Christian marketing

So I've been noticing something recently.

I get a lot of spam. Sure, everyone does... but I get A LOT. This is largely due to the fact that I run multiple web sites and have my many email addresses posted all over the internet. Spammers "mine" these addresses and add them to their lists (I had to reinstall my Norton Antispam program on Friday. Since reinstallation, I've received over 300 pieces of spam... nice, huh?).

I've got a spam filter on my email (the aforementioned Norton package... a great product, by the way, if you use Outlook, Outlook Express or a program like that to read mail), but some slips through occasionally. More and more I've been seeing spam marketed specifically to Christians.

Note, this isn't dogmatic political stuff... it's just plain ol' spam.

Subject lines like "Do you go to church every Sunday? Answer our free survey and receive a big screen TV"; "Christian Loan Advisors Can Get You The Best Rate"; "A T-Shirt Sent From Heaven" all speak to the increasing presence of people who identify themselves as "Christian" as a buying and political power.

Now it's perfectly fine for people to identify themselves as Christian, and for marketers to market to a specific population. A marketer's job is to identify his or her audience and to create messages they will find appealing so that his or her product sells.

I find it interesting, however, that the volume of this spam has increased in recent months. This would indicate that people are responding to it - if the message is pitched to "Christians," rather than getting immediately trashed as so much spam is, a lot of somebodies out there must be clicking-through.

I don't know that I have an opinion on this per se... but I do find it interesting...