Best of the ISP-Lists

Spamming Our Lists

A company that is spamming our lists is hurting itself, and polluting the internet.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 19, 2007]

Why would anyone spam an ISP? ISPs fight spam every day. They fight volumes of spam that the casual or professional user can barely imagine. A company with 1,000 subscribers could block over 100,000 spam e-mails each day.

So when an irresponsible company spams ISPs who have subscribed to one of our many ISP-Lists, the result is not sales.

Of course, spam can work for scammers and med-vendors who prey on the poor and the weakened. Spam seems to work for those selling to residential consumers. If you send 100 million spams, then if your response rate is one in a million, you'll get 100 sales.

But if you spam a smaller list (such as our moderated discussion lists: .xls), you will be named and remembered and shunned. If you spam a list of technological savvy people, don't expect to make a sale. If you spam a list of people who fight spam every day, expect worse.

Why?
So why would anyone spam such a list? One must assume that the spamming company is both desperate and ignorant.

If a spammer acquires a few customers, they would stay only for a short time, leaving when they realized their supplier is a spammer. So the strategy might net a few customers in the short term, in exchange for a long term black mark on the company's good name.

No company can survive long if it alienates all of its customers. Spammers are outed, and the ISP community in particular has a very long memory on this subject.

But it's not just the ISP community that remembers. A spammer lands on RBLs. A spammer's e-mails are soon blocked by engines that track reputation, from LASHBACK to SenderBase. Software incorporated into the internet will fight back.

Those who pollute the internet cannot expect those who have built the internet to buy from them. That would be obvious to anyone who understands the internet, to anyone who's ever talked to an ISP founder-owner.

Meanwhile, the economics of spam operate, and every spam recipient loses a few minutes each day to a company that has demonstrated its venality and ignorance.

— End

 

Further Reading:
	[April 18, 2007]	Should Spammers be Publicly Flogged?