent it to bu.y their waresthey will be in Profi.t.
You try to send a more targeted mailing, but due to thespammers all email is being vetted more carefully, and spamis hurting all of our businesses, even responsible marketerslike you who wouldn't even think about using it.
Here are the 5 reasons you should consider theimplications of spam more carefully.
1 The time it takes to sort your emails is increased, butyou can always use filters or antispam software. Whichbrings us to
2 False positives in antispam software means, if you don'tcheck the filtered out spam, you may miss a valuablecontact from a customer. So you have to check it allanyway.
3 Your customers use spam blockers, or their isps do so youneed to rethink your newsletter or email to your list ofprospects so you don't trigger theirs.
4 Due to the amount of people you can reach with email, youare more likely to encounter someone who reports you forspam even after they signed up and double opted into yournewsletter. Result:- your domain gets blacklisted, and youspend time undoing the damage.
5 People are more wary about giving their e-mail addressesout so it's harder work getting them to sign up for yournewsletter in the first place. You need an easy to findprivacy promise on your site.
Because so many people have used spam to sell theirproducts, we all suffer.
Even with all these spam related problems, email remains aviable and usable option for Online marketin.g, but it needsa bit more care than it did before.
Governments may be stepping in and passing laws to outlawspam, but the spammers themselves will move their serversto a safe place with a more tolerant government. We need todo our bit to keep email as an advertising option and playsafe.
Consider putting your newsletters online and sending ashort email with the link to the latest issue in it.Never bu.y from a spammers email, and despite some adviceyou may have seen to the contrary it is unwise to try toreply to unsubscribe, that just proves they have an emailaddress which is live.
Be careful where you get leads from if you bu.y them, someunscrupulous companies will sell you email lists harvestedstraight from website mailto links.
CD's full of 1000's of names are not a good buy to marketto, they will have been sold and sold again, and the peoplewhose email addresses are on them will have been sent toomany offers already.
Always email responsibly, and ensure you give people aplain privacy link, and an even more plain unsubscrib.e linkin every email.
Douglas Titchmarsh runs several websites, and blogs including
http://www.cashinonline.info and
http://www.titchmarsh.com
