What is SPAM?

In the email industry, we have a lot of terms we use regularly. Deliverability, Open Rate, Inbox, Subject Line, Friendly From, Call-to-Action, etc. For the most part, we all have a consistent shared definition of what these terms mean. But there is one commonly used email term where the definition can vary quite a bit depending on who you speak with. SPAM.

This topic came up in a recent webinar I participated in with ZeroBounce and their COO Brian Minnick. We discussed the definition of spam and how it can differ from one person to the next among consumers and even in the email industry. That conversation inspired me to write this article and delve a little deeper into the term and parts of the definition that are fairly well-shared and others not so much.

First, a little history. Because everyone loves history lessons. While the term is almost ubiquitous in email today, it first came up in a USENET post from 1993, when ‘spam’ was used to describe a software bug that caused a few hundred messages to be sent to the newsgroup. It’s likely the use of the term was inspired by a Monty Python sketch from 1970 where the comedy troupe used it in a repetitive and extremely annoying way (spam, spam, spam, spam, and so on) - so the idea that spam was something annoying that kept on repeating or happening over and over.

The name clearly stuck and eventually became synonymous with various types of unwanted and/or mass messages sent across various mediums, including email. Eventually, its place in email marketing was cemented with the passing of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Today, we also see it regularly applied to SMS marketing, telemarketing, and social media.

How The Law Defines Spam

Technically, ‘spam’ isn’t a legal term, but the CAN-SPAM Act addresses “unsolicited commercial email.” So, that’s at least a reasonable starting point.

How Google Defines Spam

Hitting up our friendly neighborhood search engine, the AI overview results for “what is spam email?” tells us that…

“A ‘spam email’ is an unsolicited and unwanted email, typically sent in bulk to a large number of recipients, often containing commercial advertising for products or services that the recipient did not request or consent to receive.”

That certainly hits a lot of the high points, but it also leaves some room for interpretation since it uses words like “typically” and “often” as qualifiers. It also doesn’t specifically include several types of email content that many people would agree falls under the definition of spam (like malware, phishing, etc.).

How the Email Industry Defines Spam

Here’s where things start to get interesting. While there are a lot of commonalities in how different email marketing pros define the term, there isn’t a consensus. Here are a few ways (often in combination) that email industry pros define spam.

Unsolicited Email - For some people in the email industry, any unsolicited email constitutes spam. But even this is a bit open to interpretation. What about transactional emails or other business-related emails that might be sent to a current customer, when they may not have specifically signed up for it? How about a 1-to-1 email sent by one individual to another? That could be a cold sales email (spam?) or just an un-asked-for email from an acquaintance talking about politics. And, speaking of politics, what about the unsolicited political email that shows up in your inbox leading up to an election? Spam or not spam? 

Bulk Email - This is also often included in definitions of spam. How many email addresses have to be on a list for it to be a ‘bulk’ email campaign? With personalization and various sending algorithms involving time zones and recipient ESPs, is it still ‘bulk email’ if it is sent over a span of 24 hours and every email is highly personalized with varied content? Newsletters would seem to qualify as bulk email, but they tend not to carry negative connotations just from the fact they are sent to a lot of recipients. 

Commercial/Marketing Email - The CAN-SPAM Act is clear that it covers emails that are ‘commercial messages’ which we generally call marketing or advertising emails. So, if an email has the goal of selling a product or service, does that make it spam? What if recipients signed up to receive special offers from the advertiser via email? Political email is not considered commercial email, as defined by CAN-SPAM, but it can certainly leverage similar approaches to content as marketing emails do.

Malicious Email (Phishing, Malware, etc.) - This might actually be the single qualification that will automatically define an email as spam for all email industry professionals. Even if a recipient signed up to receive an email like this (possibly due to being misled), just about every email professional and consumer alike would call it spam.

Email that an Inbox Provider/ESP Delivers to the Spam Folder - From a technical/semantic standpoint, if an email is flagged as spam in the inbox, then by definition, it is spam - at least to the inbox provider. This can occur even if the recipient signed up for it and even if it isn’t a commercial email.

Email That a Recipient Flags as Spam - If a recipient flags an email as spam, regardless of whether it fits any of the other descriptions above, there’s a pretty strong argument that it is spam - at least to that recipient. From the standpoint of the recipient’s ESP, it’s spam for that individual recipient. And, if enough recipients flag the same message as spam (or different messages from the same sender), it may lead to more emails from that sender being delivered to the spam folder (or not delivered at all).

Using various combinations of all of these qualifiers is likely to give any email industry professional a way to define spam in their mind. But, if we polled 100 email industry pros, we wouldn’t get universal agreement on any one combination. 

How Consumers Define Spam

Spam is also a term that resonates with consumers and people who have no connection to the email marketing industry. While email professionals may differ on the meaning of spam, consumers have much broader definitions of what constitutes spam.

Any Email in the Spam Folder - If a consumer’s inbox provider puts an email into their spam folder, then for that recipient it’s clearly spam. If Gmail says an email is spam, then that’s what it must be, right? Except… what about when a consumer discovers that a message they wanted ended up in the spam folder? As people who spend far more time in our inboxes than the average consumer, we know that spam filters are imperfect. We’ve likely all found emails in our spam folders that, in our minds, didn’t belong there. Similarly, email marketers send out emails that end up in at least some recipients’ spam folders when the marketer would certainly argue the message should have been delivered to the inbox.

Any Email I Don’t Want When I Spot It in the Inbox - If you talk to most consumers, this is likely how they use the term, whether they would articulate exactly this way or not. If an email shows up in a consumer’s inbox and they aren’t remotely interested in it at the moment they see it, they would probably call it spam. But, if they see that email at a time when the content happens to be relevant, then it isn’t spam. In this case, a consumer’s definition of spam may vary over time, with regard to the same message. Today’s spam might be tomorrow’s valuable offer - with a special offer on that new vacuum cleaner you don’t know you’re about to need when your current one breaks tonight.

Malicious Email - As mentioned above, this one is the rare case of criteria that virtually everyone can agree constitutes spam. If an email contains malware or spyware or is designed for phishing, then it’s pretty clearly spam to email marketers and consumers alike.

Email I Didn’t Sign Up For… or Don’t Remember Signing Up For - I broadened this from just ‘unsolicited’ because it’s really about whether a consumer knows or remembers they agreed to receive certain email messaging, rather than if they actually did. We’ve all probably checked an opt-in box by mistake or just don’t remember that we agreed to receive email messaging six months ago when we ordered something from an online merchant. To the consumer, whether they signed up or not, they don’t think they did, so it’s an unasked-for and often unwanted email. For that email sender, they are just sending a message to their subscriber list. 

So… What Exactly is Spam?

While there are certain criteria that just about everyone can agree on (phishing, malware), after that consensus is elusive. There is a great deal of subjectivity in individual definitions and an email that is spam to one person is a valuable message to another.

In writing this article, I wasn’t anticipating that it would land on a final definition. Instead, I wanted to point out the variation in definitions to help make conversations about spam more effective. When email industry professionals write an article about spam, speak about it at a conference, or have a conversation with other industry folks, it’s wise to level set on how they are defining the term.

So, how do you define spam? Did your definition change after reading this article?

 

Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash