Tragedy of the Marketing Commons: Spam filters are killing email marketing

Posted on by Barry Parr

Date.com used to rely on direct email marketing for the bulk of their new users.

Now, it turns out that spam filters are wrecking their marketing efforts:

“A year ago, I would have said e-mail was critical to our business,” said Brad Shapiro, vice president of sales and marketing at the Toronto-based company. “We were sending over 100 million prospecting e-mails a week. But a lot of those e-mails weren’t getting through or the response rates were too low. Now we’re sending out 60% less.”

Let’s face it, nobody is sending out 100,000,000 legitimately-sourced emails a week. These guys are stinking up the Net with spam.

When will the direct marketing industry finally get the message that defending spammers is not in their best interest, and cut sleazeballs like Date.com loose? Using Congress to put the entire nation on opt-out status with every company in the world isn’t going to do them any good if their messages can’t make it through the filters.

9 thoughts on “Tragedy of the Marketing Commons: Spam filters are killing email marketing”

  2. SPAM kill Email as marketing device
    An interesting point at MediaSavvy. Its true, I have had maybe 2 requests for an HTML email mass mailer this year, and they have to be very carefully setup, so they dont get junked (also who they are coming from helps).
    But with Spam detectors gettin…

  3. SPAM kill Email as marketing device
    An interesting point at MediaSavvy. Its true, I have had maybe 2 requests for an HTML email mass mailer this year, and they have to be very carefully setup, so they dont get junked (also who they are coming from helps).
    But with Spam detectors gettin…

  4. SPAM kill Email as marketing device
    An interesting point at MediaSavvy. Its true, I have had maybe 2 requests for an HTML email mass mailer this year, and they have to be very carefully setup, so they dont get junked (also who they are coming from helps).
    But with Spam detectors gettin…

  5. all i have to say about spam is that there is a delete button for a reason, so if you know its spam or just dont want to open it use the delete button and dont cry like a baby.

  6. Of course legitimate companies can send that many emails. Because it isnt them that is sending them. They contract out to list owners to advertises to their members. A 1000 list owners with 100,000 or more subscribers easily tops 100 mil.

  7. I don’t buy it. Either your contractors are sending date.com email to each of their subscribers every week, or you’ve got 50,000 contractors with mailing lists averaging 100,000 subscribers. Or something in-between. Are you telling me that 100,000,000 people get your email every week and that most of them don’t think it’s spam? Give me a break!
    In any case, I believe that your contractors are spammers. And I believe you’re looking the other way.
    There are plenty of companies that are ignoring the fact that a large part of their distribution or affiliate network consists of spammers. Dish Network comes to mind. Or a certain automotive site which spammed this site recently. If sleazeballs are doing your dirty work, you’re sleazeball.

  8. Well I wasnt referring to us in that 100million but I do see how its possible. There are several 100 million people in the U.S., thent he same in Europe, plus Canada, Australia etc. You could easily find that many people all on the web

  9. How many of them are single adults, who are presumably your market?
    I repeat: Are you telling me that 100,000,000 people get your email every week and that most of them don’t think it’s spam?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.