Boston Globe: Fearing 'Spam' Label, Advertisers Wary of E-Mail

Now that they're fired, they
have more time to email you

As the developing spam policies of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) gain further resolution, it appears the two major buy-side trade groups will break with the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) definition of what makes spam.

The DMA has said that spam is fraud sent via email. The buy-side groups seem to be taking the more common consumer definition of spam, defining it as "unsolicited, bulk, untargeted commercial email." Despite this, the draft policies do not appear to preclude the use of the opt-out lists that are responsible for the vast majority of unsolicited, bulk, untargeted commercial email.

The impracticality of trying to fit opt-out lists into a reasonable email regime can be quickly illustrated by looking at the current state of telemarketing. Telemarketing companies have a master list of numbers and many smaller lists created for each sales effort. Asking to have a name removed from "the list" will get an annoyed phone call recipient off the sub-list, but not off the master list. Sometimes that recipient is called by the same operator a few hours later with a different product offer. One possible way of patching this broken system would be the "roll-up" policy, whereby asking to be taken off a list forced the company to take the person off all related lists and even off of the list from which the name was acquired. Failing to implement such a solution led to enough consumer anger to create a political issue, giving rise to the upcoming do-not-call registry that will likely severely curtail telemarketing efforts in the future.