|
Tommy, internet junk mail isn't subject to the many restrictions that exist for commercial snail mail. Triplexcash sent individually addressed envelopes with material inside to promote a new program. Quite possibly costing them less total than having a banner for a few days on the top of GFY or whatever, and insuring that they are talking to webmasters, not surfers. Very few surfers would be signed up to their programs. Plain white envelope, not transparent, no big "HOT NEW TEEN SEX PROGRAM INSIDE" or anything like that on the envelope. I suspect they have gotten way better results than a full page ad in AVN magazine (and it is more timely, less lead time).
As for mailspam versus email spam, the difference lies in who bears the cost of the promotion.
Emailspam basically costs the sender nothing - a connection, a rented server, and a list of addresses. After that, just keep spewing until someone disconnects you. Get new connection, rented server, reuse your list, and keep going. The dufus that got 9 years was sending upwards to 10 million messages per day. The recipient has to pay for internet connection, computer, and time to get rid of this stuff, and because it doesn't adhere to any rules, it is difficult to determine useful versus spam mail. You are basically forced to pay close attention to all email looking for good stuff. It makes it much harder to use the email for it's intended purpose, uses up time, etc. 10 million messages, 3 seconds each of personal time to handle... a full 365 days (at 24 hours per day) of work time wasted to delete this stuff, plus bigger mail servers, faster net connections, filters, firewalls, spam removers... the costs on the receiving end are staggering. email spam is sent automatically and treated manually, and manual is expensive. Sure, those expenses are spread over a large number of people and 3 second isn't a long time - but if you handle thousands of pieces of spam per day (and many people get that much) you are looking at a full time job just deleting stuff off your email. Worse, you end up changing email addresses, which means contacting all the important people, getting them to switch, just in time for a spammer to get ahold of it again and the whole cycle starts over.
SnailMail spam reverses the deal. The costs are all on the sender. Produce the piece to get sent, maybe a few cents each. USPS charges anywhere from 10 cents to 30 cents per piece depending on your mailing situation. They have very strict rules as to size, material, etc. So if you want to send 10 million pieces per day, at 13 cents net (3 cents for the piece, 10 cents to deliver) you are looking at 1.3 million dollars per day.
Do you really think that many snail mailers would resend the same thing to you every day 5 times per day for 6 months facing those numbers?
The difference is obvious.
Alex
|