There’s an interesting post over at the Word To The Wise blog about the “Report Spam” button.

Apparently, some marketing folks (Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa) ran a survey that suggests the button is meaningless now. That’s because too many people click “Report Spam” when all they really want to do is unsubscribe.

This statement from Laura Atkins is what I found most interesting (which I’ve summarized in a very unprofessional way below):

“I think this is a demonstration of the disconnect between traditional marketing (telemarketing and direct mail especially) and email marketing. In traditional marketing…recipients do not have an easy way to send negative feedback…In email marketing, however…they have a way to communicate back to the marketer that they do not have in other forms of marketing.”

There’s definitely a “disconnect.” Enlightened marketers know how to treat email. Ignorant markters who just treat email as “cheap direct marketing” are ruining email for all of us, and need to have their computers taken away from them.

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