“This form spam is killing us”

Here’s a question (paraphrased, emphasis mine) that came in over the weekend:

Hi Allen,

Yesterday I found that we’re getting hundreds of bogus contact records added to our CRM each month.

I'm just sick about this because we’ve aready worked so hard to clean up records that we already had.

I figure these are coming in through one of our many public forms, but how in the world are we going to find these all and clean them up — and more importantly, what steps can we take to block whatever it is that’s submitting them?

- N.

That’s a great question, which I’ll answer with a question:

Have you ever tried to lose weight?

I have.

The first time was really frustrating. I figured it was a simple matter of cutting calories, so I worked really hard to trim my diet. Really hard. And it sucked.

And I quit it.

It was just too difficult. I was cutting the calories hard, without event knowing how much I needed to cut, or what it would get me.

The second time was a lot easier.

Acting on some good advice, I just spent the first two weeks eating what I normally would, but tracking everything (Yes, everything. Hershey's Kiss from the bottomless bowl in the office? That goes on the tracker.)

During that time, I also measured my weight on a regular basis.

After those two weeks, I had a clear understanding of my baseline weight and caloric intake.

And, armed with that information, I could make intelligent decisions about my diet (and exercise) — and then observe the impact of any changes, against that baseline.

Having that baseline made the whole thing a lot easier.

At least, a whole lot easier than just diving in head-first with radical changes.

So what does this have to do with form spam in your CRM?

The question at the top of this email warrants, among other things. a similar baseline-measurement approach.

You know the spam is coming in.
You've seen it.
But where is it coming from?
And how much is coming in?
And among the dozens of ways you might try to solve this problem, which method, if any, will actually have any impact? And how will you know?

If it's just a small, annoying problem, then sure, you can just try a few easy changes here and there and hope that something works.

But if it's a big enough problem to keep you up at night — if it makes you “just sick about this” — then it's worth approaching it a little more methodically.

In this case, I took a look at the CRM and found a few patterns that will allow us to pretty easily make a report that will point out the contact records that most likely are spam entries.

Once we save that report, we can run it any time and see how many have come in over the past day, or week, or month.

Of course that will make them easier to clean out.

But more importantly:

It will give us a baseline measurement, against which we can evaluate whatever fixes we decide to undertake.

If our fixes are effective, then that report should pretty quickly show a dramatic decrease.

If so, we can forget about this problem for a while and move on to other things.

And if not, we can decide to invest (time, money, effort, risk) in a more involved solution.

I'll talk more tomorrow about some ways to actually fight the good fight against the spammers.

But for now, here’s the thing:

When you’re looking to make a significant change,
whether that's reducing spam entries,
or increasing your memberships,
or making it easier for people to contribute to your campaigns
— anything that needs more than just a one-click fix —
it's worth taking baseline measurements first
and standardizing those measurements
so that you can compare them
over time
and have confidence
that your improvements are actually delivering the results that you need.

All the best,
A.