Opt-Out - The Complete Non-Solution

Opt-out means having no option at all.

People who would like to use email for marketing to the masses, that is, spammers and would-be spammers, like to promote "opt-out" as the standard for email marketing. They like to point out that this is the way other forms of direct marketing work, and that because of this email marketing should be subject to the same rules. Unfortunately, this ignores key differences between the email and more traditional forms of direct marketing, such as hand-delivered direct mail and telemarketing.

Quite simply, opt-out means that the consumer has no option at all. When direct marketing lobbyists say they want opt-out to be the standard, what they are really trying to say is that they have more right to decide what goes into your electronic mail box than you. This suggestion is quite clearly absurd.

Myths of Direct Marketing Lobbyists

The direct marketing lobby is unfortunately presenting a lot of poorly researched information which attempts to hide the real truth. So much, in fact, that this alone requires its own page.

Key Economic Differences Between Spam and Direct Mail

Spam Costs The Sender Almost Nothing, Direct Mail Has Significant Costs to the Advertiser

This is the single most significant difference. With direct mail, the sender has to consider the amount of return they will get for their mailing, and the cost of a direct mail run is significant. When more vendors use direct mail, the ability of people to process that advertising drops, with a corresponding fall in the response rate. This reduces the value of direct mail to the advertiser, and consequently reduces the number of people advertising. In the case of direct mail, there is an equilibrium that works fairly well.

With direct email marketing, the cost of a single spamming run is insignificant. In fact most spammers need only one positive response in order to make a profit - and they often rely on this fact. This can mean hitting many millions of addresses at a time, and it doesn't matter how many sellers there are - because chances are if the seller hits millions of addresses, one of them will respond positively, even if most of the addresses received thousands of advertisements that day. There is no real equilibrium effect as there is in the case of direct mail.

Spam Costs The Recipient Money, Direct Mail Costs the Recipient Nothing

Direct mail costs the recipient nothing - people don't pay for the amount of mail received. All costs are imposed on the sender.

Direct email imposes significant costs on the recipient. Firstly, in Australia we pay for the amount of data we receive, and email is data and hence we pay for it. Even if you don't get charged for data, your ISP does, and you can be sure they have factored this into their fees.

Additionally, ISPs require additional resources to process spam - larger servers, more disk space, and bigger and more expensive connections to the rest of the Internet. Users end up spending more time on the Internet because it takes time to download spam, and this additional time is reflected in increased time charges.

In fact, due to these differences between the cost models, spam is actually more expensive to the recipient than direct mail.

Why These Differences Mean Opt-Out is No Option At All

If we are to take the line we are getting from people who oppose restrictions on spam, you would have to assume that anybody who wanted to spam would be entitled to do so. Now bear in mind that spam costs almost nothing to the sender. Now decide what percentage of the advertisers would use it.

If you answered anything other than "all of them", you're kidding yourself. You might try to point out that this isn't happening now, but that's only because of dedicated people making sure people know that this behaviour is unacceptable.

Now, if we take "all of them" as the percentage of advertisers who will advertise by spam, we need to calculate the number of potential advertisers. Begin by taking the Sydney Yellow Pages, both volumes. Count all the entries in those books. Then get the Melbourne Yellow Pages, and the Brisbane ones, and the Hobart ones, and the Adelaide ones, and the Perth ones. Count all the entries in those books too.

When you're done with the Yellow Pages, get Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, and count the advertisements in there. Remember that each advertisement in there is more expensive than a spamming run, and reaches fewer people. Then do the same thing with the Saturday broadsheet from each of the other capital cities.

Now that you've finished counting the bulk of the Australian advertisers, get newspapers and telephone directories shipped from every major city in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and in the Middle East, and keep counting.

When you've finished counting, imagine life if "Opt-Out" were the norm. Even if you have the legal right to opt-out, how many spammers can you opt-out from in a day? Five? Ten? Twenty? This wouldn't even put a dent in the volume. But then let's take a wild trip into fantasy land and pretend you could opt-out to all of the advertisements you receive in a day. How many days would your mailbox be spam free, or even in the realm of being manageable?

The answer is zero. There would be sufficient new advertisers every day to ensure that your mailbox would always be clogged with spam. This is why Opt-Out is No Option At All. Quite literally, opt-out means you are forced to endure spam, with no choice - no option - ever.

For more information, see our section documenting the problem.