Here are the latest numbers released from the nice folks at Ferris Research on the projected cost of spam in 2009: $130,000,000,000.00 USD
Cough Cough… gasp, What??! (correct, that’s 130 billion… I thought I’d add the zeros in there for some added affect)
This is a 30% increase from 2007. Scary stuff! but still, I think a pretty conservative estimate. It was calculated from operational costs and productivity loss from people inspecting/deleting spam and also from searching/retrieving legitimate email (false positives) deleted in error by spam filters. It seems a little hard to believe seeing all that has been done in the last 4 years to combat spam, but I guess it’s time to step it up.
Here are some more interesting statistics:
• # non-spam emails sent during 2006 by business email users: 6 trillion
• Estimated number of non-spam email messages sent worldwide each day 2006: 25 billion
• % of email messages sent daily that are spam messages: > 75%
• Typical # Internet emails sent and received by a business user: 600 per week
• Cost of a user deleting a spam message: $0.04
• Cost of a user retrieving a bona fide message erroneously deleted as spam (“false positive”): $3.50
This last one through me… no spam filter is perfect, there will always be legitimate mail that gets blocked, but I would be interested in knowing what percentage of this 130 bil is spent looking for false positives? Ferris, please don’t make us wait another 4 years. Keep up the good work!
Read the whole summary from Ferris Research
Want to calculate your own company’s cost of spam? Barracuda has a nifty Spam Cost Calculator
Bye for now,
Kevin
We’ve redesigned our website in order to make it easier to find information about CakeMail and email marketing. More pages and resources will be added in the coming weeks. So stay tuned!
It would be great to have your comments!
Marketing Sherpa’s team compare the American anti-spam law and the Canadian anti-spam project of law to highlight the five major differences. We could say that Canadian anti-spam law goes a little further.
Difference #1. Advanced permission is required
Difference #2. Permission is required for SMS messages
Difference #3. Unsubscribe links must stay active for 60 days
Difference #4. Unsubscribe requests must be honored within 10 days
Difference #5. Individuals have the right to sue spammers
Read the complete article: Canada’s Anti-Spam Bill: 5 Key Differences from CAN SPAM
Previous posts:
Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? – Part 1: The Risks
Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? – Part 2: Prepare your Re-Opt in Email
Hi again, in my last post we talked a bit about reviving old lists and dealing with hardbounces, but I never really got into how important they are. Sure, most people know what a hardbounce is, but I don’t think many people know what kind of an impact sending to them can have on your deliverability.
Very simply a hardbounce is a bounce generated when you send an email to an address that does not exist. It may have existed in the past, but not anymore. Just like calling a phone number that’s been disconnected, you usually get a recording saying “This number is no longer in service..” – which is effectively the same thing. The big difference is, the phone company doesn’t block the rest of your outbound phone calls because you dialed too many wrong numbers!
ISPs look very closely at the number of hardbounces a sender generates. Too many from a given network can indicate a potential Directory Harvest Attack and ISPs will put up a block (usually done automatically) to prevent slow downs which may cause further harm to their users. Have you ever sent an email to a friend and wondered why it took so long to get there? Think about it, if an ISP is being bombarded by millions of spammers trying to validate a list of a ‘gagillion’ addresses, it’s going to slow down the legitimate email from getting through and people will inevitably start complaining.
In order to prevent these blocks, it’s very important to keep your list(s) up-to-date. This means sending on a regular basis and removing hardbounces as you go. CakeMail automatically does this for you, but if you haven’t used the list in a while or like we talked about last week, you’re thinking of using an older list, you need to be very careful. As a preventative measure, which we’ve also mentioned several times, you should be confirming any new leads. When somebody signs-up, you should (at the very least) be sending that address a Welcome email. Not only will this prove they have access to the address, but it will get rid of hardbounces right away and prevent you sending a whole bunch at once. It also gives you an excellent opportunity to send them your From address for Whitelisting and thank them for signing up in the first place!
Bye for now,
Kevin
If you have any questions, Kevin can be reached at: postmaster@cakemail.com or feel free to use our Help Desk.
Note: this blogpost was originally published on January 5 2009.
We know you’ve already planned to lose weight, quit smoking, and start exercising to improve your quality of life. And we don’t want to overwhelm you with MORE resolutions but simply having better email marketing practices can diminish your complaint rate and improve your deliverability, lowering your stress level and making your life in general better! Aren’t we thoughtful? 
Whitelisting 101 on CakeMail and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group – MAAWG Senders Communications Practices Guide (PDF download) will help you keep your resolutions.
Have a great, successful and healthy year in 2009!
