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SPAM, Bacn, and grn eggs?

by Phil Barrett

Grn EggsAs marketers and prosumers, we are all too familiar with the term SPAM – or unsolicited email and the impact it’s had on our inbox. SPAM now accounts for around 90% of total email delivered today globally.

The term bacn has been getting some airtime in the blogsphere recently. It’s like SPAM – except the messages are from sites that you’ve actually subscribed too…but you’ve either been too lazy to turn off the notifications or the site makes it too difficult to do so… like the CNN breaking news alerts I signed up for after 9/11. I’m still trying to figure out how to make them stop….!

Bacn is also a term used to describe social networking alerts (i.e. from facebook) and marketing emails from trusted brands that have little relevance to you right now. Check out the bacn blog – and hey, buy their t-shirt too if you are so inclined. The question now becomes – if 90% of all email is SPAM, what % of the remaining 10% could we quantify as Bacn? Anybody who can provide a quantifiable and / or qualified guess please stand up! Also check out Stefan Eyram’s article in One Degree on the topic.

I hereby propose a third segmentation of SPAM…. grn eggs! Definition: A term used to describe email from friends, family, co-workers, and vague acquaintances that you don’t read, want, or where the email has no relevance to you. It’s like receiving an email from a friend who starts by saying… “i don’t normally forward jokes, but this one was just super…” or when you an 11 page email from a friend recapping every moment of their most recent trip to the grocery store.

What percentage of your inbox can be classified as grn eggs? More importantly, what % of the average prosumer’s inbox is not SPAM, bacn, or grn eggs? My guess it’s nearly 0%…but do people care? One report suggests that although people have noted an increase in SPAM, they are actually less bothered by it. Is this because more people have discovered RSS feeds and text messaging and no longer rely on email as their primary digital communication channel or is everybody numb to SPAM like they are to violence on TV?

  • http://www.websocialarchitecture.com/ Ryan

    Ha! yes, we’re numb to it, just as we are to all the other stuff.
    I won’t go so far as to proclaim the death of email on my own blog–but I”ll do it here: Email is dying. It will be replaced by multi-featured web spaces that include collaboration, file sharing, and scheduling and are driven by subscription.
    Haha!

  • http://www.websocialarchitecture.com/ Ryan

    Ha! yes, we’re numb to it, just as we are to all the other stuff.

    I won’t go so far as to proclaim the death of email on my own blog–but I”ll do it here: Email is dying. It will be replaced by multi-featured web spaces that include collaboration, file sharing, and scheduling and are driven by subscription.

    Haha!