Spam: What Consumers Really Think

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Spam: What Consumers Really Think

Survey Finds Growing Anger; Advice for Avoiding Recipients’ Wrath

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SPAM: WHAT CONSUMERS REALLY THINK Survey finds growing anger; advice for avoiding recipients’ wrath

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our reputation as a sender is dinged every time a customer clicks the “report spam” button—the link certain email software programs provide users to complain when they receive unwanted email. If you get too many complaints, Internet service providers are likely to block messages emanating from your sending IP address. And not just to those who complained, but to everyone on your list.

Why Subscribers Click the “Report Spam” Button An interesting question engagement marketers might consider is how much recipients know about what actually happens when they click the spam button in their email client. Do they report your messages as spam because they’re angry? Because they don’t trust you and your unsubscribe link? And do they realize that by hitting the spam button, they can cause others who want to receive your emails to not be able to receive them? To find out why email recipients report messages as spam and how much they know about what happens when they do, Silverpop commissioned an online survey of consumers. More than 400 consumers age 18 to 55 participated in Silverpop’s Spam Survey, indicating what they think about spam and expressing considerable angst about receiving it. All questions allowed for multiple responses.

In Silverpop’s survey, 83 percent of respondents said they think spam is a serious problem. And they’re pretty unhappy about it. Yet how recipients define spam differs dramatically from how many marketers do. In the Silverpop Spam Survey, while 52 percent of email recipients said spam is email they didn’t subscribe to receive, 40 percent report messages as spam simply because they don’t want to receive them anymore. And a highly irritable 35 percent of online users consider spam to be “email from any commercial entity rather than from an individual they personally know.” Any commercial entity. Many legitimate marketers don’t look at spam in quite that way. While it’s true that you shouldn’t email people without their permission, in the United States it’s not actually illegal to do so. Despite its name, the U.S. CANSPAM Act of 2003 does not actually outlaw unsolicited commercial email. Rather, it attempts to regulate commercial email by prohibiting subterfuge, such as using misleading subject lines or disguising a message’s origins.

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Additionally, even if you’re sending unsolicited email to recipients in countries without legislation to prohibit it, most ISPs specifically ban the sending of unsolicited bulk email. By sending email, you implicitly are agreeing to their terms of service. In relation to email, what does the term "spam" mean? Email I didn't subscribe to receive

Spam in the eye of the consumer

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When reaching the global inbox, email marketers need to recognize that most other countries that have enacted email-related laws do make it illegal to send commercial email to someone who has not expressly consented to receive your communications. For example, the European Parliament passed a directive in 2002 stating that, “It is justified to require that prior explicit consent of the recipients is obtained before such communications are addressed to them.”1 It’s critical to know and understand the geographic profile of your customer base before formulating your opt-in strategy.

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Email I don't want to receive

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Email from any commercial entity

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Despite more rigorous spam filters used by ISPs, corporations and individuals, spam volumes continue to increase, with spam now accounting for 90 percent to 95 percent of all email sent.2 Recipients certainly feel the effects of increased spam, and they’re not happy about it.

Consumers don’t see spam leveling off Silverpop found that 27 percent of consumers said they’re receiving a lot more spam this year than last, and the same percentage of respondents believe they’re getting somewhat more spam, while 30 percent think they’re getting about the same amount as they’ve always received. Only 12 percent of consumers said they’re getting somewhat less spam.

© 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.

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The growing amount of spam hitting inboxes and junk folders has had a serious impact on consumer behavior. Silverpop’s Spam Survey found that 77 percent of consumers limit the number of emails they opt in to receive—even from companies they trust—for fear of receiving more spam. Twenty-five percent have created multiple email accounts, and 17 percent use throw-away addresses for contests or free downloads.

Are you receiving more or less spam this year compared to last? A lot less

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Somewhat less

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About the same

Apparently some of those unaffected by spam don’t bother reporting messages they don’t want by hitting the spam button, because 22 percent of consumers say they’ve never reported email as spam. But do the math. That leaves 78 percent of consumers who have hit the spam button on their email client. Clearly, there are more email recipients irritated about spam than those that are simply ignoring and deleting it. What do you do to avoid receiving spam? Use throw-away addresses

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In the survey, respondents were asked why they reported an email as spam, and they could indicate multiple reasons. A clear majority (76 percent) said the messages they reported as spam were simply those they “felt” they had never registered to receive. They may very well have actually subscribed to receive the companies’ emails, but don’t remember doing so. Mistrust is another reason for reporting spam. Three out of 10 respondents to Silverpop’s survey said they hit the spam button rather than the unsubscribe link because they think using the unsubscribe option will lead to getting more spam. The survey also found that 7 percent of recipients report emails as spam simply because they receive too many messages from the company. While that seems like a small percentage, it doesn’t take many spam complaints to get you blocked at many ISPs.

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1. Don’t delay sending messages after opt-in To avoid falling into the trap of recipients forgetting that they opted in to receive your messages, engagement marketers need to send subscribers a welcome message soon after they opt in. Once someone opts in to your email program, send a message to reinforce your new relationship and remind them of the value they will receive for joining your program. According to a 2008 Silverpop analysis of America’s top retailers, 35 percent failed to send any message at all within 30 days after registration—no confirmation message, no welcome message, no product information or sales notice.3 Not sending messages shortly after a subscriber opts in only serves to confuse a recipient. If someone has to wait more than a month to receive the first message from a sender, chances are higher that they’ll have forgotten they even registered with the company, and they will hit the spam button to keep such messages from reaching their inbox in the future.

Recipients care only about their inboxes—not anyone else’s Generally, a surprisingly high number of email recipients don’t understand the true impact of hitting the spam button. Nearly seven out of 10 consumers (68 percent) think that hitting the spam button means that, while the company may continue to send the emails, their ISP will block them. Eight out of 10 consumers didn’t know that hitting the spam button could result in all of that sender’s emails being blocked by ISPs, meaning that other people who want to receive emails from that company wouldn’t be able to. And when they were told that could indeed happen, most just didn’t care. Nearly seven out of 10 respondents (67 percent) said that they would continue marking unwanted emails as spam despite knowing that hitting the spam button could block senders’ emails from reaching people who really want to receive them.

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15%

80%

Why consumers hit the spam button

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While the difficulties of reaching the inbox grow ever more complex due to consumer apathy and concerns over spam, here are six simple tactics email marketers can take to help improve deliverability and avoid being targeted as a spammer.

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Limit registering for emails

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Tactics to Reduce Spam Complaints

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Have multiple accounts

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Why do you report email as spam? Company sends too many emails

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Subscribed but no longer interested

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Mistrust unsubscribe link

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To refresh people’s memories and reinforce your relationship, include a statement in the footer area of your message such as, “This mailing was sent to you because you asked for new product announcements from Company X.” This will help remind the customer what he or she signed up for, and from whom.


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2. Only send what they asked for

What do you think happens when you report an email as spam by hitting the "This is spam" button in your email program?

Make sure your messages are relevant, and send only what subscribers have asked for. One way to ensure relevance is to offer preferences My email provider will block their messages from my inbox at opt-in so that subscribers can select the types of messages they Company is notified to are interested in. If subscribers opt in to receive your Best Practices take me off their list newsletter, don’t start suddenly sending them your pure product promotion Email to other subscribers may get blocked emails, unless they also clearly request them. Never assume subscribers will want to receive different content just because they already subscribe to your messages, or because you think they will like the new content once they see it. Sending content or promotions that are outside of what most subscribers would expect is likely to drive your spam complaint rate higher. Did you know that by hitting the spam button, you could cause email from that company to not be delivered to others who registered for and want to receive its messages?

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3. Provide a clear and easy-to-use opt-out mechanism Always offer a clear way for an email customer to unsubscribe from future messages. While you may not want subscribers to leave your email program, if you make it difficult for them to do so, they may just hit the spam button instead. If your spam complaint rates are high, consider including an unsubscribe link at the top of your message in addition to the footer.

Company reported for breaking the law

But on the flip side, under-mailing can hurt, too. Email is an immediate medium. Not only will subscribers forget about you if you wait too long to send that all-important first message after opt-in, they will lose interest if there are long gaps between messages. In addition, if you wait months between mailings, your 5 percent monthly bounce rate may suddenly skyrocket to 20 percent or more with several months’ worth of dead and dormant email addresses, making you look like a spammer to the ISPs even without recipients’ complaints.

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5. Make sure subscribers recognize your messages Research has shown that subscribers first look at the “From” line of an email and then the subject line. Use a recognizable name, such as your brand or company name, in the “From” field. And resist the urge to use overly clever or tricky subject lines that could confuse or annoy recipients. Also, keep your messages consistent with your overall brand image. If recipients suddenly begin to see emails in their inbox with a drastically unfamiliar look and feel, they may quickly delete them or report them as spam without even realizing they’re from your company. 6. Practice good list hygiene List quality can affect whether an ISP accepts or rejects your messages. Make sure you remove hard bounces—addresses returned as permanently undeliverable—and spam complaints from your list after every send, and promptly handle unsubscribe requests. Knowing that hitting the spam button blocks the senders’ emails from reaching people from who really want to receive them, would you continue to hit the spam button anyway?

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4. Don’t send too often or too infrequently Maxing out your subscribers’ tolerance for your messages is never a good strategy. You run the risk of annoying people to the point where they hit the spam button and walk away from you forever. Increased frequency may raise spam complaint rates above ISP inbox thresholds, getting your messages blocked or filtered and reducing your overall delivery rate. It can cost you customers and direct revenue.

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Also consider clearing your list of “deadwood”—addresses that have shown no activity over a certain length of time. How frequently you send and what you’re sending determines how often you should scrub your list of inactive addresses. Unresponsive recipients can harm deliverability because ISPs will often use old, abandoned email addresses as honey pots or “spam traps.” They presume that since the address is clearly no longer being used to opt in to any email programs, then the only people sending to it must be spammers.


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To get around the problem of blocking senders with good reputations, Forrester Research predicts that future filtering systems “…may not only track the volume of spam complaints, but what type of user blocks certain senders in order to block emailers only from the segment of users who don’t want to hear from them but not others.”2

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contribute to the determination of what constitutes good and bad email. Regardless of whether a sender has permission or a sterling reputation at the ISP, in the end, it all boils down to whether a customer perceives a message to be worthwhile. If not, he or she may very well vote with the spam button.

FOOTNOTES:

In the end, it is important for you to understand that ultimate power over your engagement marketing efforts actually rest with your customers. Treat them right, 1. EU Directive - 2002/58/EC, 2002 and you will be rewarded. Fail to send them the emails they expect to receive, or 2. “The Secret to Email Delivery,” July 2008, Forrester Research 3. “Study Reveals Email Tactics of America’s Top Retailers,” delay in sending messages after they opt in, and prepare to suffer their wrath. Silverpop, June 2008 The designation of spam versus legitimate email is becoming a community 4. “Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008,” MarketingSherpa, project, as reputation and the hundreds of millions of email users all Dec. 2007

MarketingSherpa and Pivotal Veracity monitored the emails of 100 top publishers, retailers and business-to-business companies for 90 days at major ISPs and discovered that 49 percent of companies were affected by false positives—permission-based email mistakenly labeled as spam. Despite the strides taken in adopting reputation and authentication systems by both inbox providers and emailers, false positives continue to be a very real problem for permission-based senders.4

To find out more about Silverpop’s Engage solution and how it can benefit your company, please contact us toll-free at 1-866/SILVPOP (745-8767) or email us at [email protected]. Visit us at www.silverpop.com

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