Spam Doesn't Work?

An anonymous reader writes "Businesses who believe the hype that spam works should read this article. It seems that the more recipients that you spam, the less likely they are to respond (startlingly obvious, but this seems to prove it)." Somehow I doubt this. If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying.

Comments

Faulty conclusion

[maiden_taiwan]

The study was about asking informational questions, not about hawking products to the masses. The "bystander effect" doesn't apply here.

Obvious?

[Geeyzus]

the more recipients that you spam, the less likely they are to respond (startlingly obvious

How is this obvious at all, or even correct? The people you spam have no knowledge of how many others get spammed by the same person/company. Although your odds of getting a bite have to be ridiculously low, they most certainly have to go up with every mailbox you hit. Basic statistics!

Mark

Are they really buying??

[CarrionBird]

I think a main reason we still get 20+ spams a day is not that they're effective, but that they're very cheap. In conparsion to other forms of advertising, the cost of spam is trivial.

Any type of computer based advertising has a high annoyance factor. Most of us grew up with ad-less computers, so why should we submit to it now? In contrast, most TV has always been a advertising vehicle, so we don't mind as much when we get hit with TV ads.

Article not about commercial spam . . .

[SimplyCosmic]

If you haven't read the article yet, it's not about commercial spam at all, but the psychological effects of getting an email asking a question from someone you know, with more names in the cc: field resulting in more of a "someone else will answer it" effect.

It really has nothing to do with commercial spam, and the original post here did nothing to make that distinction.

Re:Delete

[Heem]

I use a unique name for everything I need to hand an email address to.. ie.. microsoft@mydomain.com would be the email address i give to microsoft.. that way.. not only will i kill the address if it starts getting spammed, I know who sold me up the river.

Re:I have 4 Letters for you....

[Scutter]

My problem is that, while it will keep the spam out of my mailbox, the TMDA method still consumes resources on my server. Doubly so now, too because each incoming "unknown" mail will generate an outgoing message. If I can deny the message before the session even reaches the DATA phase (i.e. by using RBL's and checking the header), then I don't have to deal with the spam at all.

Re:Headline is wrong.

[outlier]

Of course, I wonder if it would have the same effect if you simply used the BCC: line and wrote it so they thought they were the only person receiving.

The study in the article did just that. Some of the people received an email that looked like it was just to them, others saw many names in the to: field. They found that people who thought they were singled out were more likely to be helpful.

The relevant psychological phenomena are called bystander apathy and diffusion of responsibility. In each, the more people in a group, the less likely each individual is to help/work.

This is nothing particularly new, it just says that people behave consistently in person or when contacted by email. It has nothing to do with commercial SPAM, only with requests for information/help to others.

someone's buying

[Vodak]

"If Spam didn't work, why do I get a hundred pieces of it every morning? Someone is buying."

That's simple, alot of small business owners are stupid and they buy lists. that's who's buying

Re:I'll tell you why Spam doesn't work.

[Phoenix]

How you got modded up to 2 Is beyond me. The REASON that it isn't appropriate is because I do NOT need to have a naked woman on my screen when I'm trying to teach my grandmother how to conect to her e-mail NOR do I need that displayed when children are around.

If you think that such pictures are sutable for display whenever and wherever it pops up regardless of who's in the room, then I'm not the one with "pretty much warped values" now am I?

Logical Failure: If They Do It, It Must Work

[markwelch]

> If Spam didn't work, why do I get a
> hundred pieces of it every morning? > Someone is buying.

Wrong. The fact that people send huge volumes of spam does not mean anyone is buying. Indeed, most spam comes from people who have been duped by list-sellers and email-sending-service sellers, into believing the same logical mistake.

Dozens of dot-com companies spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio advertising. They wouldn't do that unless it worked, right? But if that's true, why did they all go bankrupt, and why did so some report that they spent more money on advertising than they received in gross sales?

For a clever spammer, it costs almost nothing to send spam, so the mere prospect of a single sale is enough to justify sending millions of spams. For a stupid spammer who believes what the remailer or list-seller says, spamming is a bad business decision, just as many folks who advertise in the newspaper or yellow pages would probably not do so if they tracked the results and compared the cost.

The culprits for spam are ignorance and greed, not actual profit.

Number of Recipients

[Bilbo]

Also, their conclusion was based on the fact that the recipients knew how many other people were included in the CC: field. The more people there were, the less likely they were to respond. All pretty intuitive, but hardly applicable to email that is addressed to hundreds of thousands of people.

Gee... I'd hate to see the CC: field for that test message...