Rudelle Blogging

Even if everyone agrees that spam is a plague, not everyone does have the same sensitivity on the subject. According to Wikipedia, spam is “the abuse of electronic messaging to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are generally undesired”.
The concept of “unsolicited” is not as obvious as it appears. With the strictest interpretation, any message which is not a response to a preceding message is by definition unsolicited. It is absurd. If my email is visible on this blog, it means that I agree to receive some “unsolicited” messages. Nevertheless that does not mean any message is welcome.
To clarify this, regulation authorities usually distinguish if the message is addressed to a consumer or a professional.
In the case of a consumer, it is usually necessary to collect his preliminary agreement at least with an opt-out function. There is nevertheless a big exception: if someone buys a product from a website, the e-merchant is authorised to flood this mailbox as much as he wants.
In the case of a professional (what I am), regulation authorities usually consider that it is not necessary to obtain the agreement of the recipient if and only if the content of the message is in connection with the activities of the recipient of the message. It’s obviously much more acceptable to receive an unsolicited message in connection with my activities that something completely out of range.
It remains that focusing too much on the way emails are collected misses the main point. To truly distinguish between spam and not spam, what really important is the content of the message sent and even more important the frequency of the emails. This is where the “undesired” becomes much more important than the “unsolicited”.
I am much more tolerant with the small start-up which sends me an one time unsolicited teaser on its new product, than with some big e-retailer which feels he can spam me with his bulk junk emails every week (sometime even every day!) just because one time I bought one product from his web site.
This is similar for viagra and credit offers. What is painful above all, it’s not to receive one spam per year, but 50 per day.
In short, an unsolicited email is still desirable if and only if:
- The content is neither dishonest nor offensive, is mainly informative and not hard selling.
- The product or service to which it refers is original, new and in connection with the activities of the recipient.
- In the recipient responds, his mail is treated quickly and in a personalized way
- Without answer from the recipient, no more other email is sent on the same subject.
Finally as a sender, there is a very simple way to know if you are spamming. If your response rate is lower than 5%, it’s likely that what you propose is not in adequacy with your target.
Below 1% of return, you are completely out of focus and it is time to consider another approach. For example, why don’t you try personalized e-mailing which is much more efficient? Of course, this requires personalization (and usually sophisticate) tools, but there are a couple of vendors in the market that can offer you that.