Is it spam or just really bad marketing?

A series of emails have been arriving that I assume are spam. The thing is, they are a bit different.

Firstly, they are mostly promoting reputable companies, such as Laithwaite's, Ladbrokes, The Sun, NatWest, Anglian Home Improvements, and Match.com. OK, there is some PPI/debt management nonsense, but most of it seems fairly respectable.

Secondly, the offers are all fairly dull. They don't offer miracle cures for personal problems, or pretend that you have won the lottery – they are simply dull things like 0% on balance transfers, or a £10 Tesco voucher for taking out a subscription.

One offer arrived recently for The Sun – ", join Sun+ today for a 10 Tesco voucher" was the subject, so the weird punctuation makes you wonder if something is not quite right (a lot of them seem to have that rogue comma at the beginning). The Sun does make that offer

so that seems genuine. Picking sample phrases and googling them (such as the terms and conditions) finds similar copy on The Sun's website. But there are a couple of very odd things that make me suspicious.

Firstly, the websites used for the links are different in each email and are bizarre, although also, frankly, quite funny – teensy neutrinos, prominences penny frog, council absent jester, mellow connotation, and so on.

Secondly, they all come with an address in Florida at the bottom – 7862 W. Irlo Bronson Highway Suite #313 Kissimmee, FL 34747, which seems to be associated with a company that owns at least 500 domains.

And at that point, my interest begins to fade. Except to wonder what the business model is. Is it to make spam that is almost identical to the boring and dull messages we get from regular companies? In the past spammers have concentrated on exciting, sexy or alarming messages, but now they realise that we are suspicious of those, they're copying the dull marketing messages of normal companies, which do work, after all. I'm guessing that, unfortunately, it will also make them harder to spot. As I've written before, though, if spammers got their grammar sorted out, then we would be in real trouble.