Winning the War on Spam

I may be showing my age a bit, but I remember the days where spam emails completely filled everyone's email box.  Although my inbox was never quite as bad as the picture below, I do remember that a majority of emails were of the 'un-wanted' variety.

I will admit that probably one of the reasons for the horrible percentage of spam was the fact that I was a hotmail user at the time.  Hotmail had a notoriously bad spam filter several years ago and it caused me to switch to Gmail.  Prior to our class this week, I never really thought much about spam emails as I do not see them as much anymore in my inbox.  But how as Gmail and the others been able to nearly eliminate the spam?  I had to do some research.

It turns out that with three different strategies, much of the spam can be eliminated.  The first is called 'Machine Learning'.  The idea here is that the computer is trained to figure out which messages are spam and which messages are not.  By recording various characteristics and the result of whether an email is spam, we can allow the computer to 'learn' which emails are spam.

Another way of identifying spam is by looking for trigger words in the subject or the body that are used by spammers.

Finally, as users, we can help the spam filters by clicking on the 'Spam' button on our web email.  As it turns out, all three of these approaches are being used by Google's Gmail email service.  As can be seen below, the spam filters have been working well to reduce the missed spam as well as the false positives despite the fact that the amount of spam email traffic is over 50% for the past 7 years.

Why is this important for internet marketing?  I would argue that the improvement in the spam filter means that the ethical and solicited emails that are requested by your customers are getting delivered and consumed at a higher rate.  The odds that an email is read when it is surrounded by unsolicited emails would tend to result in many missed opportunities.  Now, however, if your solicited email to a possible customer, it will more likely be read.  Thanks spam filters!

Hiding in Plain Sight

Before I begin this week's blog post, I want you to take a few minutes to watch the following video.  The goal is to count the number of times that the player's in white pass the basketball.

Did you see the gorilla?  Approximately 50% of the people are so focused on the task at hand that they completely miss the gorilla.  Is your advertising on webpages falling victim to the same fate.  Chances are, Yes!!!

One of the topics for this week's Marketing 595 class was this idea of 'Banner Blindness'.  People have a tendency to be so focused on the story that they are reading that they do not even see your ads.  The 'heat maps' of eye movement from many experiments show that people will not even look at anything that looks like an ad

 So how do advertisers get around this?  After all, advertising dollars is what makes a lot of the great content on the internet to be free for users.  Some websites have advertisements that popup and typically annoy the customers that you want to attract.  Other websites try to trick users into clicking on their advertisements.  Again, this can be seen as unethical.

What is the answer?  Unfortunately, the answer means more work up front and may even mean considering the advertisement during the design of the webpage.  That's right, make the advertisement content-rich and unique as Jonathan Gardner points out.  In his blog post, Mr. Gardner leads us to an example from Ikea where they put all of their products on one web banner ad.  Another example is from Jeep where they put the local weather forecast as part of the ad.  These types of advertisements provide a sales pitch along with delivering information to the users.  In a sense, being different is what will attract the most attention.  Although it is much more difficult to create these unique advertisements, the effort will be worth it in higher click through rates.

Internet Marketing - What is too 'creepy'?

Ah... Privacy.  It is one of those things that you really do not miss it until it is gone.  Marketers use information about you in order to show you the perfect targeted ad that you are most likely to click on and buy.  How they obtain this information is sometimes considered to be 'creepy'.  But what is the definition of 'creepy' in terms of your online presence?

Jeff Jarvis, author of Public Parts, is quoted as saying, "Define 'creepy.' It really means nothing. It's something unfamiliar that we are getting used to."  I find this definition to be on the money.  In fact, in a recent interview, Jeff states the fact that there were privacy concerns when Kodak instant cameras were introduced.  People felt that strangers would be waiting to take pictures and document your activities.  Now, a Google's Street View is convenient service but also documents some interesting moments. 

This article summed up the position well that certain services that were seen as creepy a few years ago (Google scanning Gmail's emails for key words and displaying targeted ads based on this) is now seen as common place.  If you are an online marketer, how do you be sure that your site is offering the conveniences of technology without being too creepy?

I believe this answer depends on how 'trusted' your website and brand is.  Sites like Amazon and Google may be seen as more trusted and can push the envelope.  The companies may have some push back in the media, but soon, all is forgiven.  Smaller brands and websites, however, do not have this luxury and their advanced technology to provide convenience could backfire.  In short, if you are confused on whether your small business's website is too creepy with the customization and your customer knowledge, it is best to refer to the 'Web Analysts Code of Ethics'.
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