The Big ISP Postmasters redefine Spam (and out the airline spammer)

Via the Campaign Monitor Blog , we hear that spam is and will be what the ISP Postmasters (and their end users) say it is.

So forget about being CAN-SPAM compliant, try being compliant on relevancy and subscriber expectations. I have an iMediaConnection article coming out on this type of theme. Spam is not just Viagra and Rolex crap. Spam can be from your preferred airline (you know who you are) if they start to send you cross promotional emails too often, irrelevant special offers and generally too much email that I don't care about.

There you have it, that means the emails I get from this airline are spam, even though they are fully opt-in and seem to be fully CAN-SPAM compliant. (Any guesses on what airline I may be talking about?)

The blog post includes quotes from the big dogs protecting the giant inbox in the sky.

Yahoo! Mail - Miles Libbey: Anti-spam product manager
"Operationally, we define spam as whatever consumers don't want in their inbox."

AOL - Charles Stiles: AOL Postmaster
"I don't care if they've triple opted-in and gave you their credit card number," said Stiles, drawing chuckles, but making his point loud and clear: Relevance rules, and catering to end user preferences is his top priority.

Microsoft/Hotmail - Craig Spiezle: Online safety evangelist
"We need to think really a step beyond opt-in and focus on the consumer's expectations, relevancy, and frequency."

Gmail - Brad Taylor: Google Engineer
"Sometimes people are afraid to report a message because they aren't sure if it is "really" spam or not. Our opinion is that if you didn't ask for it and you don't want it, it's spam to you, and it should be reported. "