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I mentioned earlier today about our spam problem. Then I read this article over at E-Consultancy.

The DMA’s latest stats show that delivery rates fell to 68% for acquisition emails and 80% for retention emails in the period, continuing the drops seen in Q1

Which begs the question, when is a marketing e-mail not spam?

• As a user, I seem to receive e-mails despite not opting in - it’s annoying.
• As a marketer; with some campaigns I send, some users, despite having opted in, still put in a spam complaint.

My personal opinion is that people are lazy. They’ll take the easy option despite any consequences, to which, they will lazily reply later, and that includes (on the user side) not un-ticking a subscribe box, and from a marketers side, adding people to lists without consent.

Of course, you could say that all marketing e-mail could be taken as spam, because most people don’t understand permission and opt-in. They also can’t remember every list they’ve subscribed to or who and when they may have given out their e-mail address.

As we become more and more protective of our e-mail addresses, can we, and will we, forgive the e-mail marketers who do it right, or see them all as spammers like all the rest?

As the firewalls and spam filters get tougher and tougher, and people continue to use random Hotmail accounts to subscribe, the result is a marketing medium that becomes less effective.

That’s why I like the idea of double opt-in e-mail and I think it may be coming to an inbox near you in the next few years.

Double opt-in is where you both agree to accept e-mails from one another up front, hence, subscribing to each others communications.

It’s a bit like when you make friends with people in Facebook and leaves you with control. In fact, between me and you, I think Facebook groups and messaging could be a new avenue to be exploring now…