The Forgotten Opportunity

Update In the years since this was first posted, spammers have been playing a name/claim game, slapping the label of "opt-in" on nearly everything, almost none of which is truly opt-in. In fact, seeing opt-in on mail is usually a good indication that what follows is anything but. This little tome refers to genuine opt-in, that is, e-mail received because the user actively requested it, either by writing first to request it, or checking (note: not merely failing to un-check) a box requesting further information from PDQ Widget Corp. for information about PDQ's products, and not junk from vaguely-defined "partners," somebody who allegedly "thought you'd be interested," and, in short, anything else.

It is very surprising to me to observe the frantic efforts of the advocates of what they call responsible UCE when there is an enormous and largely unexplored potential for a thriving business in opt-in. There is far more potential for profit for both the operators of opt-in services and their advertising clients; there is much greater benefit for subscribers, since they get only what they have asked for and therefore pay attention to it, and it dispenses with essentially all of the concerns of spam opponents. So why such an obsession with promoting opt-out?

For the moment let's set aside the real garbage that curently comprises the overwhelming bulk of spam: the porn, get-rich-quick scams, spamware, and so forth. Let's simply concentrate on one thing: Is there a truly responsible, respectable way that Internet e-mail could be used for commercial promotion of common products? And let's also set aside the term spammer for the moment, just for discussion's sake. Let's look at the possibilities:

UCE advocates do have one point. (Did he really say that?) The point is that people are increasingly turning to the Internet to do business, and it would be worthwhile to find ways to make it easier for them to find what they want. Where their argument fails is not in the stated goal, but rather the method.

UCE makes it harder, not easier, to bring buyer and seller together. Even if the net community were willing to tolerate UCE, the sheer volume of it that would be necessary to insure that individual users' UCE includes the products that are of interest to them would be prohibitive. Think of what percentage of the ads in a newspaper or magazine are of interest to any randomly-selected individual. Pretty darn small. The value of such advertising lies in the ease of simply passing over what isn't of interest, which to a considerable degree justifies a shotgun approach.

That is absolutely uncharacteristic of e-mail of any kind. If Sue is interested in new cars, health insurance and women's clothing, Jim is interested in in flying lessons, power tools and landscaping services, and Steve is interested in surfboards, skiing resorts and mutual funds, it's clear that each would have to receive UCE for all the others' interests to guarantee they each would receive what's of interest to them. And I'm sure you've noticed that there are somewhat more than three users on the Internet by now.

The key, obviously, is to target the recipients. That is impossible with any kind of unsolicited approach. The key is to find a way to make it attractive for netizens to turn to opt-in services when they shop on the net.

• What are the advantages of opt-in?
  • Recipients get what they want, and want what they get.
  • Unwanted UCE doesn't compete with solicted mail and ordinary correpsondence for their attention.
  • Because each solicited message has the potential to generate business, there is enormously more marketing power with enormously lower volume. It is at least arguable that such services would be self-financing, because the low-cost distribution power of the net that true spammers are currently exploiting would instead be turned to wanted commerce, which benefits the economy as a whole. And no more incentive for relay rape, forgeries and deception. (Except for the slimeballs that will probably continue to afflict us for some time to come.)
  • No more arguments over proper and improper use of the Internet for advertising! (That should clinch the question all by itself!)

• How does opt-in attract buyers?
  • This is the UCE community's own argument: People want to find what they are seeking as quickly and easily as they can. By linking specific merchants to specific customers known to be interested because they've said so themselves, opt-in saves the buyers time and effort, saves advertisers wasted costs advertising to masses of uninterested recipients, and in the process, drastically cuts network traffic and even cuts down on net traffic a bit more by reducing searching and aimless browsing.

• What could advertisers do to make opt-in marketing more productive and attract more people to their ads?
  • Conventional advertising has traditionally found plenty of ways to do that. One possibility is to offer special deals. A merchant could offer a "e-mail list special" from time to time. The buyer gets a good deal; the merchant knows that most of those who benefit will continue to receive its ads.

• Anything else?
  • Subscribers could opt for a condensed version of, shall we call it SCE?, which contains short-form ads for several merchants of the same or similar products. This cuts down on extraneous traffic even more. Because they're smaller and shared, they'd be less expensive to run. Buyers would have the benefit of having different merchants' short-form offers before them at the same time, which could mean easier comparison and selection. Such short-form ads could easily include hyperlinks for interested clients to use to see full-sized individual ads, or go straight to the merchant's web site. Again, the buyer's time and attention are focused exactly where they should be.
  • The current displeasure over UCE costs recipients in aggravation and, for those that complain, the time and net use to do so. It costs ISPs to employ abuse personnel. It causes many recipients to refuse to do business with otherwise potential merchants because they've been spammed by them. Nearly all of that could be avoided.

• So opt-in is efficient, which implies cost-effective and powerful?
  • Yeah.

• Can you cite a personal example?
  • Yes. Not long ago there was a performance of a musical play I wanted to see. I heard the ad for it on the radio some time well before it played, but forgot about it until it was too late. If I had opted into a list of local theatre productions, I'd have been reminded of it and may well have not missed it.

• Then why the heck are UCE promoters struggling to hard to shove UCE down our throats when they could be putting that time, energy and money into setting up respectable opt-in companies?
  • Beats me!

$Date: 2002/07/27 00:22:39 $ GMT