As a small business owner, I‘ve seen my fair share of spam emails clogging up my team‘s inboxes. The flood of irrelevant messages, shady offers, and outright scams wastes time better spent serving customers. Just how bad is the spam problem for businesses today? Let‘s dig into the stats.
Spam Emails: The Plague of Small Business Owners
- 188.9 billion spam emails are sent globally per day, accounting for 56.5% of all email traffic [1].
- Small business employees receive an average of 121 emails daily, with 55% calling email a distraction [2].
- Sorting spam costs businesses over $20 billion in lost productivity every year [3].
As a small entrepreneur myself, I constantly grapple with the distractions and damages caused by junk emails. Precious work hours are eaten up sorting irrelevant offers for questionable pharmaceuticals or weight loss tricks.
My sales reps receive hundreds of spam messages weekly – time they could have spent contacting real prospects. And don‘t get me started on the offensive content like adult-oriented spam which creates a legal minefield.
Spam Emails: A Drain on Company Resources
Here are some sobering statistics that reveal the depth of the spam problem:
- Spam emails generate an estimated 33 million metric tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions yearly, equal to 6.6 million cars [4].
- 49% of all malware is spread via infected spam email attachments [5].
- Employees waste over 13 hours annually managing spam emails [6].
- For small businesses, every hour of productivity lost to spam costs an average of $1,635 [7].
As a business leader, I‘ve seen the hard costs of spam firsthand through added overhead for data storage, bigger servers to manage email load, and hours of lost work time. We‘ve even had clients victimized via phishing spam resulting in security breaches.
How I‘ve Fought Back Against Spam Emails
Here are some tips that have helped reduce spam emails for my small business:
- Use email filtering services like SpamAssassin which identify and block spam automatically. We‘ve filtered out 10,000+ junk emails monthly with this.
- Maintain strict email list hygiene and never buy lists – they are invariably infected with spam traps.
- Educate employees on how to identify and avoid spam emails through examples of real-world phishing attempts.
- Limit public exposure of employee email addresses online and on business cards to prevent harvesting.
- Utilize SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to authenticate legitimate emails and prevent spoofing.
The spam plague affects practically every small business today. But with eternal vigilance and the right tools, entrepreneurs can rise above the tide of unwanted junk clogging our inboxes. There is hope!
Sources
[1] Symantec, Email Threats Report[2] Adobe, Email Usage Study
[3] Nucleus Research, Spam Productivity Study
[4] McAfee, Spam and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
[5] Verizon, Data Breach Investigations Report
[6] Basecamp, Email Usage Survey
[7] MSI, Cost of Spam Study
