Consumer Privacy and CAN-SPAM

March, 2005

“Anyone who thinks the privacy issue has peaked is greatly mistaken. We are in the early stages of a sweeping change in attitudes that will fuel years of political battles and put once-routine business practices under the microscope” -
Jay Stanley, Analyst, Forrester Research, March 2001

Mr. Stanley was right—consumer privacy is a serious issue. Look at all the new privacy legislation, including the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This Act was created to stop fraudulent, unwanted and misleading e-mail. We recently spoke about this topic at a local American Marketing Association luncheon (CICAMA). Based on the groups’ interest, we thought we’d share some of the newer statistics in this months’ newsletter.

The bad news first—since the inception of CAN-SPAM, SPAM has become even more prolific! For example, unsolicited junk e-mail now accounts for 80% of all e-mail sent – up from 50-60% prior to enactment. And the cost to U.S. businesses in terms of technology and lost productivity was $17 billion in 2004 – up from $10 billion in 2003 (global costs were $50 billion).

On the other hand, the FTC believes that the Act has been successful. They have caught, punished and fined some of the serious Spammers with many of these fines numbering in the millions. Also, filtering software has become more adept at capturing SPAM. Finally, as more large ISP’s become involved in catching the Spammers (as Microsoft and AOL already have), the harder it will be for Spammers to hide themselves and successfully deploy their billions of e-mails.

Unfortunately, today, the SPAM continues. Spammers have to send out millions more e-mails to get the same response rate, but even with a low response rate, Spammers make money. As one Spammer says, “There’s way too much money involved…as long as the money is out there, we will continue to go after it.”

All in all, this is a complex issue, and it seems that only time will tell how successful the Act has been. If you are concerned that you or your clients are potentially in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, we’d be happy to send you our white paper that contains the seven requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act. As an added bonus, it also covers best practices in e-marketing.

Of course, if you’d prefer to chat with us directly about your emarketing strategies, just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.