The History of Email in Sales & Marketing: We Ruined It!

Salespeople ruin everything. While it is said that we are in a sales and marketing technology revolution today, that’s not a good thing…through the lens of history. The greatest sales tech revolution began in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call. By the 1910s, the telephone was revolutionizing sales outreach, and it didn’t take long for us to destroy this incredible gift. It required technologies to be created to prevent salespeople from abusing it, and when that didn’t work, the government had to get involved by creating 2003’s Do Not Call Registry…which now has over 220 million phone numbers on it in the United States alone. 

Email has a similar path – invention, abuse, technologies created to prevent its abuse, and when that didn’t work, the government had to step in again. Here’s the timeline…

NOTE: I have attempted to source, link, and reference every data point possible in this article.

1969: The first message was sent between computers (October 29th)

A really interesting story told by Leonard Kleinrock about the beginnings of email, and his quote about what they realized at the Stanford Research Institute in a press release on July 3rd, 1969 where he said: “As of now, computer networks are still in their infancy, but as they grow up and become more sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of ‘computer utilities,’ which, like present electric and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country.” He was right…so right! This guy needs more credit. https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/the-first-message-transmission-29-10-2019-en

“The ARPANET’s first host-to-host message was sent at 10:30 p.m. on October 29, 1969 when one of my (Leonard) programmers, Charley Kline, proceeded to “login” to the SRI (Stanford Research Institute) host from the UCLA host. The procedure was to type in “log,” and the system at SRI was clever enough to fill out the rest of the command, adding “in,” thus creating the word “login.” Charley at our end and Bill Duvall at the SRI end each had a telephone headset so they could communicate by voice as the message was being transmitted. Note the irony that here we were using the telephone network to launch the new technology of packet switching which would destroy the telephone network! At the UCLA end, Charley typed in the “l” and asked SRI “did you get the l?” “Got the l” came the voice reply. He typed in the “o,” “Did you get the o?” and received “Got the o.” UCLA then typed in the “g,” asked “Did you get the g?” at which point the system crashed! This was quite a beginning. So, the very first message on the Internet was the prescient word “lo” (as in, “lo and behold!”).”

But What is ARPANET?

The U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first public packet-switched computer network. It was first used in 1969 and finally decommissioned in 1989. ARPANET’s main use was for academic and research purposes.

This is a really good history lesson on ARPANET: https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/ARPANET

“ARPANET stands as a major changing point in the development of computer technology. Many underlying internet technologies were first developed on or for ARPANET. Telnet and FTP protocols were some of the first used on ARPANET, and they are still in use today. TCP/IP was developed on it. The first network email was sent in 1971 over ARPANET. It also hosted what is considered the first marketing spam email in 1978. ARPANET also led to many other networking firsts. List servers, or listservs, became early social networks. Early voice communication protocols were developed on it. Password protection and data encryption were developed for use over ARPANET.”

Essentially, it was the beginning…or the precursor to the internet.

“ARPANET was a large wide-area network created by the United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). Established in 1969, ARPANET served as a testbed for new networking technologies, linking many universities and research centers. The first two nodes that formed the ARPANET were UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, followed shortly thereafter by the University of Utah.” https://www.webopedia.com/definitions/arpanet/ 

1971: Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked email while working on the Arpanet System.

Here’s an interesting timeline on the origins of email written in 1999: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1999-00/internet/email.html) 

Interesting little piece to this…

”The Origin of @: When Ray Tomlinson designed his early email programs, he realized he need something to separate the user’s name from the host’s name. As the pioneer in email programs, he had the freedom to choose any key whatsoever on the keyboard. He finally chose @ because he believed it would never occur in a name. That it also meant at was an extra plus.”

1978: Gary Thuerk – The “Father of SPAM”, is said to have sent the first unsolicited email marketing message. 

And it generated $12M+ in sales.  

A detailed video from History Pod on Gary’s first SPAM email: https://youtu.be/Q4Icfk0gq-c 

The facts: https://www.britannica.com/topic/spam#ref1072166 

An interview with Thuerk: https://moosend.com/blog/gary-thuerk-people-make-the-same-mistakes-over-and-over-again/

Here’s the citing in the Guinness World Records:

“The world’s oldest spam was sent at 12:33 EDT on 3 May 1978 by Gary Thuerk (USA), then working for Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC, USA). It was sent to 397 email accounts on the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) of the US Defense Dept., inviting them to a product demonstration of the DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060 and 2060T computers. ARPAnet is regarded as the predecessor to the internet. The original email still exists.” https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-electronic-spam 

Quotes from Thuerk’s interview: (source: Moosend)

“I had problems reaching the ARPAnet users on the west (USA) coast (we were in the Boston MASS area, East coast). We wanted to invite them to see a demo of our DECsystem-20T (that supported packet switching) on the ARPAnet”

 

“Since we were already emailing with some of the ARPAnet users, we chose email to invite them to attend a demo of the first commercial computer to support the ARPAnet. We knew that this would be the first email campaign and would ruffle some feathers. First called electronic mail, it was spelled e-mail back then. I had my product manager, Carl Gartley type in about 400 email addresses on-line, from the ARPAnet directory (phone & email book), while I composed the invitation on-line (DECsystem-1080T).”

 

“We merged the e-mail addresses and invitation and hit send and off it went.”

 

“I just wanted to show our product to the market. That’s where innovation comes, when people try to solve a problem. A lot of early adopters wrote History just by putting different (existing) technologies together and they only did it because they wanted to solve a problem. It was the first and only time that I spammed and that was it. And of course, it didn’t have anything to do with a scam”.

 

“There were about 2,600 users on the ARPAnet back in 1978. I went through the paper directory and highlighted (in yellow) the names with email addresses that I wanted Carl Gartley to put into our e-mail system.”

 

“It resulted in about $12m+ in sales. No way to know open rate, but I am guessing about 200 were read by the addressees. About 40 people came to the demos. 40 out of 200 or 40 out of 400 = very good response. No one could unsubscribe, but I did get a lot of complaints. However, the recipients did forward the email to other technical ARPAnet users.”

Other details:

“This email was first composed on the 1st of May,1978 and after some revisions, it was ready to be sent on the 3rd of May of the same year. As the email could not be sent to hundreds of people at once, some of the recipients’ emails were accidentally included in the email. The recipients that got the email, forwarded it to other people and Gary sent out a second email. That’s how this email, ended up being spam. That, and the fact that it was all written in ALL CAPS and that “This was a flagrant violation of the use of Arpanet as the network is to be used for official US Government business only!” according to Major Raymond Czahor, Chief of the ARPAnet Management Branch.”

1978: A 14-year-old V.A. Shiva Ayyadural developed an interoffice electronic mail software. Given credit for coining the term “Email”, but there are many arguments about it. https://www.emailonacid.com/blog/article/industry-news/who-really-invented-email/

1982: SMTP Developed, which simplified communication between servers.

What is SMTP? The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an application used by mail servers to send, receive, and relay outgoing email between senders and receivers. As the technology behind email communication, SMTP is the protocol that allows you to send and receive emails. Without it, email communication would be nonexistent since SMTP determines which servers will receive your relay messages. Much like a mail carrier, every email message passes through the mail server before reaching its destination. Without servers, you would only be able to send emails to people whose addresses matched your domain—Gmail.com to Gmail.com, for instance.https://sendgrid.com/blog/what-is-an-smtp-server/#:~:text=The%20Simple%20Mail%20Transfer%20Protocol,to%20send%20and%20receive%20emails. 

1989: Elwood Edwards recorded AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail”. 

Here’s the story on Inside Edition: https://youtu.be/sN67w6y1uig.

Edward’s wife worked for AOL, and he was asked to record “Welcome”, “You’ve Got Mail” and a couple of other famous phrases as a favor. He recorded them on a cassette tape in his living room and was paid $200 for it. While many believe AOL screwed Edwards, given that he’s now driving an Uber, he claims that AOL took very good care of him in other ways during that period of time, and is very grateful to them.

1992: MIMI defined standards for data representation beyond text, which made it possible to attach things other than text to a message.

1992: Compuserve introduced the first WYSIWYG editor for email, which included fonts, colors and emoticons.

Although, the first emoticon is credited to Kevin MacKenzie in an email on April 12th, 1979. MacKenzie, a MsgGrp member, once complained about the loss of gestures, emotions, and intonations when communicating electronically. As one solution to this problem, he proposed placing the symbol -) at the end of “tongue-in-cheek” remarks. This would eventually give way to icons like 🙂 or ;-).

1996: The first free webmail services were released: Hotmail & Rocketmail (which later became Yahoo! Mail)

1998: The word “SPAM”, defined as electronic junk mail, was added to the dictionary.

The name “spam” was actually first applied in April 1993, not to an email, but to unwanted postings on Usenet newsgroup network. Richard Depew accidentally posted 200 messages to news.admin.policy and in the aftermath readers of this group were making jokes about the accident, when one person referred to the messages as “spam”, coining the term that would later be applied to similar incidents over email.

1999: Seth Godin released the book, “Permission Marketing” which defined ethical email marketing.

It was considered a really important text at the time in that Godin believed that consumers should have the ability to choose how they’re marketed to versus it being forced upon them. When consumers agree to receive marketing emails, marketers are better able to understand and cater to their interests.

2002: Blackberry released their phone which had wireless email

2003: CAN-SPAM Act signed by George W. Bush, establishing rules for commercial email in the U.S. 

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,”

Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. It plays on the word “canning” (putting an end to) spam, as in the usual term for unsolicited email of this type.

A 2004 survey estimated that lost productivity costs Internet users in the United States $21.58 billion annually, while another reported the cost at $17 billion, up from $11 billion in 2003. In 2004, the worldwide productivity cost of spam has been estimated to be $50 billion in 2005.

What are the main components/requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act?

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

On February 16, 2005, Anthony Greco, 18, of Cheektowaga, New York, was the first person to be arrested under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced in a closed session.

Here’s a “History of Email SPAM” page on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email_spam 

2004: GMAIL released – with threaded conversations and 1 GB of storage

2014: Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation goes in (CASL)

In 2021, it was estimated that nearly 319.6 billion emails were sent and received daily. And in December 2021, 45.37% of the total emails were deemed as spam emails: https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-spam-statistics/

Clearly, we still have a long way to go.

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I speak and teach revenue organizations on how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, and really entire revenue organizations how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations, and revenue leadership. I wrote a 3x award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and have a newish book out (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳) now that just won its first award!

Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.

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