What is spam you ask? Isn't that a canned cooking product? Well, it is, but it is also a huge part of modern day emailing, and even more so in terms of marketing.
Spam is a message which is sent out electronically to a massive
audience, in which the recipient would not usually want to receive.
It consists of advertising, for products and services. Spam can also
come in get-rich-quick schemes or pretend legal services. It is very inexpensive
to send out to a mass audience, it costs the sender very little, and is paid
mostly by the recipient or the carriers.
The most popular type of spam used today is done by email. The main
use of spam is commercial content and advertising. Spam has also been called unsolicited
bulk email (UBE), unsolicited commercial Email (UCE) or junk mail. Spam has a
pretty high stake in all everyday emails, up to 80-85%.
Now that we know what spam is, how do we avoid it? How do we get our
message through to our customers? Email providers, such as Gmail, Hotmail,
Yahoo, and even our Mocomotion have built in spam filters. These filters target
key words and phrases. They also target certain ways an email is typed. For example, if you type "SAVE NOW ON WINDOW INSTALLATION" In all caps and green writing, these are warning signs for the filters and they may block your email. A blocked email means that your message will go to the junk/spam folder. That is the last place you want your message to go, because let's be honest, how often do you go sifting through your junk emails?
As well as using a spam filter, Gmail uses something rather neat. They have a community based spam filter. This means, if an email I received should be spam, but got through to my inbox. I am able to mark it as spam. This will go through the network, and it will remove it from others peoples inbox as well.
Gmail on Spam
Take a look at this video; it was created by the Gmail team. Although lacking in professionalism, the video is very informative and shows the way Gmail is fighting spam.
Before you send out your email, you'll want to look it over to
make sure you have as little properties of spam as possible. You can go to this
website here, http://www.americaint.com/spam-filter-messagetest/spam-checker.html.
This website will check your email and make sure it will pass through spam
filters. It will check your email and give it a score of anything from 0.1 to
anything over 13.1 (which is major spam content). Now that we know how to build our marketing emails free of spam and how to check them to make sure they will get through to our target. We are ready to start emailing! Have fun!
Thank you for reading my blog!
Austin Lerke
I really enjoyed your blog Austin, it was very well written. Spam tends to bother just about everyone, and for good reason. It's not what you want to see in your inbox and it has no reason being there. I also have a gmail account, and it works great because I have had to mark certain emails as spam and it's very handy how other users marking emails as spam will also mark yours as spam. Gmail is a fantastic email system.
ReplyDeleteExcellent essay. Although the spam is developing fastly, it's still facing some barriers like how to negoitate with ISP agreement harmoniously to reduce resist from consumers. However, it is already an essencial part of email marketing and it would play an important role in a long time.
ReplyDeleteVery fascinating about the system Gmail has, I never had a Gmail account before this class but I love how simple and quick it is. Although spam can sometimes come off as attractive and work for some consumers, most percentage of people can't stand spam. I am one of those, great blog Austin, very intriguing.
ReplyDeleteSpam can also come in get-rich-quick schemes or pretend legal services.
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recently it seems that spam has become much less frequent than in previous years. although it makes sense for the sender to use a low cost medium to get a message out, the type of medium comes with a horrible reputation. for example, even if the business was legitimate or the service was legitimate, the receiver would automatically think it was a false business. there is better ways for a business to reach many consumers and thankfully spam is less frequent.
ReplyDeleteI have also found spam to be less frequent than in previous years. I am not entirely sure it has to do with the process of familiarization or that is has actually been cut back statistically. I find that Gmail is definitely the best when it comes to filtering out unwanted emails though.
DeleteI hate spam so much but i still think it can be very effective in todays world. Good job
ReplyDeleteExcellent Post! We must remind ourselves that SPAM also affects business' themselves. The general premise behind SPAM is sound. A simple way to reach a large consumer base. However, it's gotten to a point where its lost its effectiveness.
DeleteThis is the official news aggregate for the PPSIMMONS phenomenon which began in 2008 on Youtube and which has spread around the world through various news sites, main stream media, and social networking pages like Facebook and Twitter.
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I remember when SPAM first started over email, and it was very annoying for people. Over the years they spend a lot of time and money on filtering out SPAM that people were getting, and might I say, they did a very good job. I truely believe that no successful marketing campaign can have a SPAM email list be a part of it.
ReplyDeleteAs many of us have probably experienced, Spam is becoming more prevalent in social media sites, especially Facebook. This should also be a major concern of people using Facebook as well as business who use Facebook pages. Facebook pages are how a lot of people and businesses display their image. Spam is a way to downgrade these images.
ReplyDeleteThe community based spam filter is amazing. I had no idea that would apply to other emails.
ReplyDeleteIf people start receiving spam from their favorite brand or a ton of emails, or even just emails that do not apply to them in any way, they will completely start ignoring emails from that company, opt-out of their email blasts, and start to have a really poor and negative image of that brand.
Awesome post Austin! I agree with everyone in the sense that span can be very annoying, and can ruin a persons experience on the web. Although spam has definitely been seen to reduce over the past few years. Companies are finding that consumers find this very frustrating and don't actually want to click or view the pop ups especially.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that Spam is a real pain. I enjoy when email servers use spam filters (such as gmail). I never had a gmail account before this and never knew what the big deal was, but through simple things such as the community spam filter I have been using this e-mail more often.
ReplyDeleteYour post as well as Janelle's has enlightened me a great deal on the topic of email spamming, as previously stated in Janelle's post I have had problems in the past with my email receiving SPAM, due to past online shopping, after running my email through the provided SPAM testing link (and getting less than stellar results) as well as the information provided in your article, I think I may switch to Gmail as it seems to be the most efficient email platform.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post!
SPAM is easily the biggest annoyance amongst all things e-mail. I am now in the know regarding Gmails trick to prevent further spam. My hotmail account is constantly getting bombarded with useless junk. Looks like the full transition is to gmail is needed. I found it interesting that a website can show you how to avoid the SPAM filters. Wouldn't that allow other company's to learn how to bypass these filters as well? That is my only question. The humorous introduction was a beautiful touch to this well thought out post.
ReplyDeleteInteresting information!
ReplyDeleteSPAM is so annoying and i think everyone has been affected by it in someway at sometime..
its less common now but i remember how annoying it would be when you would get a pop-up and it would keep popping up... or those emails.. random information being brought to your attention without being asked.. now there are more laws and restrictions but its still occurs,
good post.
interesting post!! Spam is the most hated thing on internet, Although my account has never been spammed, but I always try to prevent it. For emails, Hotmail can detect and combat spams, that is why we sometimes see a warning on an email, or our email becomes junk.
ReplyDeleteFor individuals who are irritated by spam mail i suggest you look into installing an anti-spam program. A company like cloudmark for instance is very accurate at monitoring, capturing, and destroying spam mail from ever entering your web surfing experience. These anti-spam programs destroy between 90-96% of spam emails and irritating messages. THank god for those companies lol cheers
ReplyDeleteEmail spam also known as junk Email or unsolicited bulk email is a subset of e-spam.
ReplyDeleteEmails are quick and personal ways to interact with customers. When composing your emails, keep your content and text short and to the point, relative to typical communications within your industry. Nobody wants to read 1000 words about lamps or packaging.
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