According to the security blog, The Registry, 90% of all email is spam. I was somewhat amazed that the number of spam email was this high. Most of the email I receive and I am sure many of you do as well, are emails that are trying to sell pharmaceuticals such as; Viagra and Cialis well below market value.
What’s most alarming from a marketing perspective is how many emails are sent daily and how many victims buy into these marketing scams. Let’s do some math based on email marketing averages.
Example of money earned from email spam
Campaign Volume: 10 million emails sent
Delivery Rate: 90% or 9 million emails delivered
Open Rate: 15% to 25%
Click Through Rate: 2% to 5%
Conversion Rate: 1.5% to 3.5%
If spammers are sending 10 million emails daily, they are converting approximately 2% of those people who are clicking on links in the email.
10 million emails sent/15% opened (1.5 million)/2% click through (30,000)/2% make a purchase = 600*
*2% of those who clicked on a link in an email.
Let’s say the product the spammers are marketing sells for $29.95. That equates to more than $17,000 that these spammers are pocketing. That’s a lot of money for something that takes very little effort.
As you can see, spam is a big business and this is why it’s so hard to stop it.
Most common spam
- Sales of pharmaceuticals and other product offerings
- Lottery scams also known as Nigerian 419
- Phishing – cyber criminals send out spam notifying victims to update/verify their account information. These cyber criminals setup up mock sites that look like legitimate online banking sites to collect personal information to steal money from a victims banking or PayPal account.
- Rogue Security Software – Links in an email lead victims to a website that offers free virus scans. The scans report false threats on the user’s machine and in order to remove these threats, the victim must pay for the full version of the software.
- E-cards – These usually come during holidays and if a user clicks on the link/s in the email they lead to malicious websites or other security risks.
Related Articles
Why You Should Never Use Email Auto-Replies
Why You Should Never Opt Out of Spam Email
Security Threats, Worms and Spam Revisited
Spammers Taking Advantage of Holiday Season
10 Ways to Prevent being Scammed
I am surprised by the percentage of email that is spam email. The thing that surprises me the most is the conversion percentage. I would have guessed that this would be dismal. However, the high CVR really explains why everyone gets so much spam.
Dominic,
Right on! The conversion is what keeps spam alive!
Not only that, but have you ever stopped to consider the bandwith (energy) wasted by spam? The numbers are simply staggering.
Spam, please,don’t get me started. I get spam a lot on my blog not so much in email.
90 percent? I would have never guessed number is so high. Spammers are never going to die.