Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.
The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 is a law passed in 2003 establishing the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail. The law requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions. Introduced by Republican Conrad Burns, the act passed both the House and Senate during the 108th United States Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December of 2003.
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.
Domain name scams are types of Intellectual property scams or confidence scams in which unscrupulous domain name registrars attempt to generate revenue by tricking businesses into buying, selling, listing or converting a domain name. The Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom has outlined two types of domain name scams which are "Domain name registration scams" and "Domain name renewal scams".
Sanford 'Spamford' Wallace is an Internet spammer. He initially sent junk faxes before coming to notoriety in 1997, promoting himself as the original "Spam King". Wallace's prolific spamming has resulted in encounters with the United States government, anti-spam activists, and large corporations such as Facebook and MySpace.
Broadway Stores, Inc., was an American retailer based in Southern California. Known through its history as Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Broadway Hale Stores over time, it acquired other retail store chains in regions outside its California home base and became in certain retail sectors a regional and national retailer in the 1970s and 1980s. The company was able to survive takeover attempts in 1984 and 1986, and also a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 1991 by selling off most of its assets until August 1995 when its banks refused to advance enough additional credit in order for the company to be able to pay off suppliers. At that point, the company sold itself to Federated Department Stores for $1.6 billion with the acquisition being completed on October 12, 1995.
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.
LiveRamp Holdings, Inc., is a San Francisco, California-based SaaS company that offers a data connectivity platform whose services include data onboarding, the transfer of offline data online for marketing purposes.
Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. is an American multilevel marketing company that develops and sells personal care products and dietary supplements. Under the Nu Skin and Pharmanex brands, the company sells its products in 54 markets through a network of approximately 1.2 million independent distributors.
Steel Connect, Inc. is an American company that provides supply chain management services to software companies. During the dot-com bubble, the company, which was then known as CMGI, Inc., had a market capitalization of $41 billion and owned the naming rights to the new home stadium of the New England Patriots. Between 1995 and 1999, it had the best-performing stock in the United States, returning 4,921%. After the crash of the bubble, the stock price fell 99%.
Spokeo is a people search website that aggregates data from online and offline sources.
VerticalResponse, Inc. is an American company providing software for sending email marketing, online surveys and direct mail for direct marketing campaigns. VerticalResponse's market research has been quoted by multiple media outlets, including The Miami Herald, Associated Press, Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes.
MyLife is an American information brokerage firm. The firm was founded by Jeffrey Tinsley in 2002 as Reunion.com and changed names following the 2008 merger with Wink.com.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. It was founded in 2000 under the name ExactTarget. The company filed for an IPO in 2007, but withdrew its filing two years later and raised $145 million in funding. It acquired CoTweet, Pardot, iGoDigital and Keymail Marketing. In 2012, it raised $161.5 million in an initial public offering, before being acquired by Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2013. ExactTarget was renamed to Salesforce Marketing Cloud in 2014 after the acquisition by Salesforce.
News America Marketing, often referred to as just News America, is a marketing business owned by News Corp. It publishes SmartSource Magazine, a weekly consumer-branded newspaper insert offering advertising and coupon promotions, delivered in over 1,600 newspapers in the U.S. and is one of three companies in the United States that control almost all the in-store ads and grocery coupons in the United States.
Exact Data helps small and medium sized businesses acquire customers cost effectively, by selling highly targeted consumer and business email, postal and phone audiences. Exact Data is based in Chicago, Illinois and has offices in Los Angeles, California and Deerfield Beach, Florida.
4INFO is an American corporation that measures and tracks media audiences for the targeting of audiences. The company also displays targeted advertisements on mobile devices. The company is currently owned by Nielsen Holdings.
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. is a data-driven marketing technology company which was founded in 2007. Zeta offers companies a suite of multichannel marketing tools focused on creating, maintaining, and monetizing customer relationships.
World Patent Marketing (WPM), founded in 2014 by George G. Cooper was a fraudulent Miami-based corporation that presented itself as an invention-promotion firm but was later determined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to defraud investors seeking to market inventions. In March 2018, following an FTC investigation, World Patent Marketing was shut down and Cooper was banned from the patent industry and ordered to pay nearly $1 million in FTC fines.
Acxiom is a Conway, Arkansas-based database marketing company. The company collects, analyzes and sells customer and business information used for targeted advertising campaigns. The company was formed in 2018 when Acxiom Corporation spun off its Acxiom Marketing Services (AMS) division to global advertising network Interpublic Group of Companies.
