Email Marketing 101: Why is Junk Email Called Spam?

Unless you live in a cave on some remote desert island, you have encountered “spam”. Spam arethose pesky messages telling you to to buy something in an email from someone you never askedto receive. Most email services offer a spam filter, which protects you from many unsolicited commercial messages. And yet, you may wonder why those messages are even called spam inthe first place.

Spam is most likely named after the famous canned meat that used to be a staple of the American diet. Even though it's still quite popular in Hawaii, the vast majority of Americans never eat it. Somesay the reason why spam earned that moniker is an old Monty Python sketch where someone orders food from a restaurant, only to find that everything on the menu is made from Spam. Whenthe guest professes that he hates Spam, a chorus of vikings burst into a Spam song. The song,which sings the praises of Spam, continues on through the rest of the sketch.

In the Monty Python sketch, the singing become so loud that no other conversation can be heard.This is not unlike spam that floods your in box, distracting you from the important messages thatneed your attention. People in chat rooms started using the word spam to describe unwanted commercial email in the 1980s. But the concept of spam really picked up in the computer craze of the 1990s.

The only other theory is that spam was given this name when the company that produced it started sending emails to advertise the product. The concept worked because the company realized that email was a fast, inexpensive way to get the company name and product out amongst consumers.

However, just like those annoying commercials we can now skip with DVR, most spam ends up being deleted before we even consider looking at it.

Nowadays email programs prevent these pests from flooding our in boxes. Even congress has been involved with the passing of the CAN-SPAM Act and amendments to this law to involve criminal penalties for those who send spam.