SPAM… we’ve all got, no one wants it, but what do you do with it?
According to a recent article in eMarketer, there’s been a SPAM spike, a 5.1% increase last month. The study cited goes on to say that 90.4% of May’s worldwide email traffic was SPAM, with hard hit areas in Hong Kong, the UK, Australia and Japan… the US faired slightly better with an estimated 87% of May’s total email volume being SPAM related.
Where does it come From?
Geographically speaking, nearly a third of SPAM originates in Europe per the eMarketing article; followed closely by Asia, South America and then North America. This breakout also corresponds to when recipients receive their SPAM – US residents see increases during the work day, starting at 9AM local time. Asia receives theirs in the evening and Europe throughout the day. Worldwide, we see more activity on Mondays and Fridays with the least on Sundays.
The article goes on to state that over half of the SPAM volume (some 57.6%) is sent through botnets – a collection of computers (sometimes thousands) that send messages without the owner’s knowledge. Much of the US SPAM originates from smaller, unclassified botnets or free Webmail solutions like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail.
Even if you’re running a clean email marketing program, odds are you’re just a drop in the ocean of SPAM. Our friends at Return Path published a Benchmark Report in 2008 that showed less than 20% of mail (world-wide) were sent from legitimate servers… of that 0.63% was classified as commercial email – proof that email deliverability is an up-hill battle for all eMarketers.
Available Resources
In addition to the items cited in this article, our most recent Service In Action call focused on Deliverability. This call is available as a podcast on the site and we can send you a copy of the corresponding presentation.
There are also tons of research and whitepapers on the Return Path site. There are also services including Goodmail available – Goodmail recently participated in a webcast intensive for Financial Solutions, feel free to access this webcast on the Service In Action site.
Finally, remember to keep your virus protection software up to date so that you don’t accidentally become a Spammer against your will.
