Part of the cavalier attitude towards the medium derives from the sheer volume of email that is sent every year. According to US-based eMarketer and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), an estimated 120 billion emails were sent in Asia in 2001, including 26.4 billion emails of a non-personal but commercial nature.
It wouldn't take a betting man to put money down that most of the messages didn't originate from retailers from whom consumers buy regularly. Instead, the majority probably originated from obscure companies trying to sell everything from get-rich-quick schemes to Viagra over the web.
In fact, as industry observers tell it, a whole industry has sprung up to help marketers sneak into consumers' email inboxes as well as automate and personalise sales pitches based on consumers' shopping history and preferences.
Junk mail senders are using novel tricks to make spam even harder to overlook to counter the growing number of consumers who are ignoring messages with vague subject lines or from anonymous senders.
Such tactics, say Dominic Powers, product director at Mezzo Marketing, is giving email a bad name. "There are few organisations using email which are aware of the issues of email marketing. So what's happening is that email is getting a bad name because of all the unscrupulous tactics we are seeing being used today."
Against this backdrop, Chinadotcom's audit plan will inject much-needed credibility into the industry, something email marketers can ill afford to squander at this early stage of the medium's development. "The principal standpoint is that it's (spam) wrong, says Stuart Spiteri, chief operating officer at Mezzo Marketing. "The philosophy (of email marketing) is to build on the profile of the individual so he or she can get quality information.
It's about building trust with the person."
Indeed, the fundamental guideline to e-marketing is gaining permission to send promotional message. The strategy should be based on individuals opting in and giving permission to receive messages in certain areas of interest. For example, if an individual is a media buyer and has opted in to receive information on media, a company would be justified to send such information after permission has been given to receive the email offer.
Chinadotcom's audit, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers over a three-month period, aims to do just that. In accordance with the standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, it examined the internal controls over expresso's information privacy practices for consumers' personal data collected or managed by the e-marketing division.
Email's appeal: on the up and up across the world
% of people Aged 16 up
Country Sent/Received e-mail
Hong Kong 84
Australia 90
United Kingdom 90
Netherlands 90
Denmark 89
Switzerland 89
Sweden 88
Germany 83
Spain 82
France 80
Italy 79
Brazil 75
The DMA recently created mandatory ground rules for members sending sales pitches over email. The move was designed to help avoid a US Government crackdown in commercial messages and stipulated that emails could only be sent to consumer who had given affirmative consent to receive promotional messages.
Godfrey Rooke, chairman of Hong Kong's direct marketing association, explains: "There is no code of practice here (in Asia), which leads to companies to market by the millions. Certainly there are some respectable marketers out there, and the problem of spam does not lie with such companies.
Spam is used by companies which can't market any other way."
What's driving the fast pace of spam delivery into consumers' email in-boxes is partly the growing commercial availability of email lists, which are often generated through premium offers and incentives.
James Thornton, managing director of Mailing Lists Asia, says reputable email lists today can cost more than land addresses. "You can get an email list or permission-based list of 1,000 names for US$250. They are used because the total cost of internationally mailing to 1,000 names would be $650. That can be some saving."
While the industry remains divided on the extent of regulation that should be stipulated in Asia, it is likely that the volume of spam email will grow unless certain guidelines are drawn up.
Thornton adds: "As the spammers out there get lower response rates, there is the hope that they will fade away. In fact the response to email marketing is already falling. It was very strong in its early days and has since declined because of the proliferation of all this garbage. This just means that the lobby to introduce legislation will increase and that, I believe, will only be a good thing."
