SPAM or Marketing - Do Canadians Know the Difference?

A new study released by Ipsos Reid, has found that even though an amazing 66% of Canadians prefer communicating via email over other methods, 44% of agree that they can hardly keep up with the amount of email that they receive. And spam is the primary culprit. Yet Canadian's willingness to provide email addresses to companies that ask continues unabated.

After a steady decline since 2003 in the amount of email received by Canadians in an average week, that figure has risen again. Canadians report receiving an average of 206 emails per week, a 26% increase over last year and up from a high in 2003 of 197.

But a significant percentage of our inboxes is occupied by spam. Three-quarters of Canadian Internet users (76%) report receiving at least one unsolicited email per week, and the average number of unsolicited emails received has jumped markedly from 86 in an average week in 2005 to a whopping 130 currently.

But the culprit for the perpetuation of spam is ourselves, as a surprisingly high percentage (25%) of Internet-enabled Canadians have opened an average of 3 spam emails per week, mainly because of curiosity (61%), or wanting to know more about the product or service (25%).