When someone says Spam, people generally think about the whole product pictured above.  When we talk about spam, we aren’t talking about everyone’s favorite canned spiced ham. We love that stuff, but we’re talking about the other kind of spam. You know, that kind of spam that shows up in your email asking you to give your credit card info to some rich prince in Zimbabwe who will make you a millionaire; that kind of spam that floods your inbox reminding you about some product every 15 seconds?  Yeah, that kind of spam.  We hate that.

Have you ever wondered how something so wonderful shares the same name as something so evil?  Well, we sure did, so we did a little investigating. According to numerous online sources, the origin of electronic spam came from a skit performed by Monty Python, a British comedy troupe.  In this skit, a group of vikings chant “SPAM, SPAM SPAM…” which drowns out the conversation of all the patrons in a cafe.  The general consensus to the origins of email spam is that users on the internet related the vast amount of junk emails drowning out other important content, just as the viking’s chant drowned out normal conversation in the Monty Python skit.

What do we do about spam:

While we here at Checkerboard love to crank out content and we encourage our clients to do the same, we refuse to spam.  Our philosophy on content and email marketing is to only send out what your audience needs and may be interested in.  Don’t bully them into buying anything.  Don’t suffocate them with sales language.  If you have a new product or service, or there’s something fun or interesting that you’ve done, send that out for sure!

We also take care of preventing spam on your sites too.  On every site we build, we incorporate anti-spam technology so that the risk of your sites getting spam comments is virtually zero.

When it comes to spam, we stick with the stuff in the can.