Spam Bits

Let's mush a few things together into a nice pink rectangular solid: ipandithurts writes "The FTC Chair Timothy Muris doubts the ability of the "CAN SPAM" law to stop SPAM." ElementCDN writes "The Ottawa Citizen has a story on Bernard Balan the King of Spam. Bernard has closed up shop and moved to cottage country near Huntsville, Ontario." CactusMan writes "CTV (among others) is reporting that a Ontario trio has been named in a suit filed by Yahoo under the new CAN-SPAM legislation. Yahoo is claiming that the father and two sons were 'responsible for sending millions of unsolicited messages to users of the company's e-mail service.'" ilsa writes "According to this AP article, as much as 19% of e-mail sent by commercial entities never reaches its destination. 'Promotions and greeting cards were the types of messages most likely to disappear, the study found.' Although this study may have been intended to be alarming, forgive me for thinking this may not be a bad thing." Reader chrisbtoo responds to an earlier spam story: "In today's story about Spam solutions, monstroyer challenged people to crack the Spam Interceptor Captcha. Turns out it was pretty easy." Finally, we can't fail to mention an attempt at making the world's largest spam musubi.

Comments

Wow, they requested this?

[Faust7]

e-mail recipients risk losing newsletters and promotions they've requested.

Who with an ounce of sense would request any sort of e-mail promotion, given the tendency those things have to multiply of those accord? Don't answer that.

Re:Wow, they requested this?

[IO ERROR]

The truth is, SOMEBODY is buying penis enlargers and breast kits, otherwise nobody would bother sending out such spam in the first place.

Re:Wow, they requested this?

[pla]

Who with an ounce of sense would request any sort of e-mail promotion, given the tendency those things have to multiply of those accord? Don't answer that.

I've answered you not because I disagree, but to add a bit to your point.

You have pointed out what I consider a major flaw in most companies' marketing strategy; namely, assuming I want to know about product updates.

When I want a new product, I search for it on the web. I read a number of independant reviews to find the "best" product to meet my needs, then I use a few price search engines to find the best price on that product, then I buy it from the cheapest place that doesn't have half its users complaining about their service.

So, now, marketing gurus, take note of that process. Notice where mass mailings from your company fit in? Bingo, they do not. Not even a little. In fact, if I find your mass mailings just a tad too spam-like (or if I EVER notice you've sold my address, which I can tell since I use disposeable email addresses), you can guarantee that I will never buy from you again, even if you do have the best price, and will also warn anyone that asks my advice (which for the typical geek means "almost everyone they know") to avoid you as well.

So, my suggestions...

1) Stop bothering us with mail, immediately. You waste your time, our time, bandwidth, and may well incur our "squirrely wrath".

2) List yourself on every price search engine you can find. At the very least, list yourself in Pricegrabber, NexTag, and shopper.com. And If you sell PC hardware and don't list through Pricewatch, consider yourself as good as nonexistant to me. Seriously, if any marketing folks read this and only remember one point, re-read this one. List with price search sites, or vanish.

3) Don't piss off your customers. If you list a product at a given price, you'd better actually have it, and have it for the listed price (or better, I won't fault any company for that). If you make me wait an obscenely long time to get it, I will cancel my order after the third day it doesn't ship. If you give me the runaround because I don't want your crappy accessories and extended warranties, not only will I cancel my order, I will report you for bait-and-switch; additionally, if you ship via US mail, you commit felony mail fraud (which I will also report you for) by taking longer than two weeks to ship (regardless of whether or not you try to avoid this by some cheesy "6 to 8 weeks" disclaimer). Overall though, if you run a legit operation, none of that will apply. Just list what you have, honor your prices, and don't treat your customers like sheep (even though most of them probably act like it, and will buy anything you tell them to, enough people will get pissed to provide plenty of negative feedback for me to find).

CAN Spam stupid

[broothal]

I hang out in various anti-spam communities (news.admin.net-abuse.email and some IRC channesl) and most of us (tinu) agrees that (I) Can Spam is pretty clueless. Now, I'd like to hear comments from someone who's not an anti-spam zealot. Is there anyone who thinks Can Spam is worth the paper it's written on? (Anyone not associated with Direct Marketing).

Re:Return Path numbers are low

[tanguyr]

And if your one of the,"oh, it can't be more than five or ten", companies in the world that is using E-mail as part of your business processes, whether for sales, marketing, customer service, CRM, purchase or account notifications, etc... well then, hell yeah it matters.

Well, if you are using e-mail as a *critical* part of your business process then you must have a back up plan: like it or not e-mails get lost, there is no guaranteed delivery (e-fedEx?) ,no standardized way of handling return receipts, not to mention the whole grey area of whether emails represent legally binding documents. Check out those disclaimers in your inbox. Any e-commerce site sends you email notifications on your order's status, but they're also available on your account page - ssl encrypted, password authenticated. And you can call customer support for the same info. /t

Some things are unstoppable

[superpulpsicle]

1.) SPAM

2.) P2P

3.) Pop ups

4.) Virus

Just when US companies think they have it figured out, some kid in a bedroom will figure out a new way to distribute smarter ones.

Re:19% of commercial email? At least!

[jrumney]

When do they come back? I wouldn't want to keep checking a website just in case there was something new there this week. If I an genuinely interested in something, then I don't mind signing up to hear that there is an update. Maybe you college students have time to go looking for new things every day, but I don't.