- Raising response rates (1)
- Uncategorised (47)
- 05/01/2009: How to promote at the start of a new year
- 16/12/2008: How blogs can make your business grow
- 14/12/2008: Email works - but you have to work at it
- 25/11/2008: 0.000001% response rate and it still makes money
- 19/11/2008: What happens when you've written your blog?
- 05/11/2008: Cheaper mailings in January
- 26/09/2008: When you've mailed them 10 times and they still won't buy
- 11/09/2008: How can I write the perfect direct campaign?
- 01/09/2008: A very low-cost way of storing products
- 29/08/2008: "Open Rates" - the truth behind the statistics
0.000001% response rate and it still makes money
Given that I don’t buy pharmaceuticals from companies that advertise via junk emails, and I don’t know why anyone does, I wonder why the companies bother to send me so many emails.
In fact they bother, because even a response rate of one sale per 12.5 million is enough to make them good money.
Earlier this year researchers from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego did a study of spam by hijacking the Storm network that itself uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail. Storm is said to have over 1 million machines under its control.
On the basis that they were only going to find out what it is like to be in the business by being in the business, the researches created several proxy bots to act as conduits of information between Storm and the 75,000 hijacked home PCs that send emails, sending out their own fake spam.
Two campaigns were run. One copied the way Storm works spreads using viruses and the other advertised a fake pharmacy selling what you’d expect it to sell.
The fake pharmacy looked like Storm’s site but always gave an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.
469 million junk e-mail messages were sent over all resulting in 28 sales - a response rate of less than 0.00001%. That would have given an income of around $100 a day. With the size of the full Storm operation that would make $7000 a day.
Because this is less than is reported in the more hysterical sections of the press it is possible that further attacks like this which could harm the spam operators.
Reassuring to know that people aren’t quite as silly as we are sometimes led to believe.
Tony Attwood - if you would like to talk about any aspect of direct marketing, give me a call on 01536 399 000
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