Chinwag's Old Blog: 40% of US Home Users Want Anti-Spam Solution

According to a recent US survey of home users, nearly 40% are interested in having anti-spam software or services to protect their inbox. It's not difficult to empathise with this view and not surprising that AOL and MSN have both recently offered new anti-spam tools.

The research also threw up some other interesting titbits...entrepreneurs and visionary ISPs take note:

• 90% would like their ISP to offer an unsubscribe option to get off all lists
• 50% would subscribe to a service that guaranteed delivery of critical email
• 38% did not receive an email they expected from a trusted source (relative, colleague, etc.)
• 29% had an email they were expecting filtered to their junk folder

Source: RoperASW/Bigfoot Interactive reported by Emarketer.

Looking beyond the obvious story that most people would really like an efficient anti-spam solution, there's a growing demand for a service that will guarantee email delivery. Presumably, it'll make a big fuss if that critical communication doesn't make it through.

More anti-spamming is going to mean more false-positives, particularly in the email marketing arena. Still, keeps the techies on their toes! For customer service it also presents the nightmare of dealing promptly and efficiently with your customers enquiries only to find your work is undermined by their filtering technology. Prepping customer services to expect emails from customers who didn't receive newsletters, confirmation notices and service responses seems like a good move.