Less Spam, More Relevance in the Inbox Today Than One Year Ago

"It is official: the industry's hard work is paying off and consumers are seeing less spam and clutter in the inbox for the first time in years," said Al DiGuido, CEO of Bigfoot Interactive. "At the same time, legitimate marketers are becoming much smarter about crafting email communications that meet the needs, preferences and interests of their customers. Consequently, email is poised to enter its next major growth phase as it becomes embedded in the marketing mix due to its continued power and efficiency to drive customer relationships and marketing ROI."

Highlights from the survey include:

• Majority of consumers say spam volume has decreased - 57% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed that the amount of spam they have received over the past year has decreased, while 39% strongly/somewhat disagreed and 4% had no response/don't know.
• Majority of consumers say they receive more relevant communications today than they did one year ago - 57% indicated that the emails they received from companies they do business with are more targeted than the same communications they got from those same companies a year ago. 35% strongly/somewhat disagreed and 8% had no response/don't know.
• Phishing attacks difficult to recognize - 34% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they have received a fraudulent or phishing email that was disguised as a legitimate email asking them to verify personal information. In addition, just 32% of consumers strongly agreed they were confident they could identify or detect a fraudulent, "phishing" email that was designed to look like those of legitimate businesses, financial institutions and government agencies.
• Anti-spam software use high - 65% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they currently use anti-spam filtering or challenge response software.
• False positives persist - 25% of consumers indicated they have recently lost or did not receive an email that they were supposed to receive from a trusted source and 32% say that email they have requested from a trusted source was delivered to a junk mail folder. In addition, 52% of consumers strong/somewhat agreed they routinely check their spam/junk folder for legitimate messages.
• Security concerns pervasive - 82% of consumers say they are concerned about spyware as it relates to their online privacy, and 55% believe they have been infected with a spyware program.
• Consumers express interest in verification functionality from their ISP/Email provider - 89% indicate they would like their ISP/Email provider to include an icon to indicate email has been authenticated and is from a trusted source, and 86% of consumers strongly/somewhat agreed they would like their ISP/Email provider to include an unsubscribe option that would safely remove them from email lists.

"While we emphasize the need for continued momentum on the technological front - including authentication, accreditation and reputation solutions - the importance of education cannot be understated," said DiGuido. "Efforts to educate marketers and consumers, including our own 'Add to Address Book' campaign, appear to be bearing considerable fruit, with 56% regularly using the feature, and 42% reporting that they are commonly asked to use the feature by companies they do business with. We must focus even more energy and resources on teaching consumers about how to identify and distinguish between legitimate email and fraud in concert with other industry efforts."