When Did It Become Spam?

One of my all time favorite books on copywriting is by Joe Sugarman. I've forgotten the name, but it was released a couple of years ago. In the book, Sugarman talks a lot about his direct marketing business, writing those long form ads that you saw in magazines, and a host of other issues related to good copywriting.

In case you don't know, Sugarman is the BlueBlockers sunglasses guy.

In essence, the way Sugarman's business worked is this: he compiled a catalog of various products, then he bought mailing lists and mailed those catalogs out.

Okay, I get catalogs all the time. Although, I rarely get them just out of the blue like that. So, what is that?

Right! That's Spam!

But back then, we didn't think of it as spam, we thought of it as junk mail.

Even now, when the mail comes, I head over to the trash can by my desk and sort through the mail. I drop the obvious solicitations into the basket, then take the residue and actually look at that.

This would be the analog to sending an email and it not being opened! Now, direct marketers have all sorts of tricks to get you to open the letter, and I'm not going to get into that, here. Because with email marketing it's different.

You can't send unsolicited emails!

For a while, I wondered why. I actually got my start in Internet marketing as a spammer of sorts. This was when I started teaching in public school.

I wrote a report about how to manage a classroom. That's something that teachers would pay at least a few bucks to learn, I thought. At that time, I had hardly learned about Internet marketing. I had no idea how to sell the booklet, so I started combing through school websites all around the country and built a sizable list of emails.

I then methodically sent emails to all these folks telling them about my report.

Oddly enough I was well received. I even sold a few reports!

Lord knows how many state and federal laws I broke!

Just so you know, this was about five years ago. :)

What this did for me, though, is it showed me the awesome power of the Internet to create money and make business opportunities. Of course, I don't spam any more. I use double opt-in email lists, like everyone else.

So, when did unsolicited advertising become spam? When the power of the Internet ramped up the messages per unit time to the point that it became overwhelming.

Four or five pieces of unsolicited mail each day is not overwhelming. It's a very small pain in the neck. Five thousand unsolicited emails, however, would be overwhelming to the point of preventing you from functioning!

That's when it became spam.