Email Marketers in Trouble as ‘Spam’ Definition Evolves to Mean ‘Unwanted’

The definition of spam has effectively changed from “unsolicited commercial email,” an idea based on permission, to a perception-based definition - i.e., it’s unwanted - according to the “Spam Complainers Survey” by Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa, reports MarketingCharts.

The survey sought to determine consumers’ perceptions of what spam is, why they report emails as spam and what they think happens when the “report spam” button is clicked.

Below, some of the survey findings.

Most consumers don’t accurately comprehend the meaning of “spam”:

• Over half of survey participants - 56 percent - consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is “just not interesting to me.”
• 50 percent of respondents consider “too frequent emails from companies I know” to be spam.
• 31 percent cite “emails that were once useful but aren’t relevant anymore.”

Regarding the use of the “report spam” button - the primary tool that internet service providers (ISPs) provide consumers to counter spam - nearly half of respondents (48 percent) provided a reason other than “did not sign up for email” for reporting an email as spam.

Respondents cited various non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button:

• “The email was not of interest to me” (41 percent).
• “I receive too much email from the sender” (25 percent).
• “I receive too much email from all senders” (20 percent).

MarketingCharts provides more findings from the study.