Some of you may define SPAM as the Rolex and Viagra emails that don't actually seem to be selling anything and are chock full of misspellings. I've always looked at it with a much broader scope to include the barrage of emails from retail companies that you get every day at like 3:23am because you once bought something from them and had to include your email address to complete the transaction. I realize that's fairly pessimistic, especially as someone who fully intends to do marketing for a major retailer when I graduate! That said, I've often wondered why J.Crew bothers to send me 4 different emails a day when the most I'll do is click one a month to check out what's new - and then I came across this article, "E-Mail ROI High, Response Rates Low".
While interactive marketers are clearly using metrics beyond ROI, no matter how you cut it, email still makes sense (or cents!) - in fact over $45 for every $1 spent - and generates leads. That was shocking to me until I remembered my last internship, where I (an unpaid intern) was responsible for the creative, which the company then emailed out to current customers - all pretty much for free. Email marketing is cheap, almost free, and therefore relatively effective and here to stay...
1 comment:
This type of email is being referred to as BACN ("bacon") -- it's not quite SPAM, because you may have signed up for it at some point, but it can be equally annoying.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Bacn (pronounced bacon) is the term given to electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all. Bacn has been described as "email you want but not right now".
Bacn differs from spam in that the emails are not unsolicited: the recipient has somehow signed up to receive it. Bacn is also not necessarily sent in bulk. Bacn derives its name from the idea that it is "better than spam, but not as good as a personal e-mail".
The term Bacn was originally coined at PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 and since then has become popular amongst the blogging community. However, some find the term to be little more than manufactured marketing material to sell merchandise.
Common examples of Bacn messages include news alerts, messages from social networking sites and wiki watch lists.
The word has also attracted attention in the professional email marketing community. Commentators have welcomed the distinction from spam and used the term to focus businesses on the need to improve the quality and value (to the recipient) of these kinds of transactional messages.
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