E-mail spam is burying Canadians under a relentless and rising digital deluge — and we largely have ourselves to blame, says an Ipsos-Reid study released today.

On average, Canadian Internet users get 197 e-mails a week, up 60 per cent from last year, and of those e-mails a whopping 134, or 67 per cent, were spam.

That’s more than double the amount of spam reported in the last quarter of 2002 and more than four times the amount from the last quarter of 2001, according to information contained in the report “Email Marketing 2004: Being Heard Above the Noise,” to be presented in Vancouver today at a meeting of the B.C. Direct Marketing Association.

And yet Canadians continue to open spam, thus encouraging those who send it to blast out even more.

More than a third of the 2,000 Net users surveyed by telephone and online in late December 2003 and early January 2004 said they had opened spam in the past week — with the average number of spam e-mails opened in a typical week being seven. That’s up, said the survey — co-sponsored by Vancouver‘s Forge Marketing — from five the year before.

The most popular reason given for opening spam was “curiosity” (60 per cent) followed by “thought it was a legitimate e-mail” (40 per cent) and “wanting to know about the product or service” (37 per cent).

Despite the findings that 59 per cent of us say we don’t want spam under any circumstance, a substantial number of Canadians differ.

“Nineteen per cent say it’s no big deal, I can delete them if I want,” said Ipsos-Reid senior vice-president Steve Mossop. “And we also have 22 per cent saying, hey, you know what, it depends on who sends it.”

One bright note for spam haters is that fewer online Canadians visited an advertiser’s Web site as the result of spam (22 per cent versus 38 per cent in 2002). However spammers are still able to get their message across, said the report.

So amazing were the numbers — especially on the amount of e-mail flowing into our in-boxes — that Ipsos-Reid went back and took a second look at the data and then eliminated respondents who had remarkably high amounts of e-mail.

“Even so, the numbers are pretty astounding,” said Mossop, who added that all the previous surveys he’s seen have shown the level of spam at about 50 per cent.

“The most we’ve ever seen are in the 50 to 60 per cent range and our numbers are even higher than that,” said Mossop.

It’s no wonder then, that only 54 per cent of us now say our efficiency is increased by the use of e-mail, down from 85 per cent. As well, forty-eight per cent of Net users now say they wish people would pick up the phone rather than send e-mail.

Mossop said the principal message he takes away from the survey is that for all the complaining we do about spam, we have to point the finger at ourselves.

“We are opening unsolicited e-mail at an alarming rate. Forty-eight per cent of us are opening at least one e-mail per week and the average is seven. That’s outstanding. What direct marketer can claim the same numbers?”

Last time the survey was released Mossop said he thought people would sit up, take notice and change their behaviour by not opening e-mails or using spam filters.

“What’s apparent is that this is not the case,” said Mossop. “The threshold has not yet been reached and I’m not sure when that is and I’m reluctant to predict when it might be, but it’s clearly not yet.”

Strangely enough, even the users of spam filters aren’t immune to the lure of unsolicited e-mail. Thirty-six per cent of them open as many as four pieces of spam a week and they give the same reasons — curiosity, mistake and wanting to know more — for doing so.

And only 62 per cent of spam filter users say they don’t want unsolicited e-mail under any circumstance.

As well, spam filters can be a bother with 35 per cent of users sometimes having legitimate e-mail blocked by the filters.

The good news for permission-based e-mail marketers — those who ask us to opt-in for things like newsletters — is that this end of the business remains successful.

Seventy-seven per cent of Canadian Net users have registered with a Web site to get e-mail.

The average number of sites we’ve registered with has risen from seven in 2002 to eight in 2003.

Sixty per cent of those who did register said they went on to enter an advertiser’s contest. Fifty-three per cent visited an advertiser’s web page.

Interests have risen in the areas of hobbies, lifestyle and culture as well as computers and technology. Interest in news and information has dropped slightly.

The overall results of the survey are considered accurate, plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 95 per cent of the time.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004