CAUCE and Survey.com Partner to Track E-Mail Abuse

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail</a > (CAUCE) and e-research company Survey.com have partnered to track spam statistics and provide hard data to legislators and regulatory officials.

The first survey marks the beginning of the UCE Research Initiative, an ongoing relationship between CAUCE and Survey.com. The study, conducted by Survey.com’s team of analysts, not surprisingly found little love for spam in the Internet world.

Internet users don’t mind receiving email advertisements from companies with whom they already have a relationship — 51 percent appreciated such ads and another 25 percent were neutral on the practice.

But those surveyed were overwhelmingly negative about receiving unsolicited email advertisements from companies with whom they had no pre-existing relationship.

“This study bears out what we’ve known for some time, which is that the best way to use email as a marketing tool is to first build a relationship with a consumer, then use email to cement that relationship,” said John Mozena, CAUCE co-founder and vice president and a marketing industry professional.

“Blasting email advertisements out to an unqualified list of unidentified addresses is just a recipe for angry recipients.”

“We are very concerned about spam and fully support CAUCE’s efforts to control this mounting problem,” said Michael Bach, CEO and president of Survey.com. “Spammers make it harder for us to deliver the accurate, timely information that our partners and clients depend on.”

More than 40 percent of recipients say they refuse to do business with companies that send unsolicited commercial email, and virtually the same percentage block future email from that sender.

More than 60 percent of recipients say that junk email is “not useful,” compared to less than three percent who consider such mail “somewhat useful” or “totally useful.”

More than three-quarters of respondents felt that forged headers should be made illegal and valid contact information should be required, while about two-thirds felt that Internet Service Providers should have the power to refuse to accept such messages.

“CAUCE will assist Survey.com in asking the right questions and in getting their results to the people who need it,” said Mozena. “We have needed hard data on the spam wars for some time, and Survey.com is the perfect partner to help us gather and disseminate that data.”

The spam survey is available here.