2.2 History

E-mail is probably ubiquitous to you, but there was a time when there was no e-mail!

E-mail actually predates the Internet and was first used way back in 1961 as a way for users of the same computer to leave messages for each other. Ray Tomlinson is credited with creating the first network e-mail application in 1971. He initiated the use of the “@” sign and the address structure that we use today (username@hostname).Dave Crocker, “Email History,” http://www.livingInternet.com/e/ei.htm (accessed March 18, 2008). E-mail was used to send messages to computers on the same network and is still used for this purpose today.

It was only in 1993 that large network service providers, such as America Online and Delphi, started to connect their proprietary e-mail systems to the Internet. This began the large-scale adoption of Internet e-mail as a global standard. Coupled with standards that had been created in the preceding twenty years, the Internet allowed users on different networks to send each other messages.

The first e-mail spamE-mail sent to someone who has not requested to receive it—evil! dates back to 1978. Spam is defined as unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail. In fact, more than 97 percent of all e-mails sent over the Net are spam!Darren Waters, “Spam Overwhelms E-mail Messages,” BBC News, April 8, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7988579.stm (accessed May 7, 2010).

Direct marketing has long played an integral part in marketing campaigns, but the high cost meant that only large companies were able to pursue it. However, with the growth of the Internet, and the use of e-mail to market directly to consumers, marketers have found these costs dropping and the effectiveness increasing.