Is it spam if people keep opening it?
January 19, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: Special Report
Ever wonder why spam keeps arriving in your e-mail when, by now, everyone knows not to open it?
Surely no one is stupid enough to even open cheap Viagra ads, solicitations from horny Russian temptresses, or uncanny weight-loss “silver bullets”, let alone buy anything from them, right?
Think again. We don’t have any info on Russian babes or sex aids, but a recent survey on weight loss shows how spam is a lucrative business.
The results: Over 40% of people with self-described “weight problems” have opened weight-loss spam messages. And 18.6% of people in that group have made a purchase from an e-mail solicitation about losing weight. (Astonishingly, 5% of those without weight problems also sent away for such products.) Furthermore, the survey was targeted at college students, who one might believe would be pretty savvy on the Web.
And of course, the products themselves are either useless or perhaps downright harmful. The author of the study is quoted as saying “I was shocked. I didn’t expect so many people to be buying this stuff.”
Those are extraordinary numbers. Now, it’s clear that no one reads 40% of their spam or orders 18.6% of all offered products, but even one purchase a year from 18.6% of a population make this a far more effective marketing tool than direct mail or Internet ads –- especially when you consider the low cost.
The survey appears in a recent issue of the Southern Medical Journal. The sample size is pretty small (200 respondents) and as a result, the percentages are not very trustworthy. But the fact that any significant sampling of students could fall for the lure of spam mail says a lot. The low cost of spamming means that even a tiny response rate can be possible –- and that keeps spam a growth industry.
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Tags: Southern Medical Journal, spam, survey
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January 20th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
How about this? Send out survey SPAM about this subject and see who responds. If you ask them for $1, you can make a lot of money. P.T Barnum was right except the suckers are born more often than every minute.