Spam vs. e-mail?

SPAM is a growing problem for anyone who uses and depends on email in his or her day-to-day activities. It is also becoming a major headache for organizations that have chosen to employ email marketing best practices. Illegitimate or illegal email practices undermine the credibility and effectiveness of legitimate permission-based email marketing efforts such as those that we undertake for our clients at MethodMail. But does this problem spell the end to Email Marketing as a practice? SPAM is definitely an annoyance. However, I believe over time that SPAMMING will become an unacceptable business practice.

First, let's quickly address what is being done. A first line of defense for marketers is to analyze and implement the anti-spam and privacy legislation practices that governments are now passing into law. Of course, as detractors of Privacy Legislation point out, those who tend to obey legislation are probably already observing best practices, and those who choose to operate unethically will probably continue to operate in this manner. In other words, Privacy legislation will not stop the guilty from continuing their illegal practices, but it will help separate the legitimate from illegal efforts.

What is clear is that it is difficult to catch and punish spammers. They have made a science of cloaking their identities, covering their tracks and operating from areas that make it difficult if not impossible to legally prosecute and punish them. Clearly, legislation could be a deterrent, but it alone is not the solution to the problem.

Another line of defense for marketers resides with consumers who have access to the latest Filtering technology. Today, consumers and businesses are integrating Filtering technology to help 'weed-out' those messages that are most likely SPAM. This relatively new technology may be based on key words or patterns within the email itself. The filter can also use a unique identifier such as an email server domain name or IP address. However, as it currently stands, both methods have drawbacks in terms of false positives (wrongly identifying legitimate emails as SPAM), and false negatives (letting SPAM slip through as legitimate email).

A third line of defense resides with Email Marketers themselves, in the form of licensing or 'authorized sender' programs. Several groups are now working to develop standards that would allow email marketers to be granted certification or authorization (or similar professional industry designation) to send permission-based email. When accepted standards emerge, email users will be able to install plug-ins that filter all commercial email to ensure the sender is 'certified'. Certification will be policed first by the consortium of email marketers themselves, then via outside agencies and governments with whom the consortium will fully cooperate.

Failure to comply with legislation and/or best practices will result in a marketer's certification being reviewed or revoked permanently. This method of SPAM prevention holds a great deal of promise because it does not rely on patterns within an email or any technical identifier to weed out SPAM. The result will make it much harder for SPAMMERS to circumvent the controls in place.

Marketers can also help their own cause by only purchasing or using email addresses where the end user has given explicit permission to contact them, and by observing other best practices and being respectful of the relationship they have with their customers. SPAM will likely never disappear totally, however, if we work toward taking away the financial reward behind this practice and find different ways to punish those who do not comply with legislative or industry guidelines, we will reduce their numbers and the SPAM annoyance factor.