Forget about the stock market and the slumping economy, it is a raging bull market for spa*mmers right now.  If it seems like the amount of unsolicited email in your inbox is greater then ever, it’s because business has never been better for spa*mmers.

The attraction is simple, email addresses are easy to get and cheap to buy, so a marketer does not need very many responses to get a positive ROI. One broker I saw online was featuring an introductory offer of 33 million emails for $200. Another was selling a subscription service for $40 a month that promises to deliver 1 million verified addresses a week!  These guys even promoted the fact that they have removed the “flamers and trouble-makers” from the list.

It is no surprise that as many as 80% of web users in a recent survey said that the spa*m problem is worse than it was just a year ago.  To make matters worse, IDC projects that your volume of email will double in the next three years and Jupiter says that 35% of it will be unwanted spa*m.  The problem is even more severe for those who access the net primarily from home. These poor users are receiving more spa*m then legitimate email from both personal correspondence and permission mailings like newsletters.

Where is it all coming from? You may have your own opinions about who the biggest spa*mmers are, but here are the findings from an interesting Brightmail report. The biggest category of spa*mmers are from financial services (33%) relating to the stock market, credit, loans and investments.  Rounding out the top three are generic product messages (31%) and adult material (11%).

Fortunately, consumers don’t look at all commercial email together as spa*m.  Permission emails like newsletters are seen as valuable and have proven to be effective at influencing purchase behavior.  A Digital Impact study found that 62% of those surveyed are eager to read email messages they have subscribed to or requested from a company.

Where is the Law?
At this time there are no federal laws against unsolicited email.  The Federal Trade Commission has promised to take action in this area, but they have not yet been able to move on it. Legislation has been drafted but is stalled in Congress. On the local level, about half of US states have taken the issue into their own hands and established restrictions for spa*m email. Although, interpretations and limitations of these local laws vary significantly from state to state.   For instance, California law requires that unsolicited marketers include the letters “ADV” in the email’s subject line and Wisconsin only protects against email harassment.

Making It Stop
Fighting spa*m may feel like a losing battle, but there are a few tools available that many businesses and ISPs are utilizing. While these tools may be effective at clearing out spa*m, they may also be an obstacle to your email marketing efforts.

Brightmail, one of the largest spa*m filtering services for ISPs, has a rules-based system that scans all incoming messages for spa*m-like headers and qualities and deletes these messages before they reach the recipient.  Another more aggressive solution is a product called ChoiceMail. With ChoiceMail, users must create a list of email addresses of approved senders. All others trying to send a message will receive a message directing them to a web site where they must complete a form requesting permission.

A new company called Cloudmark offers a free download that utilizes the power of community to identify and filter out the unwanted. This plug-in adds a bulk mail folder and a unique spa*m notification button to the email application. Whenever the user gets a spa*m message they mark it and a notification is immediately sent to Cloudmark.  As other Cloudmark users mark this sender, a consensus is built across the community so future mailings from this sender will be routed directly to the spa*m folder.

The challenge with these services is to avoid having your newsletter classified as a false positive.  Certain triggers like overuse of the words “free”, “guarantee” or using all caps in the subject line are likely to get you in trouble. Many marketers are simply asking subscribers to add the newsletter email address to the filter’s approved list to solve the problem permanently.

List brokers will continue to capture and sell email addresses in large quantities, but by understanding how spa*mmers work and focusing on strong relationship building efforts with your lists, you can continue to break through the clutter and deliver effective email communication.