At IT Conversations interesting discussion (podcast) with Mikko Hypponen, director of anti-virus research for F-Secure. Hypponen threw out two sets of numbers that seem to collide, but don’t.
1) Spammers consider a response rate of 0.001% to be a “good” email spam campaign.
2) 40% of Americans (and 60% of Brazilians) report having made a purchase as a result of a spam sales pitch at least once.
How to square the difference? Volume, volume, volume.
I confess to having bought something from a spam once (and only once): A targeted pitch for a T-shirt bearing a big retro “Shacker” logo. It appeared that the spammer in that case had blasted their message to shacker@everydomain.com. No matter that “shacker” in the marketer’s context referred to college students who sleep in a different dorm room every night — I had to have it.