Spam Spam Spam

Posted On: 2008-02-13

For some reason I just can't get that old Monty Python song about spam out of my head as I write this. If you haven't heard it then you really should go looking for it on Google and play it ... that way it can infect your head too and you can suffer just like I am.

Now you know what sort of bitchy mood I'm in today and you'll also understand why Steve is being very quiet and working very hard in his office. And no, it's not that time of the month; it's just one of those days when the rest of the world is about half a beat behind me and do wish everyone would get with the plan and catch up!

So, getting back to the vexing topic of spam who would you say are the top spamming nations on the planet right now?

Well sadly for the President and Congress their Can-Spam Act just doesn't seem to be working. Oh you will see spammers getting caught and penalized from time to time but it doesn't seem to be having much affect because between October and December last year 21 per cent of all junk email ... and that included emails containing malicious software ... originated in the United States.

Shock! Horror! It's not those nasty Russians that so many envious wannabes love to hate, it's the good old USA that's generating most of the spam! Now who would have thought that?

Unfortunately Russia did manage to reach second place but it's a long way back with around 8.3 per cent of the spam that flooded our email boxes during the same period. China, Brazil, South Korea, Italy, Poland, Germany and Britain also featured in the list of top 10 spamming nations and even Mexico and Turkey got a mention in there.

On a regional basis it seems that Asia is the leader in spam generation with Europe at number two closely followed by North America and those three regions account for well over 85 per cent of all the spam sent out during the last quarter of 2007.

Regional variations in marketing
One of the interesting things that savvy marketers take great care to get right is the regional variation in their marketing message. One size certainly does not fit all when it comes to selling things on the international scene and it really does pay to get your marketing message right if you want to sell your products outside of your home country.

Yet how many people really take the time to get that message right? A couple of days ago we signed up to download a free webinar from what was supposed to be one of the leading search engine marketing companies in the US. Almost immediately we received an email from one of their sales reps who suggested that we might like to partner with them to provide even more services for our clients.

I think it was probably just the right sort of email to send to a business in the United States but the language was all wrong and way too over the top for anyone doing the sort of mainstream business that we do here. So the email had the completely opposite effect to what the writer had intended and any more emails we get from that company will go straight into the spam folder and never be seen.

That made me wonder just how often our marketing messages here in adult have the opposite effect to what we had intended. Do you write for your local audience or do you try to temper your marketing message just a little so that your message might have a slightly broader appeal?

On the other hand, is your message perhaps a little too low key for anything other than your local audience?

It's an interesting question and obviously not one that the spammers care too much about but I'm sure that it's one that we should consider. Even though our message is going out on the World Wide Web it will need to be a little more targeted than a spam message is if we really do want to make money.

And now I'm off to jump into my day down at the office and leave Steve to work here in peace. We were supposed to have what amounted to a Category 1 Tropical Cyclone come through here last night but in the end all we got was some heavy rain. That's still enough to cause some mayhem down at our office so perhaps it's time I spoke to the builder and suggest that he get his act together and fix all the leaks that come through the front doors.

I'm sure he would love to hear from me today.