Category: E-mail Acquisition

When speaking to marketers and their agencies I often hear different interpretations of what constitutes spam. There is the “textbook definition”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29, the legal definition as covered in the “US CAN-SPAM laws”:http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtml and “other interpretations”:http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html. Often a person’s own definition of spam relates to how they are using e-mail and if they are a sender or recipient of marketing e-mail.
For me, and for most recipients, spam is any unwanted or irrelevant messages, even if I’ve signed up.
Marketers (senders) can always justify (at least to themselves) why their products or services, and therefore their marketing e-mail, are relevant and even wanted. However, they have a narrow opinion of what is spam. Most marketers that have compiled large permission lists take the high road and follow legal and “best practices” definitions. Those that don’t have large lists or want to get their messages out quickly will often “bend” these definitions to suit their actions. I know of Fortune 500 companies that “technically” send spam based on how they originally acquired e-mail addresses.

Reading “Chip’s Deliverability Tips”:http://etdeliverability.typepad.com/chips_deliverability_tips/2005/11/business_card_i.html over the weekend got me thinking about spam, permission and privacy. It especially made me consider the tendency for people to believe that if they have someone’s business card it means they have “implied” permission to communicate with them.
From a privacy perspective and Canadian PIPEDA privacy laws we know that anything contained on a business card, or in a business directory, is information that is open for use by others as it is published information. But taking this information and adding it to an email list will always constitute spam.