Spam over phone and email is changing consumer communication preferences

Of today’s main communications mediums – text, phone calls and email – consumers get the most spam over phone and email: 70% said they receive spam often over email and 51% said the same for phone calls, a Zipwhip survey reveals.

Fifty-four percent of people even use a separate email address to avoid getting spam in their main account. Comparably, consumers report receiving much less spam over text: 41% reported rarely receiving text spam, and only 18% reported getting text spam often.

Given the high spam figures for phone and email, it’s no surprise that 92% of survey respondents said they ignore phone calls from unknown numbers. With texting, however, a person or business can identify themselves immediately without the consumer needing to engage.

This could be part of the reason texts have better response rates than phone calls; in a separate survey, Zipwhip found that 83% of consumers respond to a text message within 30 minutes or less.

Low scam attempts via text

Consumers also reported low volumes of scam attempts via text, with only 17% reporting they receive them often, versus 43% who report scam by phone and 46% who report scams by email often.

“Texting continues to be consumers’ most preferred medium, and that’s increasingly the case as spam and scam attempts infect other methods of communication like phone and email,” said John Lauer, CEO of Zipwhip. “Legitimate businesses with a real need to reach their customers have an obvious choice, and that’s to text.”

Surging robocalls

The survey also found that a large majority of consumers have been affected by the surge in robocalls – 83% of respondents said they’ve noticed an increase in the last year.

Consumers inundated with spam and scam phone calls, as well as robocalls, can report them to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or their network carrier. In Zipwhip’s survey, 35% of consumers report already having done so.