The From Line

It seems as though Avenue A/Razorfish picked up a rock star to run their email marketing practice.   Avenue A/Razorfish will need a guy like Baker since I'm sure they are starting to feel a little heat from traditional media agencies trying to steer in the interactive direction.  Good Luck Dave!

Every email marketer has heard by now about e360insight.com's whopping $11.6 million judgment against the notorious and often feared blacklist The Spamhaus Project.  As an email marketer, I wince at the mere idea at one of Spamhaus' "volunteers" reading my blog that criticizes the organization and as a result point their loaded guns at my business.  However, I do live in the United Stats and last time I checked the First Amendment is still alive and I think it's about time someone from my industry poke a few holes in Spamhaus' model even if it means that I will have to dodge a few rotten from the far left of spam vigilantism.

According to many members of the Email Senders and Providers Coalition (http://www.espcoalition.org/), of which Gold Lasso is still debating about becoming a member, legislated lists of email addresses or any legislative lists of anything related to email marketing is a bad thing.  I find it ironic however that these same people never openly criticize black lists and how they wreak havoc on legitimate email marketers.  By this statement I'm not suggesting that Spamhaus' labeling of e360 as a spammer is right or wrong. I am not familiar with e360's business or anyone related to the company.  However, I have dealt with Spamhaus on behalf of a client, and it wasn't fun to say the least.  Gold Lasso's main client base is trade associations and nonprofits.  As a member of these groups, you expressly give them permission to send you email yet a very prestigious client of mine with over 300,000 members in the academic community ended up on Spamhaus' list.  Just as e360 claimed in its complaint against Spamhaus, I found myself frantically searching for a non-existing phone number.  After a week of email exchange with an unidentified representative, I finally convinced the individual that my internationally recognized client was not a spammer nor were any of Gold Lasso's servers compromised by a spammer.  The net result was missed opportunities of my client's abilities to share vital academic research, sell books and other items that help augment its budget and most important, deliver information to their members of which they expressly asked to receive.

Some analyst estimate the direct mail industry to be $27 billion stretched across postal fees, printing, envelopes and the hundreds of thousands of people that make it all work. What would happen to the direct mail industry if some rouge group decided to take over local post offices chucking various piece of mail they thought to be unwanted by its recipients?  Worse, what if the post office opened the doors and feely let them do this? As the email industry grows, so too is its economic impact on this country.  Right now this nascent industry is fast becoming the most relied on medium for retailers, publishers, associations, educators, manufacturers, etc. to sell their wears, exchange ideas, and provide much needed information.  Having a group that can not be reached via the telephone determine who is a spammer and who is not could have a catastrophic economic impact on this industry in the next five years.

Given my criticisms of Spamhaus, overall they do a good job of catching the crooks, hucksters and pornographers.  Their technological methods are effective however just as a tuna fisherman they tend to catch a lot of untargeted dolphins.  Since most anti-spam efforts are a result of IP address and domain filtering, would it be such a bad thing if ICANN incorporated Spamhaus into its organization?  This maybe a pie in the sky thought, but it's better than the Legit Email Marketing Industry vs. Spamhaus nightmare that will likely unfold.

I received three calls this past week from amateur marketers desperately seeking to open an account with my company Gold Lasso.  Each one claimed to be using an email service provider that encourages best practices.  Below is a paraphrased conversation with one of these marketers.

Me: How long have you been practicing email marketing?

Marketer: About three years.

Me: What kind of email content do you send?

Marketer: Offers from third party advertisers.

Me: (red flag goes up) What is your average monthly email volume?

Marketer: Around two million emails a month.

Me: All two million email addresses are double opt-in?

Marketer: Double opt-in, what's that?  These people signed up with my website.

Me: Did you disclose that you would be sending email from third party advertisers during the sign up process?

Marketer: No.  I'm not spamming.  I comply with the CAN SPAM Act.  I provide my address at the bottom and an opt-out link.

Me: Why are you looking to open an account with Gold Lasso?

Marketer: Because my email is not getting through with my current email service provider.

Me: Which email service provider do you use?

Marketer: I use (Censored).

Me: Never heard of them.  Do they over you your own unique IP address?

Marketer: They provide me with three revolving IP addresses.

Me: How much do you pay to send two million emails with your current provider?

Marketer: How much would you charge to send that volume?

Me: Depending on a few things, the cost might run around $(censored) per month. 

Marketer: What? I pay $(censored) per month with (Censored) provider.  You seem expensive.

Me:  Our mail gets through.  You get what you pay for.  Besides, you're not the type of client we would like to have for the simple reason that your email marketing practices are not up to snuff.  It's not an insult.  It's just we like to have all our clients achieve maximum success and deliverability.  I'm going to send you an email with some information to help get your program on the right track.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Once you're able to get your lists cleaned up we can speak further.

Marketer: Click!

Desperation is starting to resonate quickly amongst email marketers who lack best practices.  I'm sure I will be receiving many more calls like this in the not so distant future.  If you're doing everything right and your email is still not getting through, it's probably because you're sharing a network with one of these boneheads who recently called me.

If your email marketing system transmits email in MIME format how do you know what format (HTML or Text) your recipients are reading?  Most systems will calculate open rates however this is only regulated for HTML formats.  In addition most systems will calculate clicks however they do not distinguish between a text click or HTML click.

If you're fortunate enough to have an email service provider like Gold Lasso that calculates unique opens and unique clicks that distinguishes between HTML and text formats you can easily calculate a rough distribution between the two.

Here are the formulas:

HTML format = Number of recipients who requested HTML formats + (Unique Opens - Number of recipients who requested HTML formats)

Text format = Number of recipients who requested text formats + (Unique Text Clicks - Number of recipients who requested text formats)

MIME Format = Number of transmissions - (HTML format + Text format)

The reason why you need to subtract the number of recipients who requested a specific format from the Unique stat is because you do not want to count them twice.

Hint:  Over time if you see your text versions start to increase it is probably because your recipients are reading your email from a mobile device.  Many of our B2B clients are observing the text stat increase.

I just finished reading Return Path's Sender Score Certified: Standards for Reputation-Based Email Accreditation; July 2006 white paper by George Bilbrey, General Manager of Delivery Assurance.  From what I can tell by reading this five page white paper, Return Path's new Sender Score Certified is a program to replace their not so popular Bonded Sender Program. Instead of putting the cost on bulk email senders, ISPs will pay to use Return Path's scoring system to determine if a bulk email sender has a decent enough reputation to send email to their customers.    

Return Path's scoring system seems sophisticated and in theory could work however I have yet to see a white list that prevents spam.  Spammers are usually a few steps ahead of the industry and I'm sure they are studying Return Path's white paper too.