A tale of two pork flavored emails: The difference between spam and bacn.

January 21 2011, 4:55pm

We still see folks react strangely to those two pork flavored email messages; Spam and bacn. Both are trying to persuade, inform or sell you something. Both can make checking your email a chore. And of course, both are delicious when served between two pieces of bread with some lettuce. Yum! Wait… scratch that. Let’s break it down into tiny, tasty morsels. SPAM We know a lot about spam. By definition, spam is unsolicited email notifications.  

You did not ask for it, it just shows up like a pushy party crasher, offering you cheap meds, vacation deals and more. Our initial product Defender was somewhat of an invisible shield for spam! It allowed a user multiple email addresses to combat spammers at the point of acquisition. When someone asked for your email, you made one up on the spot and then you could easily keep track of who sold your name. In other words, if you gave your email addy to a restaurant and then noticed an email from them concerning male, ahem, “enhancement”, you knew right away that they had a breach or just flat out sold your name and you could block them easily! Empowering? Yes. Awesome? Totally! But, as often happens in science fiction, the machines got smarter, so we had to follow suit and create something new…. Yep, Organizer but we will come back to that.Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and other email providers all made spam a top priority! Senders? Blocked. IP addresses? Blacklisted. Criminal keystrokes? Curbed. You may have noticed they were slowed. Perhaps you thought to yourself-“Hey! Whatever happened to that Nigerian Prince? I guess he found help with that bank transfer. Good for him!”Well, don’t be too concerned for him, he is still looking for help. Your email service provider just has him looking elsewhere! (Thanks guys.)The problem with spam is… it’s very profitable. It goes out. People click. Simple as that, supply and demand. So, as I mentioned above, while spam might NOT be dead, it is somewhat under control.So why are people’s inboxes still under barrage? Why do we still need help with the endless flow of messages coming at us? It’s called bacn, and we asked for it!BACNBacn is all those things we sign up for. By definition, bacn is solicited email notifications. And bacn is good for us.  

In a lot of ways, bacn is the most basic transactional currency of the web. It’s the newsletter from your kid’s school, the mortgage notification, the receipt from Zappos, the Twitter updates, the authorization for new accounts and all those things we want and need to make the web work for us. In short, your email notifications are how you know things are working as you dictate. Unlike spam, if your bacn stops… EVENTUALLY YOU WILL NOTICE!So… We like to sign up for things. So, we get a lot of bacn. Deliciously important things, but not as important as the email from your friend, boss, kids, or, you know, things with a pulse! But it all goes to the same place. Your inbox.So what is the best way to handle the flow? Filters of course!Filters allow you to channel your e-mails into designated folders. They gather things according to rules that you set up in advance. But rules can change. ANY number of things may affect your rules-  you’ll add new senders, or senders change their names or the senders change their subject lines, the list goes on. Filters can be a bummer to stay on top of even for the most geekiest of geeks…. Trust me on this one.Organizer is a great way to avoid constantly re-arranging your rules and getting your email to work the way you like. I mean, that’s why we built it as such and why nearly three-quarters of a million people agree!But I digress- This post is about the virtual pork in our inbox. Ahem, so-Let’s review-1. An email from Facebook announcing that the event “Pork Fest 2011″ has been postponed. Spam or bacn? 2. An email from “Pharmaceutical Pam” offering amazing discounts on Cialis. Spam or bacn? 3. A coupon for one dollar off of your favorite brand of bacon from your local supermarket. Spam or bacn? 4. A animated atrocity that promises to reveal other “pork product fetishists” in YOUR area. Spam or bacn? 5. A receipt from your pharmacy for the refill of Cialis that you need to pick up. Spam or bacn? 6. A newsletter from Hormel announcing the winners of the top Spam recipes of 2011. (You are a card carrying Spamaholic) Spam or bacn? If you answered 2 and 4 as spam, you are correct! If on the off chance they actually made it into your inbox, mark ‘em as spam and move on. Lastly, what if you no longer want to receive or feel overwhelmed by the bacn you get?Spam and bacn are different so treat them differently!The rules of engagement for your bacn is simple. If you no longer want your bacn, don’t mark it as spam! Unsubscribe from it.Unsubscribe using their embedded unsubscribe link or using Organizer’s simple  Unsubscribe Folder. When you mark legitimate and solicited emails as spam it can affect the way your email client will handle further emails you DO want. Not to mention, sending spam is a crime, sending someone the notifications they asked for is not! If you want your bacn, but need to get to it later, use filters or let Organizer do the work for you. It’s easy for us and it’s what we do.Seriously, if you have read this far, you are looking for a solution to your perfectly normal bacn hoarding issue. Let Organizer put it in a nice folder until you can come back around to it!I hope this quick primer was helpful in helping you do the right thing next time you go through your inbox. Remember, proper engagement is key but the right tools too can make things much easier and save you time for the words you really want to read.Have you ever clicked on something and instantly regretted it? What’s your favorite cheesy spam line? Share below, on Facebook or tweet us about it!Good luck out there!