On Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:29 AM Jay Hennigan via mailop <mailop@mailop.org> wrote:
> On 1/16/20 07:44, Jesse Thompson via mailop wrote: > > > On the other side of the coin, recipients within the same institution > > are constantly baffled why they keep getting unsolicited marketing from > > companies who, by all appearances, are playing by the rules (except for > > the unsolicited part, of course) and can't realistically be classified > > as spam by anyone who assumes that marketers aren't all skirting the > rules. > > ...(except for the unsolicited part, of course)... > > ...can't realistically be classified as spam... > > Isn't that the very definition of spam? It's unsolicited, it's bulk, and > it's email. > Going by spam is what the receiver thinks, many business customers tend to view most marketing from consumer stuff as spam, even if opt-in (ie, Target), but are typically more welcoming to things that are closer to their business use cases, including conferences and even some more direct sales like messages. Many of those aren't quite as bulk as the more consumer oriented spam. There's also often multiple people involved in receiving, so the admins having some control, or corporate policies, overriding the specific employees. Which is just a way of saying that different receivers have different ideas about spam, and one size fits all doesn't. There's a lot more gray then one would like. > Another factor that complicates things is that users are afraid to > > unsubscribe (to send the signal directly to the marketer) > > 1) when the message was obviously unsolicited > > 2) because they're constantly told not to click on links within spam > > messages > > IMHO, they shouldn't unsubscribe. This validates their address and the > fact that they open and read spam. Unsubscribing to spam gets your > address sold to other spammers as "One who has responded to similar > messages." They should report the spam as abuse. And, as you suggest, > the unsubscribe link could very well be malware. > I'd say if it's even remotely gray mail, and not pure spam, go for the unsubscribe. On Gmail, we only provide a ui unsub link if the sender reputation is ok, for example, but arguably anything from a mainstream esp or company is fine to unsub from. I see a lot of local companies and non-profits who have bad sending practices and often go to spam that are completely fine to unsub from, for example, and helps clear out the spam label to make it easier to find the false positives. This is also informed both by the prevalence of spam (something like 90% of active users get a spam a week) and the effectiveness of our spam filters. When I see other folks saying they don't get much spam, only 5 or more messages a day past their filters... I can understand why they don't want to get anymore. I don't believe spammers are really selling clean lists, our experience is they email everyone they possibly can. Maybe there are some dark gray spammers who try to use various legitimate delivery techniques to curate their lists and expand their inboxing, but they seem to mostly want to work around spam filter weaknesses instead of trying to be more legit. Brandon >
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