NetCreations has done something half smart to battle the spam problem. One of the largest managers of rented opt-in email lists, the company is now offering consumer subscribers to its email lists a $5 discount on Lyris's $60 MailShield desktop spam filter (press release). Really, it's less than half smart. Maybe a quarter smart.

Back in June, I commented that what responsible permisison marketers should do is take the high road and supply recipients of their emails with spam filters. Spam is the single biggest threat that to the effectiveness of "legitimate" email marketing, and spam is going to be halted effectively only at the level of the consumer inbox: server-side filters, legislation and "best practices" will never do the trick.

But, a discount?!? A measly $5 discount? That's not even 10%. What nonesense is that? There are enough free filtering tools out there, and NetCreations is deep enough in this whole permission/spam email nexus, it seems hardly a favor to make users pay anything to defend themselves from this garbage, which sooner or later is likely to ruin NetCreations' business.

Let's be realistic about another thing: third-party rented email lists used for customer acquisition purposes is a small step from spam in any event. The best use of email is for customer retention. Those are the folks -- the marketers themselves -- who should be offering free spam filters to their house-list subscribers.
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