Bacn, the other kind of spam

Monday, October 17th, 2011 Best Practice, Deliverability, Email Marketing, News

Bacn – Email That You Want But Not At The Moment

SPAM has long been considered public enemy #1 in the email marketing industry – but there is a new challenger to this crown that you may not yet be familiar with. Introducing BACN.

Pronounced “bacon”, the term was first coined in 2007 and was used to describe opt-in emails that were left unread over long periods of time.

Just like spam, bacn accumulates and clogs up a recipient’s inbox. However, the main difference between bacn and spam is that bacn is something the recipient has subscribed to receive, unlike spam where the sender has typically acquired an email address and emailed the recipient without their consent.

According to a recent article by Mashable, bacn accounts for almost 70% of a recipient’s delivered email and its growing occupation of inbox territory has had a direct and negative impact in industry wide open rates.

In this article, we look at the current trends associated with bacn and steps marketers should be looking to take to combat open rate attrition.
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