Seven Thousand, Seven Hundred Eighty-Six E-mail Ads Per Day
Some alternate thoughts about unsolicited e-mail advertising
Who comes up with these wild figures, anyway? Is this a scare
tactic? Why the exaggeration? Let's face it, e-mail ads aren't that bad.
Not even an anti-advertising extremist would even pretend to be
getting thousands of e-mailed advertisements per day.
Today's spammers aren't representative of advertisers. People object to
the pornography and scams and chain letters propagated by today's spammers
on general principle. There is no such disdain of the advertising of products
and services which have real value to the consumer, at least not among
the majority of consumers. And real advertisers don't spew and shotgun
all over creation; they target their mailings to reach likely prospects,
not random samplings of humanity.
It's time to look at some conservative situations, and come up with some
reasonable numbers.
There are
23,700,000 businesses1
in the United States alone. But we know that a lot of those
businesses will not do much unsolicited e-mail advertising; lots of these
companies make items or render services that the general public simply does
not want, such as boilers, ships, train coach wheels, etc. So for purposes
of our computation, we'll say that only sixty percent of those businesses
will advertise using unsolicited e-mail; that's a much more reasonable
number. These businesses want to be in the consumer's sights
often, but not unreasonably so. Let's say twice per week is a good cycle
to get and keep the reader's attention without nagging.
No. of companies................. 14,220,000
Mailings per year per address.... 104
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Total e-mails per address........ 1,478,880,000
Divide by days per year.......... 365.24
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Total e-mails per address 4,049,063 per day
We must be missing something. Aha! Only fourteen percent
of all U.S. businesses
are on the Internet now anyway; I read that somewhere. We'll work
with half that, seven percent of all U.S. businesses,
and let someone else worry
about growth. And let's cut down to twice a month.
No. of companies................. 1,659,000
Mailings per year per address.... 24
----------------
Total e-mails per address........ 39,816,000
Divide by days per year.......... 365.24
----------------
Total e-mails per address 109,013 per day
This is frustrating. All right, we prohibit 99% of businesses from
using unsolicited advertising e-mail by law. And no matter how many
products General Motors or Sears or Wal-Mart or Safeway has to sell, no
business can send more than one e-mail per month to any address.
Naturally, since mail from businesses outside the U.S.A.
would inflate this figure, that has to be regulated by U.S. law as well.
No. of companies................. 237,000
Mailings per year per address.... 12
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Total e-mails per address........ 2,844,000
Divide by days per year.......... 365.24
----------------
Total e-mails per address 7,786 per day
That's about as far as we can go. We'll have enough trouble
choosing the one percent that are allowed to use e-mail marketing, much less
telling ninety-nine percent of all businesses that they can't use it. There
will have to be a law to make sure no company sends more than one ad per
address per month;
leaving an expensive mailing system idle most of every month makes no
business sense, so businesses aren't likely to do so on their own initiative.
Note 1:
"In 2003, there were approximately 23.7 million businesses in the United
States, according to Office of Advocacy estimates."
Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration,
Small Business
Frequently Asked Questions.