The Future of E-mail Marketing - Part 2
by Gary B. Smith
The Crisis:
The term spam has a rather innocuous and interesting etymology. It
comes from the Monty Python comedy sketch in which a group of Vikings
in a restaurant start singing "Spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam!
Wonderful spam!" They annoy the waiter who tells them to shut up.
The meaning of the term simply refers to a repetitive act that annoys.
This annoyance has developed into a crisis, which has powerful consequences
for business in particular. The European Commission recently stated
that the problem costs £6.4bn a year in connection charges and lost
productivity - the equivalent of £16 per Internet user.
It's hard to fathom how such an obviously beneficial technology could
be in trouble, but from many quarters the feeling is that the future
of e-mail is in jeopardy. The reports and statistics are frightening.
While America Online states that unwanted e-mail was the top complaint
from all its subscribers, Media Matrix predicts that the average American
will receive at least 1, 480 spam messages in 2006. The problem has
its roots in a major advantage of e-mail - its price. The cost of
sending 10, 000 e-mail messages is not much more than sending only
ten. This means that the unscrupulous e-mail marketer can post thousands
of e-mails very cheaply. There is also the growing perception, based
on research, that targeted e-mail is more effective than its paper-based
equivalents. The acquisition of e-mail addresses has been automated
by software robots, which search the Web for any and every e-mail
address. All this adds up to an enticing environment for the spam
mailer. Research from Garner recently reported that spam mail comprised
almost one third to half of their client's incoming mail. Alarmingly,
they predict that this figure will treble by 2005. Reading and deleting
spam mail also takes time; surveys by various companies estimate that
their employees spend up to 10 percent of the working day dealing
with spam mail.
Author and Internet writer Richard Seltzer, says that the experience
of using e-mail has reached a stage where it is "more often a hassle
than a help." His experiences follow a very recognizable pattern with
virus and spam marketing hitting the Internet worker from every angle
"In self-defense, we set up filters on our e-mail to lock out spam
messages, but spammers continually find new ways to by-pass these
filters using clever and plausible subject lines that people we normally
correspond with might use, and even doing identity swapping. For instance,
the From: line may indicate that the message is from someone we know
or even from ourselves. And so we attempt to filter even more. And
people who have real messages to deliver find that their messages
often get filtered out or deleted before they are even read, while
the spam keeps pouring in."
Viruses:
Spam is not the only bugbear in the works. Viruses have become increasingly
sophisticated at attaching themselves to e-mail and propagating themselves
throughout the Internet via e-mail address lists. The Bugbear virus
is one of the most recent threats that records keystrokes, which can
have devastating effects for companies and private clients alike.
The Bugbear worm allows hackers to take control of infected machines
remotely to terminate the processes of various anti-virus and firewall
programs. The best defense is to install reputable anti-virus software
that can be regularly updated with the latest virus signatures. Richard
seltzer says,"Viruses have become a major hassle even when you have
software that protects you against them infecting your inbox. The
likelihood that they are hidden in attachments prevents you from opening
any attachments you are aren't sure about."
Beyond Spam:
In an attempt to stop the tide of spam, legislation from various quarters
has been put into place. However, it must immediately be said that
the opponents of rigid legislation point to the real problems that
this might impinge on expressive freedom and privacy and that it will
inadvertently exclude legitimate e-mails. The same fears affect the
attempts by most ISPs and software companies who offer filtering processes
for e-mail. In August the EU implemented an e-commerce directive to
tighten rules on spam. This ruling means that those sending out mass
commercial mail- must first ensure that their recipients are not on
an e-mail preference list- held by the American arm of the Direct
Marketing Association (DMA). This is intended to protect registered
users from junk postings. The subject line of the e-mail must also
include the ADV abbreviation, indicating that it is an advertisement.
However, there are always ways around legislation and those who simply
ignore the rules, knowing that persecution is difficult to carry out
on the Internet.
Another avenue that has been suggested is to empower the user to filter
messages more effectively. This can be done by ISPs or IT managers
developing the tools to allow customers to choose various preferences
for their incoming mail, thereby effectively filtering the incoming
mail before it reaches their mailbox. This might mean that a client
can select preferences, which may accept or reject certain e-mail
addresses or certain domains; or reject e-mail on other criteria such
as country of origin. This would mean that the e-mail is stopped before
it has to be filtered or deleted by the user himself.
The first step in the evolution of e-mail will be the development
of techniques to filter and combat spam. Professor Jacob Palme, at
the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University
and KTH (www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/)
states, "I am sure that all the major developers of e-mail are working
at adding spam filters to their software. He warns that we should
however be aware of the inherent dangers of filtering. Palme says,
"Spam filtering is not easy, and there is a risk that a spam filter
will sometimes suppress messages that should not be suppressed. The
development of e-mail will also be dependent on more uniformity within
the developer market. Because there are so many different e-mail software
programs written by so many different people, evolution of new ideas
and functions is difficult and slow."
Another issue that is a recurrent theme when talking to experts about
the future of e-mail is the need for more personal control over your
e-mail. Many believe that people should be able to modify or take
back a message already sent, but the technical experts do not want
to do this because of the obvious security risks; someone else might
use it to remove your messages against your will, unless security
is good. Another possibility is password -based e-mail, an idea suggested
by Richard Seltzer. "In this mode, only if you have the correct password
attached to the message does it get delivered to the target mailbox."
More stringent e-mail security is one of the central issues that will
form part of e-mail messages in future. There are a number of ways
that security can be added to e-mail. Some predictions regarding e-mail
security include digital envelopes, where the text is encrypted, which
means that it excludes anyone from seeing the message except the designated
recipient; digital authentication, which checks out who you are before
you read your mail; and digital seals, which will ensure that a message
has not been modified in transit.
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