[pmmail-list] Surge in Junk email?

[Tim Roberts]

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:55:53 +0100, Sorin Srbu wrote:
>
>...This is so stupid. Why can't the governments ban
>spamming altogether? How hard can it be? Nobody wants it for one
>thing...

Au contraire.  The members of the Direct Marketing Association want it,
and they have a powerful lobby.

If spam were annoying, stupid, and useless, it would die on its own. 
However, as incredible as it may seem, spamming WORKS.  In fact, it works
very well.  You can send 10,000,000 e-mail solicitations at practically no
cost.  The typical spammer gets a hit rate of about 1 per 10,000, which
means that one free spam gets me 1,000 *interested* prospects.

That's a better rate of return than television, radio, or newspaper
advertising, at MUCH less cost.

I appreciate the difficulty in coming up with a good anti-spam law.  In
many cases, there is a very fine line between legitimate advertising and
spam.  I'm sure many of us would like to go back to the early 1990s when
the culture of the Internet was almost strictly non-commercial, but that
ain't gonna happen.  People have to be able to do business.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


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