Eradicating Spam

No I am not dreaming. Although I do dream about eradicating spam every day and night.

I get about 400 emails a day from senders i never want to get email from. That's how i define spam. About 300 of them are caught by Postini, my spam filter. It's not perfect. About 100 more spam messages get through. By spelling Viagra V-I-A-G-R-A. And by lots of other tricks that annoy the hell out of me.

I am an investor in two great email companies Bigfoot Interactive and Return Path. Both companies help legitimate commercial emailers who have permission to send emails do just that. But they are not growing as fast as they should because their customers are reluctant to spend more money on a channel - email - where four out of every five messages is garbage. And I don't blame their customers. It's a huge problem.

Seth Godin convinced me in 1996 that direct mail without stamps was a great business. And it is. But its a great business for a lot of jerks. And that's what they are. Because they are violating Seth's number one rule for direct mail without stamps - you must obtain permission in a world where sending costs are almost free.

But if the jerks could be stopped, we'd have the greatest marketing channel ever invented. I get Clear Channel sending me a weekly email on all the new concerts coming to NYC and when i can buy tickets. This is great for me and great for Clear Channel. I get ~10 emails a day from Jim Cramer telling me what stocks he is buying and selling. I get a daily email from the Italian Wine Merchants telling me about new wines that i might want to try. I read these emails. I act on these emails. And i am better off because of them. And the companies that send them to me are too. It's Nirvana for direct marketing - the smart/pull marketing that works (spam is unfortunately the proof of that). Not the stupid/push marketing that doesn't.

So what do we do about Spam? We fix it. I am convinced we'll fix it in less than 12 months. There is too much money at stake. Bill Gates said the following at ETRE, according to David Kirkpatrick, ""Clearly e-mail should be verified. There are proposed standards for that." He said Microsoft would be able to make spam "a truly minor problem."

I know for a fact that all of the major ISPs and email providers are working on standards to verify the sender of commercial email. They will roll this stuff out in the next 6-12 months. And it will take time to have an effect. But it will clean up our inboxes. And that's a great thing. Someday soon my dream will be a reality.

Comments

[simon]

day after day i have clients ring me explaining the spam they receieve.... I tell them i cant do anything about this .... ive been on the web for 6 years now and only till late spam has become a problem for me.

I use to think if you was wise and not throw your email address around, you would avoid spam. But being a web developer my email has been picked up and thrown in the loop....

// death to spam

[Bennett Zucker]

Right on target with your comments about emails we WANT to receive and DO read.

Just spent two days with a media company client who has earned the trust of hundreds of thousands of their readers. Because of that trust, their readers open and RESPOND to opt-in emails - clearly identified as being from them - at eye-popping rates. Incredibly, one of their customers - a large auto dealer - attributes sales of 15 vehicles to a single email campaign.

Our customer's main selling points? Pretty basic, very effective:
- We will send you emails on only those topics you specify
- Every email will be an offer that is available exclusively to our subscribers
- We will never rent our list

This is how one company is successfully - so far - fighting the spam war. It helps to have principles.

[Chevsky]

Spam is a huge issue, and as mentioned, I hope we can reach some sort of standard or legislation that will return things to some semblance of *normal*.

With that said, I really think that users need to take the onus on themselves for now. People need to be proactive in limiting their spam exposure. Part of this means not giving out your email address to non-trusted enterprises, but even more importantly, it means not posting your email address on the web.

Blogs are a spammer's heaven - so many email addresses are there for the scrubbing. That's precisely why I'm submitting this post with my hotmail account (sorry MS, but you're hosting my spam can). This is something that I did early on, and I am so thankful that I did. My main account, which I give to friends and colleagues, is almost spam free (I get about 2 spam a month). So, for those of you thinking of switching email accounts or wondering how to combat spam, try setting up a junk account to use when online.

[erin]

Seems to me having/maintaining a blog with your e-mail address creates a specific problem.

Do you count as spam people that read your blog and want to contact you "offline" about postings? Do you mind weeding through that? Or do you want a spam filter to do that? Having a spam filter do that surely helps get rid of the some of the junk, but doesn't it also can limit the exchange of new and interesting ideas that your blog promotes.

[Fred Wilson]

i don't consider people contacting me about my blog via email spam. i consider messages that are blasted to millions of people with offensive, irritating, or useless information to be spam.

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