Silverpop
From First Click to Lifetime Customer
WHITE P A P E R
Spam:
What Consumers
Really Think
Survey Finds Growing Anger;
Advice for Avoiding
Recipients’ Wrath
Engagement Marketing Solutions
Silverpop
Engagement Marketing Solutions
STUDY
SPAM: WHAT CONSUMERS
REALLY THINK
Survey finds growing anger;
advice for avoiding recipients’ wrath
Y
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.
1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767)
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
www.silverpop.com
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.
52%
Email I don't want to receive
40%
Email from any
commercial entity
35%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
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.
2
Silverpop
Engagement Marketing Solutions
STUDY
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
5%
Somewhat less
12%
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
77%
0%
20%
40%
60%
27%
A lot more
27%
0%
5%
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.
20%
25%
30%
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.
1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767)
15%
80%
Why consumers hit the spam button
www.silverpop.com
10%
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.
25%
Limit registering for emails
Somewhat more
Tactics to Reduce Spam Complaints
17%
Have multiple accounts
30%
Why do you report email as spam?
Company sends
too many emails
7%
Subscribed but no
longer interested
7%
Mistrust unsubscribe link
30%
Didn't subscribe
to receive them
76%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
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.
© 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.
3
Silverpop
Engagement Marketing Solutions
STUDY
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?
17%
83%
Yes
No
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.
www.silverpop.com
1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767)
18%
18%
7%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
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?
33%
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.
68%
67%
Yes
No
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.
© 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.
4
Silverpop
Engagement Marketing Solutions
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
Conclusion
STUDY
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
www.silverpop.com
1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767)
© 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.
5