[TerrelShumway]

Originally Posted by JohnG

What do you mean by legitimate marketers?

legitimate marketer = someone with a clue who respects his prospects and carefully targets his offers to those who at least might be interested.

I know you understand this because targeting is the most important factor in your direct-response copy pulling well.

From the material on your website, I think we are on the same page. I can not say that being a member of the DMA, AAAA or any organization makes you "legitimate" marketer or not. Maybe we need a new term. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by JohnG

* The CAN SPAM Act of 2003 regulates the transmission of commercial, transactional and relationship email.

* The Act does not explicitly prohibit the sending of unsolicited commercial email in bulk.

I did not claim that CAN-SPAM will ever succeed in its aleged mission of "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing." In fact, I think that it is no coincidence that the chosen acronym suggests that you can spam.

Where CAN-SPAM does succeed is that it is easier for the small but clueful marketer to avoid a non-frivolous law suit by complying with one law rather than 50. Not a very good ROI, IMO, but our legislators would have spent the money somewhere else if not on CAN-SPAM.

Originally Posted by JohnG

(This is why the deliver-my-email campaign of SiteSell has merit. Why should a marketer who runs an affirmative consent mailing list have to sign up with an accreditation service? But watch, it will happen.)

Why? The law of supply and demand requires it. You pay for what you get.

The ultimate problem is that something that has real value (sending email) is relatively inexpensive. The law of supply and demand suggests that some invisible hand must eventually reach in and either reduce the value or increase the cost. If that means I have to sign up with an accreditation service and pay a penny per message -- Bring it on -- that will significantly increase the value of sending email by eliminating the spammers who are doing such a good job of destroying the value. And even at 10 cents per message, it's still the best media bargain since cable channels started charging money for late night air time (orignially, it was free -- just like email was before spam became a problem).

Originally Posted by JohnG

We have the whole suppression mess, along with a number of other issues, including:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that the suppression mess is now out the window.

Originally Posted by JohnG

The reality? As long as it is socially acceptable to send unsolicited bulk commercial email, we are going to have a 'big' spam problem.

As long as the cost of delivering email is significantly less than the value, we are going to have a 'big' spam problem. Social cost is important, but money cost gets a lot more people to pay attention.

Originally Posted by JohnG

The first step in fighting the war on spam? The DMA, ANA and AAAA needs to stop being hypocritical, saying oh yes, we are against spam, while in reality so defining spam as to make the statement a mockery.

Once we have a unified front on this issue, we can then make real progress in other areas. But, as long as it is socially acceptable to send what most people define as spam, this only makes it harder to bring the underlying societal problem under control of marketers acting responsibly, given the shared nature of the Internet.

Amen.