Our session on what customers really think about your email campaigns began with an interesting graph noting that 21 percent of people knowingly report permission-based email as spam. Here are the reasons they hit that dreaded button...


43 percent -- sender name or email address
38 percent -- email content/body
35 percent -- subject line
20 percent -- I do not recall
13 percent -- none of the above
The bottom line: Marketers think of spam as a textbook definition; customers, meanwhile, think of spam as anything they don't want, for whatever reason.
The solutions-oriented discussion included some interesting ideas:
Include an opt-out link at the top of a page. If an annoyed customer wants to stop receiving your messages, they're more prone to hit the spam button at the top of the page than to scroll down to the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page.
When you have something good to say, send it. If not, don't. Focus on relevancy, not schedule.
Keep your list tight and performing, not bloated and underperforming. Size doesn't if many of those recipients never open an email or click through.