«I feel that spam mail is both an inefficient and unethical way of advertising», Maria Sutorikhina, the brand manager of Yekaterinburg branch of Sovintel Ltd (part of Golden Telecom), said to UrBC. She noted this blanket mailing that couldn’t account for the target audience’s tastes was inappropriate regardless of whether the message was an ad or something else.

«Unlike other ways of advertising, spam mail is totally unpredictable in terms of results and consequences. People who do engage in such activities usually refer to advantages of spam like cheapness and wide audience, yet these ads can never ensure any productive contact, since people hardly ever read these messages and tend to delete them instead. Even deleting a message is somewhat time-consuming, which is bound to make the users irritated, and this is the feeling they transfer to the whole brand or service», Ms Sutorikhina said.

In the meantime, Saint Petersburg State University’s Department of Retraining Sociologists and Social Workers has been sending out mass e-mails to inform the public about the courses they offer. Users get four-megabyte electronic messages with detailed information on their master classes on marketing technologies and other events without any preliminary notification.