Is a response rate of 0.00001% good enough?

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) are reporting that spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5 million emails sent.  That translates itself into a response rate of circa 0.00001%. Most  direct mail organisations would set the bar at 2% for a ‘good’ campaign.

There is no particular news in the revelation that the spammers live off of sheer volume of spam email. The researchers here were purporting to be a fake pharmacy, peddling a herbal remedy to boost libido. This is pretty much representative, so it does call into question just how profitable it can be for them?  It does bring to the fore the point, that even with spam, the laws of return on investment still apply. With such a low-margin business, they are susceptible to advances in  new anti-spam and security software defences, that would render current techniques and campaigns as not worth it to them. Or, so we can but hope.

UCSD used some interesting tactics with their research. They managed to piggy-back on the ‘Storm’ network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for spam.  The ethics of this are open to debate, particularly when the researched added another 469 million spam emails that the world need not necessarily benefit from.

Full details of the Symantec State of Spam report for November can be found here.

November 10, 2008 | Filed Under Spam 

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