Our national telecom operator seems to think so, at least based on their recent 'research', prestented at the 2nd Central European Direct Marketing Congress this past week.

I guess no one explained to them that spam only constitutes ilegitimate e-mail, such as the e-mail no one actually subscribes to.

It must be easier to talk about e-mail marketing simply as spamming, since it does save you some lines of text on the presentation.

What matters most is that after 6 years of market education, slowly demonstrating to companies why spam is not a good option, some large company with the largest share in the telecom market appears and starts confusing legit e-mail with spam, only with the intent of selling their e-mail marketing services ... or spam services, as they call them.

My only message to the guys in Slovenia is: Grow up. Don't play the big boys (or girls) if you don't understand the difference between spam and legitimate e-mail that people actually subscribe to.

And don't ever try to demonstrate the power of e-mail marketing, in terms of using third-party lists, using the example of your own product, which your clients actually want to know about. Oh, you already did ...

Well, here's a marketing 101 lesson for you: if you're trying to prove that e-mail marketing works for advertisers in your (our) country, try proving that with actual third-party ad campaings, instead of using your own company (which your list already somewhat trusts and actually wants your product) as a case study.

And just when I started thinking that Slovenian internet marketing might be picking up, some large company makes the capital mistake and publicly 'destroys' the essence of e-mail marketing ...

BTW - I'm wondering what our legislation enforcement officers think about their statements, especially since SPAM is ilegal here?

Power to direct marketing, at least to "real" direct marketing".