I read an article on Yahoo Wednesday that indicated spam levels had declined to 97% in the latter half of 2008. – According to a report from Microsoft.

When many people hear ‘Email Marketing’ they immediately think spam. Unfortunately with so much actual spam out there, people’s views are naturally jaded. This trickles down to affect many elements of legitimate email marketing. With more spam coming to everyone, it reduces our ‘inbox share’ – the ratio our legitimate communication represents compared to all email that subscriber receives. It reduces our ability to provide compelling creative due to default blocked images with so many email clients. It hurts our deliverability due to many issues.

This list goes on, but you get the point. Spam can cause unfavorable aftermath. We all must do our part to support the legitimacy of the email channel.