Americans Would Ban Spam: Harris Poll

Eighty percent of Americans find unsolicited e-mail very annoying, up from 49% roughly two years ago. And nearly 75% would make these messages illegal, according to a new survey by the Harris Poll.

Disdain for spam cuts across gender, racial, income, political and age lines, with 70% to 80% of the people in all respondent categories indicating displeasure with the tactic.

But industry observers wonder if Harris has confused the terminology.

“It’s not surprising that consumers are concerned about spam,” said Patricia Faley, the Direct Marketing Association’s vice president of ethics and consumer affairs. “Marketers are concerned about spam as well. But the way the Harris Poll defined it, they seem to think any mass e-mailing is spam, and that’s where we would disagree.”

Faley feels the respondents are largely reacting to firms that fail to identify who they are or that don’t allow consumers to opt out. And they may also be wary of companies that don’t identify where they’re located, or the ones that send fraudulent content or unwanted pornographic offers.

“In our experience people are not concerned about e-mail saying that Old Navy is having a sale, or Baby Gap is having a Christmas or holiday sale,” Faley said.

DMA guidelines state that marketers should identify themselves, should offer a clear opt-out in each and every e-mail and should specify their geographic location.

The Harris survey found that consumers had the strongest negative reaction to pornography, with 91% saying it irritated them a great deal. But financial services and investment offers also ranked high on the annoyance scale: Mortgages and loans, investments and real estate opportunities each earned better than a 60% disapproval rate.

But the survey found that other online issues have abated. For example, 25% said two years ago they were annoyed by the length of time it took for information to come up on their screen. This year, the number was 17%. And only 10% were put off by the amount of time it took to find the Web sites they needed, compared with 20% in the last survey.

Some things don’t change at all. Just under a third of all respondents felt information from the Web was unreliable, only a slight dip from 35% in 2000.

Harris polled 2,221 adults in an online survey conducted between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2, 2002.

Anti-spam

The Harris Poll found that:

• 80% of all Americans find spam annoying
• 75% want it to be prohibited by law
• 91% strongly dislike pornographic spam

Young Women Prefer Mail When Buying Healthcare

Want to reach young women concerned about their health? Forget MTV — the best channel might be direct mail.

That’s the finding of a new survey of 20,000 healthcare consumers by Evanston, IL-based information provider Solucient.

The survey found that while women age 18 to 34 are broadly exposed to healthcare advertising on television and radio, they are more likely to respond to direct mail or handouts in the doctor’s office.

The study found that 29% of women in that age category have weight problems. In addition, 13% suffer from depression and 26% reported that they have migraines.

Women afflicted with depression are 40% more likely to respond to direct mail than television spots. And those who get migraines are 100% more likely to respond to physician office information than to television offers.

“The findings are surprising,” said Ruth Colby, senior vice president of Solucient’s planning and marketing division, in a statement. “Our clients often focus marketing dollars for this age group on obstetrics programs and diet and fitness classes. We’re not going to recommend they stop focusing in these areas by any means. We are, however, suggesting they develop a more comprehensive approach to women’s health.”

Solucient surveyed a random sample of 20,000 healthcare consumers.