The From Line

On my way home from a restful Caribbean vacation I picked up a copy of the New York Times during a stopover at Charlotte Douglas International.  On the front page in the Inside feature section read a headline "Do Not Call, Write or..."  Since I'm an email marketer, naturally my curiosity piqued and I read the article.  Needless to say I have never read such an ill researched piece of crap from the mainstream media then what I read in the New York Times that day.  The premise of the article was to give advice to consumers about how to remove their names from marketing lists.... snail mail, email, etc.  In the article Damon Darlin suggests to readers that "Whatever you do, do not respond to an unsolicited e-mail message when it gives you the option to opt out of receiving more e-mail. That is a trick used by spammers to confirm they hit a live address. Once that happens, your address goes to a prime list and is sold to other spammers. You may even find legitimate businesses eventually using addresses on that list." 

Where is the research behind this claim?  All the spam that I have received for Viagra, fake Rolex watches and winning lottery tickets never have an opt-out link.  Granted, I'm sure the practice by spammers of using an opt-out link to trick unsuspecting consumers to verify their email address may happen on rare occasion.  However if a spammer wanted to use that opt-out link methodology  to really confirm email addresses they would simply measure the open rate... a spammer would a  better net result and the process would be much more efficient.  Therefore Darlin's claim is total bogus.  Yes, spam is an issue however sending unsolicited commercial email in the United Stats is not illegal and legitimate companies practicing this do include an opt-out link if they have half a brain cell.   Therefore not using an opt-out link to such email would simply have the opposite effect stated by Darlin.  The bottom line is that Darlin and the New York Times have done a disservice to consumers and have contributed to the undermining of legitimate marketer's efforts to educate consumers to use the opt-out link. 

Read the New York Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/business/20money.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Recently Gold Lasso has been receiving a large influx of sales leads from the not so usual suspects in email marketing.  The diversity of leads range from the local flower shop to an oil and gas driller.  One major thing these atypical email marketers share is that they are completely clueless about where to begin.  They are baffled by the efforts involved with list building and maintenance, legal compliance and content development.  Many of them just want to cut corners and "blast" their way to success.  It's the old mentality that most experienced email marketers went through in the late 90's.   There is one very interesting trend that can be decifered from the surge of newbies entering the industry.  Commercial email has become so mainstream that consumers are starting to expect it from businesses they interact with on an daily basis.

What scares me is that legitimate commercial email has become so commonplace, the value is driven down by shear clutter.  Just as you know it's time to sell your stocks when your mailman told you he bought into the market, is it time to shift away from email?  Nah!  It's too addicting.

Another year in email marketing is almost gone and the good guys' battle against spam has barely made a dent.  Black lists, content filters and challenge response are all a joke to spammers.  Ninety-nine percent of spammers are never identified because of their uncanny ability to hide behind hijacked pc's and servers.  As an email marketer, the only real silver bullet to combat spam is the unified use of SPF or Sender Policy Framework.  SPF is a simple string of code attached to a domain that forces an email sender to be identified hence there is no place for spammers to hide.  The biggest issue to using SPF in the battle against spam is getting network administrators to implement it on their DNS (Domain Name Service) in addition to them not allowing email to enter their network from a sender who has not implemented SPF.  Two very simple things that need to be done in concert. 

However there is a dirty little secret among domain registrars and DNS providers.  This dirty secret is the simple fact that many of them do not support SPF. 

2007 is going to be a lull for deliverability and email marketing in general is going to suffer.  I think that network admins will be so fed up dealing with spam that there will be a quiet revolution to push DNS providers to support SPF.  Once this happens these revolutionary network admins will be able to implement it causing a chain reaction down the network admin pyramid forcing broad-base implementation.

Gold Lasso announced last week that we joined the Email Experience Council, http://www.emailexperience.org/.  Red More Here! 

The group meets every so often via teleconference then splits into various round table discussions.  I'm currently participating in the email experience round table which is tasked with formulating standards for different types of email communications such as newsletters, transactional, promotional and charitable.  So far most of the group seems to be pretty engaged and has come up with some good ideas and formats to test.  My overall experience with the "Experience" has been good.   Allison Swerdlow of Ogilvy has done a great job organizing everything, especially since everything is virtual.  I don't know how she does it and work full time.

Next post should be about my round table's findings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

E

The Federal Trade Commission in a 5 to 0 vote decided to smack Yes Mail with a $50K fine for violating the CAN SPAM Act all due to a technical oversight.  I really feel bad for Yes Mail because no software company is without technical glitches.  Unfortunately, in this industry, technical mishaps comes with confrontation from the federal government.  The next step for the FTC is to chase after clients of email service providers.  Just make sure your email service provider dots their i's and crosses their t's because you'll be the next one to enter the ring.

Read more here:
http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/legal-privacy/38892.html