A recent study by Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa (read in Marketing Charts) reveals how the meaning of the term “spam” has lately changed for users, in a way with high impact for us as marketers.
The survey sought to determine consumers’ perceptions of what spam is, why they report emails as spam and what they think happens when the “report spam” button is clicked.
The main conclusion is that now spam means “unwanted e-mail”, in contrast with the traditional “unsolicited commercial e-mail”.
That’s a huge difference for us. This means that, now more than ever, your content must be relevant. You must engage with your recipients or will have a big chance to be blacklisted by the most important ISPs, such as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail.
The reason is that, according to the study, people misunderstand the implications of hitting the “Report spam” button omnipresent in all mayor webmail apps. Take a look at these figures and start to tremble:
“What this survey uncovered is a major disconnect in consumers’ understanding and use of the ‘report spam’ button, as well as consumers’ definition of spam from ‘I didn’t sign up for it’ to ‘I don’t like it’—all of which signal that the current system of email spam filtering is a broken process” said Matt Wise, president and chief executive officer of Q Interactive.
Q Interactive suggests that ISPs’ “report spam” button be replaced with those that more clearly indicate consumers’ intentions, such as an “unsubscribe” button and an “undesired” button.
And that means a lot more of effort for marketers too: much more targeted and relevant content. It has been the better way to go in the past and, naturally, it has become the only way to go now.
Read the full review at Maketing Charts.
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