Beware of spam definition creep, DoubleClick warns

Consumers’ definition of spam is expanding, threatening to engulf even e-mails between marketers and existing customers, says the latest consumer survey about e-mail attitudes from e-mail marketing company DoubleClick Inc. DoubleClick’s fourth annual Consumer Email Study released at the DMA Annual Conference in Orlando, FL, this week reports that 65% of men and 56% of women define spam to include “e-mail from a company that I have done business with but that comes too often.”

In addition, 36% of men and 32% of women said "any e-mail that tries to sell me a product or service" should be considered spam. E-mail marketing practitioners tend to define spam as unsolicited mail sent in extremely high volumes to compiled lists. “We were surprised that to men, almost any commercial e-mail was considered to be spam,” says a spokesman for DoubleClick.

Further, any e-mail that appears to fall under the consumer’s definition of spam has a high likelihood of being deleted without being open. 65% of consumers are deleting spam without reading it, up from 60% a year ago, and only 4% are reading it to determine whether it might be of interest, vs. 5% a year ago and 18% in 2001.

When asked about how they are dealing with spam, 53% report using bulk folders that re-direct e-mails from the inbox, up from 48% a year ago; 36.1% use a “report spam” function of their e-mail program; 15.9% have downloaded spam filtering software and 13.7% have created a second e-mail address for making online purchases.

Other definitions of spam are "e-mails intended to trick me into opening them," cited by 95.5% of survey respondents; "e-mails from senders that are unknown to me," cited by 93.5%; "e-mails of an offensive subject matter," cited by 92.5%.

Despite the current e-mail environment and the proliferation of spam, e-mail remains a popular channel for consumers and an effective channel for marketers, DoubleClick says. 91% of consumers receive some form of permission-based email with 57.2% receiving special offers from online merchants, 55.4% receiving them from traditional retailers, and 48.5% receiving them from catalogers. Permission-based email also continues to be the preferred method of contact from a favorite retailer regarding new products, services or promotions, preferred by 59% of consumers, while only 32.1% prefer direct mail.

Of categories in which consumers do not currently receive e-mails, respondents are most interested in receiving grocery coupons (cited by 22.1%) and household tips/recipes/crafts (13.6%), electronics and computer software/hardware (13.8%) and apparel/shoes (12.3%), DoubleClick reports.

“It’s back to the basics with things like paying attention to consumers’ preferences,” the DoubleClick spokesman says. “People want to receive e-mails as a relationship tool and not so much as a sales tool.”