Want to get rich quick? Try the spam business. More than 49 percent of emails we receive per day are considered spam—that means about HALF of the notifications in our inboxes are more or less clutter. If you had a penny for each piece of junk mail, you’d…well; you wouldn’t have room for all those pennies in your house.
The reason we’re inundated with spam is because it scales better than any idea a Silicon Valley startup could ever hatch. It costs the same minuscule amount to send 100,000 messages as it does 100. Studies (like mileage) vary, but the general consensus is that a spammer turns a profit even if only 1 in 25,000 recipients responds.
Slice it any way you want; spam is the scourge of our modern day existence. Your precious target audience is predisposed to hate you even before they’ve even met you.
The unfortunate name had nothing to do with its ineffectiveness. In 2003, Congress enacted the CAN-SPAM Act. It placed some limits on what internet marketers could get away with. But by that time, spammers and marketers had already begun a journey toward indistinguishability in the eyes of the public.
An amazing communication device for marketers was being marred by spammers. And sadly, the CAN-SPAM did nothing to reverse the trend. The Criminal Justice Policy Review published an assessment in 2014 stating that the impact of CAN-SPAM was largely unsuccessful for 2 reasons:
- It’s difficult to enforce the regulations regarding junk mail, graymail, and malware
- Spam operations felt the heat in the US, so they moved overseas
There are days, based on the amount of junk mail in your inbox, you may think the term “spam filter” is an oxymoron. But technology is trying to get the upper hand.
Email is clearly not going away anytime soon. That means there’s still an opportunity for spam to find its way to you. Until our email clients get smarter, many believe that the combination of artificial intelligence and cloud computing will finally drive the proverbial stake through spam’s greedy little heart.
Meanwhile, some companies have found a way to soundly defeat spam—they’ve instructed their people to stop using email. Collaborative social communication platforms like Slack are quickly scooting in and taking up residence at companies of all different sizes. You can’t get spam if you don’t use email.
Email will remain a powerful communication platform once it finds a way to stop hanging around with bad-boy spam. Thanks to technology, it could end up reinventing itself. Until such a time, is it still an effective way to reach target markets?
People don’t want to get messages from strangers, they want proper introductions first. Until then, your company is a stranger. It doesn’t matter how high the propensity is that they should want your product or service based on demographic research and consumer behavior. You are spam.
The obstacle for marketers isn’t figuring out how to talk to people they don’t know. It’s how to create a relationship with strangers before they use something like email to strengthen the relationship.
Email works beautifully as a communication medium when the sender and the recipient have an existing connection. There’s nothing wrong with it. Spam may have given email a black eye, but it sure isn’t responsible for its inefficiency.
You don’t need to come up with another excuse as to why email isn’t working for you. Instead, let the experts at ContentBacon tighten up your content and bring your email campaigns to a whole new level. Get in touch with us today—we’ve got your back!
