Resumen
This article discusses new horizons in effective e-mail advertising. The number of people connected to Internet has been increasing very rapidly. According to some estimates, there are 500 million users with Internet access, almost all of whom have access to e-mail services. This electronically connected Internet community has attracted direct marketers who view it as a medium that provides quick and inexpensive access to potential customers. Direct marketers can easily get email lists of millions of potential consumers. These lists can be obtained from newsgroups or individual companies that compile this information. Solicitations to individuals on these lists via email have resulted in a problem commonly described as unsolicited commercial email (UCE), or spam. Fundamental to the problem of UCE is that senders find it more expensive to target their e-mail messages to likely consumers than to simply send e-mail to the entire list. The problem has become so severe that spamming is now the number one source of customer complaints to Internet Service Providers. The effective legislation of UCE is necessary to realize the full potential of email advertising. The global nature of the Internet makes the regulation of UCE difficult but not impossible. To curb the growing problem of UCE, some efforts by lawmakers have been taken in the U.S. and more recently in other countries.