On Monday, eMarketer reported on a survey conducted by Mirapoint and the Radacati Group. Here’s a link to Mirapoint’s press release, which notes that “11 percent of users purchase products and services from spam emails.” In January, a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 6 percent of Americans online buy from spammers.

What’s a few percentage points among friends? Let’s split the difference and call it 8.5 percent. Now, if we accept the recent ClickZ statistic that the population of active Internet users in the U.S. is 137.54 million, that’s 11.69 million people who have purchased from spammers.

To me, these numbers seem awfully high. In the absence of viewing the survey’s specific methodology regarding how “spam” is defined, I suspect the numbers indicate something else: that “spam” has become the casual computer user’s term for commerce-related email of any kind, just as “Kleenex” means any kind of tissue and “Band-Aid” means any kind of bandage.

For many, “Have you purchased from a spammer?” equates with, “Have you purchased from someone who has sent you an email?” That the email is 100 percent legitimate, double opt-in, totally above-board, and ethically beyond reproach is irrelevant.

It’s email + it’s trying to sell something = spam.

Takeaway for Marketers: Even after you take every pain to follow every rule, your email may still be perceived as spam.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways.