Whether you choose to or not, you likely will eat more than a little SPAM this holiday season....

According to an article at CNET News, "In October, 63 billion junk messages were sent daily, on average, compared with 31 billion a year ago, according to data from IronPort Systems. Another antispam specialist, MessageLabs, reports that 88.7 percent of all e-mail sent in October was unsolicited. That percentage is expected to rise to nearly 90 percent in November and December."

I've noticed. Every morning at e-mail opening, 25 - 35 pieces of junk gather in my SPAM folder, and they represent but the previous 12 hours catch. Throughout the day, I receive at least that many again, and sometimes more. Should I ever need a sexual pick-me-up, a fake Rolex or a rich new friend in Africa, I need go no further than my SPAM folder.

Even as a kid growing up poor in southern New Hampshire, SPAM was unattractive. At least I could eat it. The only satisfaction from today's SPAM comes from deleting it. Unfortunately, that is the technique being used in offices across the world. The consequences of all this flotsam in cyberspace harms every business using e-mail as a marketing or communications tool.

As open rates decline and SPAM clogs the wires, legitimate e-mail bangs its head against firewalls, human and electronic gatekeepers who delete or block anything not from someone they know and trust.

I don't know about you, but as a marketer employing e-mail, this concerns me. What is to be done? Apparently, the CANSPAM Act is not enough. And as I said earlier, I am not a fan of SPAM.