Every day when I get home from work, I do four things… 

1. Greet my black lab who meets me at the door
2. Greet my husband who meets me at the top of the stairs
3. Put down my extremely heavy bag
4. Go to the kitchen table to riffle through the pile of mail waiting for me

When I get to number four, I always find myself hoping that there is something really interesting, or personal, or special waiting for me—like a card or invitation from a friend or family member, or maybe a little unexpected gift (I love presents!). Why I keep hoping, I don’t know, because at least 90% of what’s in the pile is JUNK. Can you relate?

And, what makes this mail junk? Mostly, it’s the fact that I didn’t ask for it. Worse than getting this kind of “junk” in my mailbox is getting it in my email inbox—and I’m not talking about the nasty spam (“buy meds for cheap!!!”). I mean legit marketing emails from legit companies—that I didn’t ask for. I consider my inbox to be sacred ground. I don’t want anyone in there without my permission.  

Something I received in my inbox this morning tells me that I’m not the only one who feels this way. MarketingSherpa reported that the number one reason people hit the spam button is because they didn’t sign up to receive an email.

1. The company purchased a list with your email address on it. (While you’ve never knowingly signed up for an email list that would be sold, you can still end up on lists.)
2. They got your email address from a website (aka directory crawling).
3. They did an email append, which is a service that takes the information a company has from you, most likely a physical address, and then runs it against a massive database to match that address with an email address.