Slashdot Mirror
Building Better Spam
henbane writes "Cringely is plugging a new method of advertising from Dr. Jim Kowalick and Mario Fantoni. Their book entitled 'E-Mailing Your Way to Sales With
the Taguchi Approach' is out in the autumn. What could be worse than a method which increases the returns on spam?"
The return of Yoko Ono?
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
...aren't they making good money on carpet bombing? Why bother to target when you can reach all for pennies anyway. Of course, assuming you don't care about how many you piss off, which they normally don't.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
After reading the article I realized that I must be doing something wrong. I always click on every link in every email I get but still my penis hasn't gotten bigger, I don't have a horde of horny teens after me and I'm not rich.
What gives?
M
Did anybody RTFA? What does this have to do with spam? This is a originally a way of improving processes, primarily in engineering and/or manufacturing. Now, it's been applied to marketing. Since when is all spam considered marketing? I give this article a -1, Troll.
What could be worse than a method which increases the returns on spam?
Set someone's desktop picture and home page to be the goatse.cx guy. Truly evil, but it helped me train people to log off their machines when they weren't at their desks.
Trolling is a art,
Because if they do, they'll figure out quickly that sending me spam won't increase their returns.
Spam isn't hated because it is targetted advertising; precisely the opposite - SPAM is hated because it is untargetted. That is, people get spam for things that they would never buy. Personally, I do get targetted emails - I've given my address to local retailers, and I get their specials via email. I'm not annoyed at them. I'm annoyed at the folks who spam me with stuff that I would never even remotely be interested in.
If making spammers more effective means that I won't get 50 emails a day for stuff I'll never buy, I'm all for it. If it means that I'll get discounts for stuff I do buy, then I won't mind too much.
For those of you interested on learning Taguchi method. Here's a good intro.
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Cringley points out how standard engineering tools, in this case Taguchi's Design of Experiments (DOE) methods, can be used to increase the effectiveness of advertising. Claiming that he "plugs spam" is a complete mis-reading of the article. He points out the original study used "spam" in order to prove it's effectiveness; the study isn't dated.
DOE is how engineers make complex design decisions with as few experiments as possible. Mostly, he uses eBay as an example. He slightly mis-reads what Taguchi's DOE is about when he says that the old eBay data can be mined to re-create an orthogonal array. The whole point of DOE is a priori deciding what experiments to run, instead of the shot-gun approach used in the past. If you're gonna use data mining, then you don't really need Taguchi excpet for data reduction.
Personally, I recommended this approach to a high-volume eBay seller a couple years ago. He sells widgets with 3-4 different features (style, size, color), and uses a variety of terms to describe them (i.e. [stunning|beautiful|awesome] [rare|unique|one-of-a-kind]). Basically, he could run 16 or so tests using these various terms in the right combination, and determine which combinations were likely to work best. Ultimately, he didn't go down that route, but I'm pretty sure this is what Cringley was getting to before he got it confused w/ data mining.
Using data mining to do the Taguchi stuff is tough, b/c there are too many uncontrolled factors. I'm sure he'll get 100 letters on the topic from DOE experts and write a follow-up column next week.
As for spammers, I bet they start using DOE techniques, as they'll have to as fewe & fewer emails are getting through, making it a less profitable venture. Of course, legitimate advertisiers should be using the same techniques, and maybe they do. But DOE can be applied to any process, whether it is building cars, designing rockets, baking cookies, selling on eBay and, yes, sending spam.
From the article:
;)
They claim their work can be applied to any product or service and any advertising medium. And what presently requires sitting for those couple of sessions with Kowalick and Fantoni (at a cost of about $8,800) will soon be reduced to a $499 interactive software program that will run on a PC, bringing all the benefits of Taguchi without requiring that a nerd be enclosed to make it work.
The vanilla wafer recipe, however, will remain a secret.
Now where have I seen THAT before?
When men used to be men
We forget sometimes that advertising, when done right, plays a crucial information role in our economy. The quick and accurate dissemination of information is vital to keeping prices low and efficiency high -- not just advertising products to consumers, but to corporations, as well as advertising for jobs and soliciting services. (*ahem* Not those services)
The problem with spam is that it is bad advertising, and advertisers have not yet really caught on about how much it infuriates their potential customer base. I think you'll find that companies really paying attention to what works will eventually de-emphasize spam in favor of less-intrusive methods.
1. Don't ever buy anything from SPAM no matter how attractive the offer is. You must not reward their behavior.
2. Don't ever buy anything from telemarketers no matter how attractive the offer is. You must not reward their behavior.
3. Don't ever buy anything from door-to-door salesmen now matter how attractive the offer is. You must not reward their behavior.
MORTAR COMBAT!
What could be worse than a method which increases the returns on spam?
Plugging the book for free on Slashdot by pretending it's a news item.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I read through the article and I don't think it's reasonable to automatically assume this will lead to better spam. What if the most effective advertising rate is to not spam? Supposedly this Taguchi method rapidly takes thousands of variables into consideration and through a few experiments, comes up with the most effective method. If experimenters include the method of delivery as a variable, they may find that another technique works better than spam.
From where I stand, I see the possibility that spam will decrease significantly. The Taguchi method could be the next big buzzword (or buzzphrase) and every spammer who wants to make more money (which would be all of them - why else would they sacrifice their ethics) might determine that there is some better method than bulk mailing to *@*.* with deceptive subject lines and random strings everywhere.
And even if that doesn't happen, the end result would be spam that isn't quite such a nuisance. Something that we might not mind as much. And if we're going to keep getting spam, I'd rather it not be the kind that offends, insults and annoys us.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.