It’s just possible that they are acting with the best of intentions, but I for one have always had major concerns about the way email providers – Google, Microsoft et al – deal with the issue of spam. In my view, however well-intentioned, interfering with someone’s email infringes their rights as citizens and is potentially illegal. And to my mind, things are about to get a whole lot worse. 

Google’s imminent launch of its “Gmail Priority Inbox”, which analyses your behaviour and “decides” which emails are NOT important, and the news that Microsoft is in the early stages of utilizing user behaviour to decide whether a message is delivered to the inbox or junked for Windows Live Hotmail, bring the likelihood of a class action lawsuit against them that much closer.

As I understand it, in the US it is a Federal crime to hide, keep or open others people’s (snail) mail without permission. The same is true in the UK, of course, where rather quaintly all mail in transit is considered to be the property of the Queen until it reaches the owner's mailbox, at which time it becomes theirs. In both countries, interfering with the mail is a serious offence and could result in a jail term and a large fine. The law does not care whether the letter is a utility bill, bank statement or yet another unwanted piece of direct mail.

If something is sent to you in a sealed envelope with your name and address on, that communication is considered sacrosanct; it is yours alone to decide if, when – or whether to read it. With email, things are rather different, even though an email address is every bit as central to people’s lives as a home address.   

Today an email address is at the heart of a person’s identity. Without it, most of our online transactions and interactions – with individuals, brands and shops, with government and employers – would not be possible. In the developed world, not having an email address is the online equivalent of being homeless.

In other words, to have an email address and unrestricted access to your email has become a basic human right. Rights are things that confer responsibility on others. In this case, email can no longer be regarded as the property of the providers. The decision as to whether I receive an email from a company operating within the law, whose newsletter I have subscribed to should not be in the gift of the people who happen to run the delivery mechanism.  

In summary (for those of you who have been on another planet the last couple of weeks) the headline news is that Gmail are going to start prioritising the emails they deliver to you based on engagement – the way you interact with emails. They will be looking at variables such as:

 1. How often you read the email from a given sender

2. How often you reply to the email

3. Manual adjustments using the increase or decrease importance buttons

 

Hotmail are going one step further and are planning to junk email that doesn’t meet their as yet to be defined engagement standards. Metrics Hotmail will be taking into account include:

• Messages read, then deleted
• Messages deleted without being read
• Messages replied to
• Frequency of receiving and reading a message from a source

On the basis of such metrics, Google and Microsoft will start deciding that emails that you’ve signed up for and are sent legitimately should be deemed junk or unimportant, because the way you’ve reacted to them doesn’t fit with their idea of “engagement”. Now no system is infallible and systems that rely on interpretations of the meaning of a given behaviour are particularly vulnerable.

An obvious problem with this is that, despite what the email experts say, indifference to marketing and advertising activity in in all channels is actually the norm and email is no different. If someone sees an ad from a holiday company when they are not planning or thinking about a vacation, their most likely response is to ignore the ad, turn the page or leave the room to get a cup of tea and certainly not to book a holiday. This does not mean that they hate the company and never want to hear from them again: in fact the paradox is that email marketers – who operate in the only channel where you can actually opt not to get messages from companies you don’t like spend more time worrying about being relevant than marketers selling feminine hygiene products on TV!

So the danger is that the new Google/Microsoft initiatives will effectively classify the majority if not all commercial messages as second-class post. It’s the equivalent of the postman (or woman) delivering some of your mail to your mailbox, but leaving your utility bills in a cardboard box on your doorstep, out in the rain, because they heard you complain about your phone company yesterday.

You’d think the email marketing community’s response would be outrage and anger. But no, it’s: GREAT the bar’s been raised even higher! We’re going to have to be even more engaging and relevant than ever! Batch and blast is truly dead, hooray! Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas. 

It’s a classic example of fear and self-loathing in email marketing! Our community, “guided” by people with a vested interest in, and/or a career built on, the idea of inbox delivery being difficult, are implying that these new developments serve us right because we’re not being relevant. ESPs, deliverability companies, and the vast majority of email agencies out there operate by this mantra: if something doesn’t reach someone’s inbox, it’s our fault. No one is questioning whether the ISPs’ latest response to the spam issue is either reasonable or legitimate.

Anyone who thinks that the either Microsoft or Google are on the verge of eliminating spam for ever is just plain nuts. Whatever they do, Viagra, porn, Rolex watch and phishing emails – false negatives will still occasionally appear in our inbox.

What should be of concern is the fact that inbox delivery based on behaviour will significantly increase the false positives - email from friends and co-workers, order confirmations and delivery notifications that get marked as spam or deemed unimportant.  And this likely to get worse as more and more people get smartphones

A lot of people perform “email triage” on their smartphone: they use their mobile inbox to filter, prioritise, read and/or delete messages. And the phone may or may not enable images. So if you do email triage on your Blackberry (which defaults to no images) and delete messages after you’ve engaged with them to your satisfaction, Gmail and Hotmail may well never know. They may just see that as damning evidence of non-engagement and start blocking those messages. Mobiles will make it very difficult for Google and Hotmail to truly understand how people are engaging with your email.   

So there are still problems in need of a solution. But rather than challenge the right of ISPs to vet people’s email, we beat ourselves up and buy in expensive deliverability expertise to help reach the inbox of someone who has asked you to send them email. 

No one is pointing to the increased risk of making the wrong inferences from a given behaviour – of assuming that“I don’t open an email” = “I never want your emails”. Many people rarely open their bank statement; imagine if, after 7 consecutive instances of me not opening my statements, the postal service decided to stop delivering them! People who do online banking may go several months without opening emails from their bank, and they can do that safe in the knowledge that those emails will never be junked or deleted from their inbox; they’re there forever. If they got junked or blocked by Hotmail or – under the new Google system – “deprioritised”, there is a danger that someone will not see or delete an important message in the belief that it’s something spammy they don’t need.

One metric of engagement apparently being used by Hotmail is replying to an email. But very few people reply to commercial messages or bank statements or order confirmations (in fact the from address is often “donotreply”). It’s not the only criterion but it will count against you as an email marketer. Imagine the outcry if this happened to our offline mail service.   

Given that we’re quickly moving to a place where email will be considered to be a valid and legally binding communication channel in its own right, what’s going to happen soon is that an individual is going to miss something vital. One day – if it hasn’t happened already – emails missed because they are falsely branded as spam will cause someone to miss an appointment for an operation, lose a contract or miss a mortgage payment. 

Legal advice suggests that there might well be a case for someone to sue an ISP for failing to deliver a message. For obvious reasons, this would need to be a class action, and one can imagine several classes of people who might dare take on the ISPs:

1.    Individual claimants aggregated by opportunistic lawyers who’ve suffered from non-delivery with the prospect of a huge jackpot

2.    Small businesses that use Google’s hosted-email service, which operates by the same rules

3.    Very large brands: legitimate businesses operating within the law; the very same businesses who collectively spend hundreds of millions of their advertising and marketing budgets with those very same ISPs (and even if they chose not litigate, they could – should – threaten to withdraw their advertising)

4.    Social networking companies, which rely heavily on email to keep their less than totally addicted users engaged with what’s happening to their friends and drive people back to the site (If you were Facebook or Yahoo groups would you trust Google’s behavioural algorithms to be impartial?)   

Because the behavioural approach is such a black box – there are no clear definitions of engagement – it gives big ISPs the opportunity to be anti-competitive – to favour some companies over others. And so even if they are going to use this kind of algorithm they should be obliged to publish exactly what the algorithm is.

I think we should stop using deliverability as a yardstick for the effectiveness and quality of our email marketing activity. It is an artificial and constantly moving benchmark developed for the convenience of the ISP’s. It very rarely – in the case of permission based or opt-in programs run by trusted brands bears any relation to conversions and revenue

Where we are with spam blocking though imperfect goes far enough, the problem with the Google/Microsoft approach is that they are moving beyond the wholly laudable project of trying to stop illegal activity, and to a totalitarian state where they decides who reads what.

Everyone knows that the way to get a real read on your email deliverability is to put seed addresses in the list and then check if they really arrive at the Inbox or the Spam folder. Because spam filtering is different at each ISP, you need to have seeds at Gmail, seeds at Hotmail, seeds at Yahoo, and many other places. Traditionally this has worked pretty well and there are a few commercial solutions available in the marketplace from Return Path, Pivotal Veracity, Lyris, and others.

Things aren't so simple though. Spam filters are getting more personalized, learning about what individual users consider spam or not. Messages are being removed from the Inbox after they are delivered. These and other factors cause the seed accounts to behave differently than the average user.

Gmail's Priority Inbox will only make this worse. It's completely personalized, learning what you think is most important based on who you contact most frequently and which emails you open. Now you don't just need to worry about the spam folder, you also want to get into the Prioritized Inbox. You can't measure this with traditional seeding, you need a way to sample the behavior of real users.

At first, this will be most relevant to the large ISPs who have cutting edge spam filtering. It will probably be many years before regional ISPs have this functionality. But the top four ISPs make up more than half of most email lists, so this is an issue that will be hard to ignore for long.

Here is the official Gmail video describing the new prioritized Inbox.

Email marketers have long benefited from the linear nature of the inbox, where everything is sorted by time of arrival.  Marketers enjoyo close proximity to personal messages – our sale notice sits next to a private invitation for dinner with friends.  That prominent position has helped make email marketing one of the most powerful and ubiquitous digital channels.

 

Don't get too comfy.  The world is changing.  A new set of inbox management tools are emerging from the global mailbox providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail/MSN and Gmail. These tools make it easier for subscribers to avoid whatever is not interesting to them.  Hotmail did a major release of the new features in the last week of July, and more and more subscribers have access to the new Sweep and other filtering tools already.  Gmail has long offered advanced spam filtering and social connection tools, and similar Yahoo! “My View” features  were released last year. 

 

(Author's add: I posted this last night, and this morning find that Gmail has now announced "Priority Inbox" - a feature that lets you sort mail by what is important, interesting and "other."  Yikes.  How much marketing mail will make it into the first two?!  Doesn't change the theme or recommendations herein.)

 

I call it the “Ultra Managed Inbox” – and it creates both opportunity as well as threat for email marketers.
The new inbox management tools are designed to help all of us more efficiently access the email messages we want, and eliminate the ones we don’t. Hotmail’s “sweep” feature makes it easy for me to create a “shopping” folder and sweep all messages from retailers directly into it. In future, I will never see them in my inbox.  After a week or so, they will be deleted from the folder, too.  I could also sweep a sender immediately to “trash,” automating today’s manual delete-delete-delete process.  That will save consumers time, but also means win-back campaigns will never reach the inbox, either.  Hotmail may also notice that I never read messages from a certain sender and prompt me to unsubscribe. 

 

The good part is that folders with high value (like “Weekend Deals,” “Productivity Tips” or “Horoscope”) might get more attention.  It may be true that subscribers who regularly visit their folders are much more actively engaged in the messages that they find there. Tracking behavior back to the subscriber will give marketers lots of insight into timing and relevancy, too.

 

These changes by the world’s leading mailbox providers provide a new imperative for email marketers.  We can no longer “ride along” for attention by cozying up to personal messages.  We must re-earn our way into the inbox, or at least into a folder that subscribers check frequently.  

 

The good news is that the same rules still apply:  Delight subscribers, manage infrastructure well and keep your file clean -- and you will continue to enjoy high inbox placement rates. However, there are some nuances that emerge as a consequence of the ultra managed inbox.  

 

1. Encourage personal whitelisting.  Long a good deliverability tool, “add to the address book” now is a survival approach.  Marketers on a user’s “safe senders” list will continue to be given preference.  Plus, this is still one of the only ways (besides third party certification) to ensure images and links are on by default.  Be sure to make it easy, and tie your “from” domain clearly to your brand.

2. Segment your “from” addresses. From what we at Return Path can tell from using the new tools, the Hotmail Sweep feature bases filtering on the “body from” domain, so the entire from address is what is filtered.   Therefore marketing@returnpath.net and transactional@returnpath.net should be treated differently.  Unlike their current personal block list, Sweep won’t give the option to block by domain, only the entire address.  (Subscribers can still block domains with other tools.)  Please consider this carefully. We as marketers know the nuance between marketing@ and transactional@, but subscribers may not.  The actual email experience must be unique and tied to the from address – each email message type must have a clear purpose to be viewed by subscribers as unique. Otherwise, they may sweep a marketing@ from address and wonder why newsletter@ is still coming to the inbox. That second set of messages may be quickly marked as spam.

3. Turn frequency into cadence.  When everything reached the inbox, being present was enough to earn a brand impression.  As users employ more filters, being relevant and timely will trump volume.  When I open the folder, I will expect to see timely messages tailored to my interest.  On the other hand, repeated reminders about last week’s sale may turn me off from visiting this folder again.

4. Transactions are the new connectors.  As always, transactional messages are very welcome by subscribers – and could be a great co-marketing opportunity.  Consider appropriate marketing that is tied to the transaction rather than pure promotions that dilute the value of the original purpose.  (Also, remember that CAN SPAM governs what is considered transaction vs. marketing in the U.S.)

5. Segmentation by activity trumps demographics.   Messages sorted into folders are likely to be viewed by utility.  Defaults at Hotmail include Social Networks and Upcoming Events.  There is no “special offers” flag – so users will either create folders by sender (e.g.: L. L. Bean) or activity (e.g.: Sales, Banking, Read Later).  It’s up to marketers to create content and offers that is worth reading later.

6. The first click really counts.  New subscribers will receive initial messages in the inbox (provided our sender reputations are good) – the ones just after sign up.  This is the chance to be relevant, and earn the right to STAY in the inbox.  Give considerable thought to the first 3-5 messages a new subscriber receives.  It may be the last set of messages ever to go directly to the inbox.

7. Consider mobile implications.  Portable devices may have fewer features.  For example, Hotmail on a smartphone does not allow movement to any folder but trash.  If you have a high mobile readership, consider segment and frequency options to reduce the clutter and engage more deeply.

8. Get feedback now.  Start now to investigate subscribe behavior so you can plan ahead.  How many of your subscribers have actually opened and clicked this week? This month?  How can you gather data on their preferences and other interactions with your brand? How do subscribers want you to use email strategically with other channels like postal, social and advertising? 

 

The Ultra Managed Inbox still spells opportunity for marketers.  Inbox management is not new – all these types of filters have been available for a long time. Soon, however, they will be automated and promoted heavily to new users.  There’s lots of good news for marketers in this potential rejuvenation of the inbox – but only if we get ready now and start testing what it really means to engage and compete with the clutter surrounding our messages. 

 

How are you planning to adapt for the new, ultra-managed inbox?  Let me know any questions or thoughts in the comments section below.

So the other day I saw again another commercial for the online rating service called Angie's List. Per their site and if you have ever seen their commercials, Angie's List is where you'll find thousands of unbiased reports and reviews about service companies in your area. Our members share their experiences with each other so that you can choose the service company that's right for your job the first time around.

Now, me being as curious as I can be sometimes decided to see about the service and see how it works as I am looking at putting in some new fencing in the upcoming weeks. So I visit their site, do some reading, and decide to click on the join now button. From there I am taken to a simple looking sign-up page that wants my zip code, emails address, and a password. Of course at the bottom of the sign-up page in a light grey colour is the typical hidden warning:

By creating an account, you're also opting to receive e-mail about Angie's List.  If you ever want us to stop sending you home improvement and health advice, you can unsubscribe (through a link at the bottom of each e-mail) at any time.

did you see it? I almost didn't... Bad notice I say. Small print, hidden colour, not to descriptive as to what you will receive.

anyway, I figured the service would be free to look at and not to my surprised I guess I found AFTER the sign-up page (they have my email address at this point) and the fact that you have to submit a credit card to access the service. bummer I said to myself...so I abandoned the rest of the sign-up process and went my busy little way back to the free Internet.

Few days later I wasn't to surprised when Angie's List began to "spam" me with offers about them and their partners. Well the partners emails I was surprised at since they didn't mentioned my data would be used for such (maybe that was in white print), <sarcasm> but who cares about third party's and data sharing these days </sarcasm>

I being an anti-spammer from days ago of course used a tagged email address when I signed up in the beginning. I decided on the first email that these were NOT very targeted emails and not to my liking decided to use their unsubscribe link at the bottom. Again wasn't surprised that I was taken to a preference centre to change or remove my permissions vs. just unsubscribing me.

What did surprised me was the amount of campaigns I was subscribed to even though I NEVER completed the sign-up process or ever bought into ANYTHING or gave them a preference to what I wanted in email.

Little over kill huh?

I wouldn't have NEVER guessed from that one grey line of warnings during the sign-up process that I would be auto subscribed to so many campaigns based on a single non-paid sign-up in which I gave no preference to topics or relevancy.

As you can tell this has me a little miffed and concerned that this is how some companies still perform mailing list and permission practices. In my opinion, Angie's List should handle permission and list building MUCH better than this.

Some thoughts:

1) Be more clear upfront that before handing over an email address this is a paid for service.

• This is in case someone like myself isn't interested to that level.
• Don't hide the fact that you will be using people's information for these things. Don't be like SEARS
• Don't hide your legal warnings. Be upfront!

2) They should separate the sign-up process from the newsletter or marketing aspect

• Go ahead and offer a newsletter box outside of the sign-up process to get more information about Angie's List, but don't give the entire pie away to those who haven't bought anything.
• Make sure you use this process to nurture over time the visitor into buying something vs. throwing the entire buying manual at them and not sending them targeted email based on behaviors.

3) Don't assume that your sign-up is going to want ALL this

• This is WAY overkill in my opinion. Like me, you will lose the subscribe if they get to many emails in these short amount of times
• Survey and ask permission from the subscriber as to what they want. Don't think for them!

Sorry Angie's List, but in my opinion....you failed at a GREAT opportunity in how you could have obtained better sign-up's, the ability to market to people more effectively, manage permissions, and maintain relevancy.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

In the hearts and minds of ESPs, ISPs, and just about every proponent of legitimate email, there lies a deep desire to rid the world of spam.  To accomplish this noble goal, I recommend the construction and acceptance of a neoclassical structure known as the International Email Museum.  The museum currently exists only inside my brain, but I have decided to share it with the world. J  Because museums are usually bastions of truth and relevance, one might ask, what would one find inside a museum dedicated to the history of email?

This place of gathering, built especially for email connoisseurs, begins with an insightful history of how spam originated.   The architects of this museum envision a layout that will consist of three floors.  On the first floor, visitors will come to understand the history of Email, and its forefathers.  

Given that spam is so ruthlessly prevalent in our daily lives, it is difficult to remember what life was like before such nasty developments as spam and botnets.  Visitors to this floor will take a walk down memory lane, coming to know not only the history but the people associated with legitimate email.  They’ll experience the early days of email firsthand, and come to understand the continuing challenges of reaching the inbox. 

On the second floor, the museum, using powerful interactive media, will immerse visitors in the destructive world of spam, highlighting the cumulative losses of billions each year. This floor would stage the epic battle between spammers and legitimate marketers.  The Tug-of-war- between irresponsible senders and ISPs still rages today; however, a foundational knowledge of how this marathon struggle began will, hopefully, shed some light on spam’s eventual eradication. This floor will also feature those who tirelessly create and update filtering algorithms for unwanted mail.   Life size monuments will be erected in dedication to the brave receivers, including, but not limited to, Paul Blair of Tucows, and Steve Champeon of Enemieslist.

When you think that spam in the US costs businesses in excess of 30 billion dollars annually, you begin to ponder whether dedicating only the 2nd floor of the museum is enough.

ViKtims of Spam

In one respect or another, all of us have been hindered by spam.  And, many of us have witnessed and experienced “death” by spam. J  In the open space at the center of the museum, there will be an important memorial to remember those who we have lost and that those who survived the spam battle.  This memorial will help visitors appreciate and understand the impact of spam by hearing the voices and emotions of suffering receivers globally.   Leading up to the memorial will be tributes to the majestic forefathers of email, dating back to the days when buying lists were appropriate and non-segmentation was part of the uncharted waters of the industry.  This tribute serves to remind visitors of the events that took place before the horror and atrocities of spam. The internationally recognized Email Museum will offer a place for reflection, where memories and emotions can be confronted in an environment filled with hope, inspiration, and a commitment to removing the bane of spam against humankind.

The bottom floor will contain an important educational experience for visitors to further connect with their emotions and leave their feelings.  Visitors will be able to question, interact, and, more importantly, figure out how they can contribute to eradicating spam.  Ultimately, they will commit to be part of a culture that understands, respects, and supports the rights of legitimate senders.

The Café at the Email Museum

On the 3^rd floor, will be the famous café. The Café will feature an extensive menu of sandwiches and snacks.   There will be a variety of sandwiches available, as well as other dishes, including “Spam Soup” created by Al Iverson and other classics, such as the McCloskey Melt and the Dayman Dog, which is smothered with private label relish and sauerkraut.   Other popular treats include the Levine Lavash, and the Shneyder Schnitzel.  There is only one thing to remember about the menu at the Email Museum Café: it does not accept cash or credit cards.  At our museum, the only currency you’ll ever need is a reputable IP address, and an above average domain reputation index.

Memberships are currently being accepted. :)

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

   

 

Being a deliverability consultant or, as Fred recently put it, a “lone ranger”, exposes you to all sorts of peculiar questions from customers looking for optimization and higher ROI from their email marketing. Some of them are quite unthinkable, but hey…we are here to take on all challenges. 

For example, I was approached with this the other day: “Can I export my Facebook contacts (in this case, people who have joined a fan page) and add them to my mailing list?” The first answer that comes to the mind that believes in the permission-based way is, of course, NO. 

But then you’ve got the customer’s honest and, to some extent, reasonable deduction – if they’ve expressed enough interest to become fans of my company, why not send them a newsletter every now and then? Isn’t that a kind of opt in? On top of that, a quick Google query will point you to a plethora of resources that let one export Facebook friends /contacts along with their names, email addresses etc. Sounds like they don’t mind getting emails, right? CAN-SPAM and email marketing best practices aside, let’s see what Facebook’s Terms of Service have to say about this:

#3. Safety

2. You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.

Still want to “keep in touch” with your social media contacts via email? Take a look at this one next:

#8. Special Provisions Applicable to Developers/Operators of Applications and Websites

2. You will have a privacy policy that tells users what user data you are going to use and how you will use, display, share, or transfer that data.

5. You will not include data you receive from us concerning a user in any advertising creative.

6. You will not directly or indirectly transfer any data you receive from us to (or use such data in connection with) any ad network, ad exchange, data broker, or other advertising related toolset, even if a user consents to that transfer or use.

Pretty clear, I’d say. Let’s face it – “exporting” contact info from social media profiles is just another way of harvesting email addresses. The friend-to-friend or fan page admin-to-fan relationship does not give anyone legal rights to initiate commercial communication via email, unless explicit consent has been obtained. Think about it…does the fact that you follow me on Twitter give you the right to invade my inbox space with your offers? Nope. Or are you entitled to send UBE to people just because you are connected with them via Foursquare? And the fact that the Internet is brimming with black hat software that can help automate those tasks does NOT mean that they are legal.

Furthermore, don’t forget about all those “friendly” and “sociable” folks out there who are in the habit of sending out friend request invitations en masse. Or those groups uniting people that are willing to express their hate against mosquitoes…or whatever. Add the export feature to this mix and you’ve got a really volatile combination that gives the bad guys tons of opportunities to spam mailboxes with “special offers” and scams. Factor in that most Facebook users provide an active and valid email address on their profile and this modus operandi becomes highly coveted by these types.

That being said, there are two bulletproof reasons to support the thesis that sending commercial emails to an exported list of Facebook contacts is a no-no. 

1. Not only will this lump you in the same category as UBE senders because you have not obtained permission to do so, but 
2. you’ll also be running the risk of attracting the attention of Facebook’s lawyers. And, as we all know, they have a pretty good record of chasing down abusers and making them pay. 

My final point here is that any “outside of the inbox” relationship, by which I mean there is a lack of explicit consent backed up by HTTP or SMTP proof, will lead to sending out unsolicited mailings and all the negative baggage that goes along with it. In the case I described, it was certainly not a matter of the customer’s deliberate ill will to spam, but rather the erroneous assumption that being someone’s contact on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. gave them the right to add them to a mailing list without obtaining permission. Even if an ESP granted you the option to import such addresses, I’m sure those friends would turn their backs on you and use the spam buttons to abruptly break up the relationship. 

Maciej Ossowski

Deliverability Expert

Implix / GetResponse

http://www.getresponse.com

So this doesn't have any barring to marketing emails or how to get your emails to the recipient faster, but just a point that has been on my mind these past few weeks.

Do Out of Office alerts these days serve a purpose anymore? They seem to work well a decade ago when you were really out of the office and your computer sat under your desk and you couldn't check email till you got to it.

Today, we as an industry and as individuals now have laptops, iPads, Smartphones, Wifi, WiMAX, etc keeping us 100% of the time on the Internet at one time or another. And you know we all at one point throughout our days whether or not on vacation or after 5 PM check email as part of our everyday lives. The unfortunate thought here is that we as people are so wired(less) today that in our minds we think that we have to answer email as quickly as possible or expect an answer in a few minutes when we send one.

Some of us have used Out of Office alerts (OOO) to tell people we are:

1. On vacation
2. In meetings for 5 hours on day
3. On the other side of the world and will have a time difference before answering email
4. Not with the company anymore

I know that when I see someone's OOO vacation alert I can always expect a second response from them on their mobile device (which is their normal phone too) to my original email because it is always with them.

I know that when I am in a week long quarterly company meeting that I will be responding to emails that same day I get them

I know what even though I am aboard in the EU that I am going to respond to emails ASAP because I have the ability to no matter where I am.

So why the OOO alert then? Is it because we put such an importance on email and the need to make sure we are NOT ignore you as the sender in this immediate email gratification world we live in?

Why can't we just give each other a break and just plain and simple say to ourselves that I will send this email to this person and give them a few hours if NOT days to respond at their leisure. Maybe we don't really need the OOO alert except for vacations? Maybe we don't need to let everyone know I went to a long lunch meeting and will be back later?

Many of you don't know it, but I stopped using OOO alerts this year. Why? cause I am always going to respond to your email whether I am in the EU or out for the day or just a few hours in a meeting. I have my laptop, iPhone, and iPad with me. I am always near an Internet connection. When I have the free time I will be checking email. Now a few sales people would disagree with me response times, but hey can't win them all ;). I have successfully been able to still make people think I am responding to their email in a timely manner. Go figure.. Nothing changed! I am still answering emails when I can just without the OOO alert.

Also, I am noticing that it for me it can be a security risk to my family when people know I am gone for long periods of time or in far way places. Sort of like PleaseRobMe.com. All a criminal needs to do is see my OOO alert and if they are smart enough find out where I live and rob or harm my family.

We unfortunately live in a world of over sharing and need to be more cautious and courteous to others about this. I can't tell you how many times I send an email to one of my email marketing or privacy lists and over half of the OOO alerts are just a plain "I am in a meeting today" alert. I just filled my inbox up with 100 new emails that I now need to delete. *GAH*

All I am saying is think about it next time that you want to turn on your OOO. Do you really need it? Will you will be answering email while it is on? Will it impact you negatively without it? Will it throw off the timing of your email responses by that much without it? Will you overload people who don't need it? Are you creating a security hazard?

If you do have an OOO alert for vacation (which I do recommend), please don't make it one (1) page long. One (1) line/sentence is all that is needed saying who to contact in your absence. I am just as guilty for this in the past. Treat it like a marketing message. What is my call to action? You only have 3-5 seconds to tell me why this email is important before I trash it ;)

GIve it a try like I did. Turn off OOO alerts if your traveling for business one week or will be in a long meeting. I guarantee you it will make no difference other than removing the unwanted email out there and possibly creating a change in your mind that you DON'T have to be online 100% of the time.

Like I tell my wife late at night, close the laptop...email and the Internet will be there in the morning waiting for you.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

P.S. I will be on vacation sometime this summer so if you don't hear from me I will get back to you ASAP ;)

Personal note from me: Take a REAL vacation this year. Don't create an OOO alert saying you will be check email for high priority issues. A vacation in the simplest definition I found on the Internet is this, leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure. Go rest! Get away from the hussle and bussle of email. Take a vacation from the Internet. Don't turn on your device(s) for work. Use that iPad instead to find the nearest theater to spend time with the kids or the nearest restaurant to take your family to dinner while on vacation.

I’m a lover of magic.  When illusions appear creative, bold, and clever, they seem worthy of being shared with everyone.  On the other hand, if it’s a trick that everyone knows—one that has been around for decades—the “magic” becomes cheap and hollow, unlikely to fool anyone. When it comes to the standardization of email metrics, the question arises: is this truly noteworthy, or simply another case of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?”  Smoke and mirrors won’t work in this case; complete transparency is necessary to address this issue.  It’s time to put all of our cards on the table and examine various aspects of the argument surrounding standardization.

 

Independent email consultants Luke Glaser and John Caldwell, as co-chairs of the DMA/Email Experience Council’s Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, have marshaled a group of industry players to launch an email standardization project.  For what it’s worth, that project is gaining momentum and earning some serious ink within the industry.  This is not the same old dog and pony show we’ve seen in the past; these guys really have their act together.  Think of them as Siegfried and Roy of the email industry.  Their “S.A.M.E” project (Support Adoptions of Metrics for Email) has bent the ears of industry pundits, and their formula for encouraging ESPs to adopt the standards seems to be fooling everyone.  And in this context, deception is a good thing. Learn more about the S.A.M.E project here. 

 

Sleeveless in Seattle 

 

As with any new industry related project, many challenges surface, but without early adopters, we’d be left sleeveless, a nightmare for any magician.  Two ESPs, MassTransmit/EmailTransmit and AllWebMail have already committed to adopting the industry standard for metrics which was released by the DMA/eec in March 2010.  Since then, a dozen other high profile ESPs claim that they will allegedly adopt the standards in the next six months or so, including, but not limited to, BlueHornet, Silverpop, Blue Sky Factory, Bronto, SubscriberMail, and YesMail.  When you think about early adopters, companies like these help pave the road for the rest of the industry to benefit.  As interested ESPs begin to track the progress and milestones achieved by the S.A.M.E project, momentum will build and the benefits will galvanize the industry.

 

“Adoption is not just a semantics game,” says Stephanie Miller, Vice Chair of the DMA/eec and an active member of the Roundtable (her day job is at inbox deliverability solution provider Return Path).  “Marketers usually find out that there are no standards when they go to benchmark their performance, or when they change vendors and realize that all those numbers they’ve been betting their bonus on – they don’t mean what they thought they meant!

“It’s about time our industry stepped up and supported standard metrics just like any other direct marketing discipline,” she says.

 

Deliverability Will No Longer be a Selling Point for ESPs

 

Once the implementation of email standards leads to congruency across the industry, ESPs and marketers will find themselves on a level playing field.  This means marketers will spend more time searching for the right ESP, but once a match is made, marketers will be less likely to move from one ESP to another due to inconsistency in metrics.  This means attrition rates for switching ESPs will fall, which will direct ESPs to focus on supplementary services that will help customers achieve a higher ROI. Examples of such services include compelling creative copy and perhaps a monthly or quarterly SWOT analysis provided by the ESP to each marketer.  Higher performance of the channel benefits all of us.

 

S.A.M.E Project Goals

 

Once a magician takes his oath, he must never reveal his secrets.  However, if aspiring participants are willing to learn magic, they, too, can join the “magic club.”  ESPs face a similar choice.  They can remain on the outside looking in, simply observing the progression of the S.A.M.E project, or they can choose to be an active part of the club.  John and Luke’s first goal is 10-15% of the ESP market adopt the standards.

 

Nowadays, when an ESP reports on the “state of the industry,” they analyze metrics only of their own campaigns, like a magician who looks in the mirror and declares himself successful.  Industry standardization will introduce accountability to the industry, providing the digital marketing community with sterilized benchmarking and consistent reporting.  The spotlight now shines bright on Luke and John, along with other industry veterans and aspiring ESPs involved with the S.A.M.E project. It is their mission to deliver what the email industry yearns for: a final levitation act that will wow the crowd and inspire mass adoption.  They hope to prove that they are master magicians—if they perform their act well enough, even the skeptics will believe. 

 

Here’s How to Get Involved:

 

Marketers:  Send this article to your ESP and encourage them to adopt the standards.

ESPs:  Study the new standard definitions and set a goal for yourself to adopt them.  Be part of the program here:

 

Now, where did all the Rabbits go? J

 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

Imagine yourself sitting down for coffee with the CEO and CMO of your company. Now, assuming you had just a few minutes of their undivided attention, what would you try to convey to them about deliverability? In addition to ensuring they learn just how smart you are, what one or two things would you leave them with? What things does your C-Suite most need to know and take action on to improve not only the deliverability of the email programs your company sends, but could also revolutionize how your brand is perceived in the marketplace?

That is the question I posed recently to several thought leaders in the email space. The result is a great document we call “Letters to the C-Suite: Getting Serious about Permission & Deliverability.” A few of the contributors also contribute to Deliverability.com, such as Carlo Catajan from Yahoo, Andrew Kordek from Groupon, and George Bilbrey from Return Path. Others from Earthlink, McAfee, Email Marketer’s Club, Pivotal Veracity, Goodmail and the Online Trust Alliance also weighed in from “where they sit” as part of the email community. I think the advice they provided is spot-on accurate and a must read for any marketer needing to optimize their deliverability.

The main takeaways of this paper are:

Permission Matters. In fact, Permission Comes First.
As Andrew Kordek put it, “Remember, everything you do in email marketing is a reflection of your brand. It starts with permission—and everything your subscribers experience until they unsubscribe can—and will—impact complaints, deliverability, and the willingness of others to join and become engaged in your program. Your subscribers are in charge. The rest is up to you.”

The ISPs’ responsibility is to their users, not to marketers.
To the CEO, I’d summarize it as follows: ISPs are businesses too and they like customers as much as the rest of us, so they want to keep them happy. Your unsolicited email/spam (or the “bacon” your legit email has become) is annoying subscribers, and so it in turn annoys the ISPs as it can cause them to lose that user to another mail provider.

Geralmy Swint from Earthlink talks about it this way. He says, “To the Executive: A single spam report doesn’t mean you’re a spammer, but it’s important to remember that better senders get fewer spam reports. If your mail gets more spam reports than the next guy, you might be doing something wrong.

Here are a few of the things I would recommend to keep your spam complaints as low as possible:
• Remind subscribers that they signed up, and offer them an easy way to unsubscribe
• Identify yourself clearly in the message
• Honor the recipient’s request to be removed from your list
• Respond quickly to unsubscribe requests
• Don’t buy lists or send email to people who didn’t opt-in”

ISPs are now tracking metrics like opens and clicks, so marketers need to optimize on these items to continue to achieve good results.
Marketers should already be optimizing on subscriber actions and engagement anyway, though the stats show many are not. At ExactTarget we analyzed lists where the retailer was seeing below average response rates and showed that nearly 40% of a typical list was unengaged – meaning subscribers that had not opened or clicked on a message in 90 days. Another 30 - 45% of the list had just a few actions in 90 days. This is truly the 80/20 rule in action. We've found with the appropriate frequency and relevancy you can engage a much larger segment of your audience. That's why user-defined frequency and content preferences are key.

So, what would you tell your CEO about permission and deliverability?  Let me know here or tweet me at @cehouse.

At OtherInbox, we help hundreds of thousands of users to manage email overload by automatically identifying commercial email and organizing it into folders. We send out a daily digest to our users showing all of the email that we organized for them the day before. We get a great open rate on these emails and monitor it closely as an indication of user activity.

Recently, we introduce a bug that prevented us from tracking opens (started on Thursday). The bug only affected new digests, but old digests that we had sent were still working. This chart shows how our open rate declined over time, providing a view that you don't get to see very often - how do the opens trickle in over time? 

As you can see, 60% of the opens happen within the first 3 days. But 4-5 days later we're still getting a significant number of opens from old digests. Then on Tuesday we fixed the bug and the number jumped back up again.

There is probably going to be a slightly different distribution for different types of messages that are sent, but I bet the shape of the curve looks very similar for most email.

 

Many of you know I just returned from a long month visit to the European Union. In that trip I attended MAAWG in Spain, Eloqua's office in the UK, and visited many additional cities (Berlin, Brussels, and Paris) where I was a U.S. IAPP privacy delegate and where we meet with many EU privacy advocates, experts, and many of the countries privacy commissioners.

During the last half of my trip, I attended a Digital Europe breakfast meeting and a Privacy Platform meeting in European Parliament (Brussels).

The Privacy Platform brings together different stakeholders on privacy related topics. During our visit, over 100 representatives from industry, privacy activists, EU institutions, governments, and European data protection supervisors discussed the privacy aspects of behavioral advertising. Behavioral advertising is the tracking of consumers on the internet, mainly with the use of cookies. The data are used for advertising targeted to the individual consumer's specific interests, based on his profile.

While in Parliament, we were a bit surprised, but glad when Mrs. Sophie In 't Veld, Member of European Parliament and chair of the Privacy Platform and Belgian Data Protection Supervisor Mr. Willem Debeuckelaere presented their official opinion at our meeting expressing the Article 29 Working Party's concern about the implications for privacy and data protection of the widespread practice of behavioral targeting. Mr. Debeuckelaere commented "that what is at stake is that many consumers are not aware that their surfing behavior is being monitored and data are being stored for advertising purposes".

Additionally in their release, the European Data Protection Authorities stated that when online behavioral advertising providers use cookies to build profiles on individuals and to server up targeted ads based on those profiles, they are bound by the new EU ePrivacy Directive, which "introduces the obligation for informed consent of users before tracking devices such as cookies are installed on users' computers." and goes on further to state that the data protection authorities call for "simple and effective mechanisms for users to affirmatively give and withdraw their consent for online behavioral advertising"

The opinion states that although online behavioural advertising may bring advantages to online business and users alike, its implications for personal data protection and privacy are significant.

Also in their opinion, they clarified the use of browsers as a method of consent when it comes to cookies acceptance. Originally when we blogged about this in "Me want cookie!, Me eat cookie!, Om Nom nom nom", Recital 66 of the amended ePrivacy Directive indicated that the user's consent may be expressed by using the appropriate settings of a browser or other application, but in this opinion, it doesn't.

1. Based on the definition and requirements for valid consent, generally speaking data subjects cannot be deemed to have consented simply because they acquired/used a browser or other application which by default enables the collection and processing of their information. Average data subjects are not aware of the tracking of their online behaviour, the purposes of the tracking, etc. They are not always aware of how to use browser settings to reject cookies, even if this is included in privacy policies."
2. For browsers settings to be able to deliver informed consent, it should not be possible to "bypass" the choice made by the user in setting the browser. However, in practice deleted cookies may be easily "respawned" by so-called flash cookies, enabling the ad network provider to continue monitoring the user. The availability and increasing use of such technology challenges the ability of browser settings to deliver informed, valid and effective consent."
3. Consent by browser setting to receive cookies in bulk implies that users will accept future processing, possibly without any knowledge of the purposes or uses of the cookie. Consent in bulk for any future processing without knowing the circumstances surrounding the processing cannot be valid consent."

Currently, of the four major browsers, only one browser blocks 3d party cookies by default from the moment the browser is installed. The other three major browsers have as a default setting to allow all cookies. In these cases, cookies are being sent and information is collected prior to obtaining consent, thus clashing with the need for prior consent.

In order for browsers or any other application to be able to 'deliver' valid consent, they must overcome the above problems.

So, what this means is that in the EU you will STILL need to get informed consent from a visitor to place a tracking cookie on their systems and begin to provide valid and easy ways for them to withdraw that consent and tracking when they want.

For consent in terms of time, you should need to re-obtain consent for a tracking cookie vs. setting the cookie expire date to "forever". In this published opinion, the Article 29 Working Party feels that most individuals who agree to be tracked using a cookie that would last forever could and would perhaps forget they agreed to tracking a year ago when in the future they may not want to be tracked anymore. Consent to be monitored should not be 'forever' but it should be valid for a limited period of time, for example, to one year.

In their conclusion they state this:

• Behavioral advertising techniques enable advertisers, mainly ad providers, to track individuals when they surf the internet, to build profiles and to use them to serve tailored advertising. In most cases, individuals are simply unaware that this is happening.
• The Article 29 Working Party is deeply concerned about the privacy and data protection implications of this increasingly widespread practice. Whilst data protection legislation requires, among other things, obtaining informed consent from individuals to engage in this practice, in reality it is very doubtful whether average individuals are aware of, much less that they consent to, being monitored to receive tailored advertising.
• So far, the ways in which the industry has provided information and facilitated individuals to control whether they want to be monitored have failed. Notices provided in general terms and conditions and/or privacy policies, often drafted in rather obscure ways fall short of the requirements of data protection legislation. In some Member States industry has made some efforts to complement existing law with self-regulation. Such efforts are welcome as they specify the general principles contained in the regulatory framework. However, the Article 29 Working Party considers that there is a long way to go. Industry should step up efforts to comply with the reinvigorated applicable laws.

If your feeling up to it, you can see video's of each speaker during the Privacy Platform by visting here and can read all the LONG details of this opinion by visiting here Download WP 171 Opinion 2:2010 on online behavioural advertising

Hope this give you some insight into what you will need to comply with by middle part of 2011 in the EU. Feel free to post questions, concerns, and opinions to us here. Would love to hear from you on this.

-Dennis (glad to be home) Dayman
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver

 

REPOSTED from E-Mail Precisley

You are in complete control of how long customers should and will maintain their online relationship with you.

 

Some marketers stack the deck by pre-checking fields that sign a customer up to receive e-mail, such as during the purchase process. Some prefer to make customers check a box to opt-in.  Others acquire names and just add them to their mailing list with without any advance notice or consent from the consumer.  So what's the right thing to do?

 

The first thing to consider is legal compliance.  Remember though, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it's right.  Think about this for a moment, would you stand in the middle of Times Square and yell insults at people?  Expressing your opinion in that way is legal, but it won't garner you any friends.  In the US opt-in is not required.  It is legal to make people opt out, but is it the right thing to do? 

 

The answer to that question is philosophically steeped in the definition of the relationship the marketer wants to have with their customers.  The relationship needs to be about mutual respect and a reciprocal value proposition. For example:

• IF, the marker clearly and conspicuously discloses that by entering an e-mail address the customer will begin to get relevant and targeted information about their respective services, opt-out might be fair.
• IF, the marketer does a good job explaining what the benefits are of the e-mail and then honors them, opt-out might be fair.
• IF, the registration form clearly states that the customer needs to uncheck a box, opt-out might be fair. 
• IF, there is a link to the privacy policy that explains what happens to their PII and how they can change that information or limit who it is shared with is next to the registration form, opt-out might be fair.

On the other hand, in the EU and many other countries, opt-out is not legal.  Permission is required to send commercial e-mail.  But, if the marketer doesn’t adhere to the principles above, their customers will probably opt-out or stop responding anyway.

  

Whether names are acquired via opt-out, opt-in, or double opt-in really don’t matter (assuming you are legally compliant).  Regardless of what type of permission you have the responsibility to maintain the trust and respect of your customers ultimately falls on your shoulders.  It is critical to be:

• Transparent about your data collection/use
• Respectful of your customers’ preferences
• Timely and relevant with the content you send them

The fallacy of the opt-out strategy is that it will yield a larger customer database.  The myth of an opt-in policy is that the customer is willingly expecting your next e-mail.  The reality is that the customer gets the final say.  They will flourish, become dormant, complain or just leave if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain.

 

Rick Buck

VP privacy and ISP relations, CIPP

e-Dialog

One of the biggest topics in organizations today is the need and desire to grow their subscriber list.  Most companies believe that the bigger the list they have, the greater chance they have to sell more stuff.  More stuff sold + more revenue = happy companies.

Some organizations take the hard road and build their list organically and spend money and resources on properly activating and creating brand advocates in their subscriber base.  They recognize that the size of their list is not as important as the overall lifetime value of their subscriber.  These organizations often have pressure internally to grow faster by out of touch executives with unrealistic expectations on subscriber growth.  In most cases though, these companies follow the good path to growth and are prosperous in the long run.

Then, every once in awhile there are organizations that take the easy road.  They use so many different channels, spend a ton of money on third parties that promise the world who often are using the same 50 Million Opt In, Can-Spam compliant list to try and bring in as many subscribers as they can.  These organizations say they are interested in quality, but often mask that with a “yea butt” statement of “we still need to get to X million subscribers by X date”.  Activation, welcome and engagement strategies are thrown out the window and the focus becomes on getting their X subscribers to buy stuff so their investment is not wasted. 

Sit back for a minute and think of acquiring a single or 5 million new subscribers as a party that you are hosting.  You certainly would not invite anyone over to your party unless you had cleaned up your house, got the hors d'oeuvres, the drinks, music etc.   When your guests arrive, do you open the door and let them stand there or do you give the tour of where everything is so that they can enjoy themselves.  As more and more people hear about how great your party is, folks will want a piece of the action and convince you to invite their friends.  Eventually it will lead to a bunch of riff raffs wanting in which will eventually ruin it for everyone.

Before you put some super aggressive acquisition plan together, ensure that your house is in order and you are ready to greet your guests. One of my colleagues and fellow bloggers here, Matt Vernhount says is beautifully: “It’s not the size of your list, its what you do with it”

Invest time and money to the more important part of acquisition.  You and your subscribers will be glad you did.

The  question "How do I write effective subject lines?" with all its variants is the No1 FAQ in email marketing, despite the fact that subject lines are probably the most frequently A/B tested variables in email marketing. Most email marketers A/B split test subject lines on a regular basis so why hasn't anyone come up with the answer yet?

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I think it's because most email marketing departments do not have enough resource to test more than 2 or 3 subject lines at a time. At that rate it could take several years to gather enough results to develop a truly effective methodology for subject line writing. Which leaves no other option but to keep A/B split testing.

But relying on relying on A/B split testing to tell you which of the 2, 3 or more subject lines you come up with is like expecting someone to give you a fish every day for the rest of your life. we think it's time to learn to fish; so we're launching a unique new research project.

Our aim is to conduct the first ever subject line study to evaluate the impact on ROI of language - grammar, syntax and word choice. In association with digital copywriting agency Sticky Content, we're analysing the results of hundreds of subject line split-tests conducted by us and participating clients over the last 18 months to find answers to such questions as:

• Which work better in subject lines - questions or instructions?
• What are the most effective words to use in subject lines - and what are the words to avoid?
• Does mentioning your brand name in a subject line really make a difference?
• Does personalisation in the subject lines improve performance?

Send us your subject lines - get a FREE advance report

Have you run A/B subject line tests in the last 18 months? If so, we would like to invite you to pool your test data with ours to create the largest collaborative subject line study ever run (and get a free copy advance copy).

Send us your subject line test results by Friday 2nd July and get a free advance copy of our whitepaper.

Find out more >>

 

The recession has made citizens more attentive to scams, especially those that promise easy money or frighten people about the banking system.  This accelerates the already large regulatory agenda of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose role as a “civil prosecutor” includes regulating and enforcing protections from online offers, advertising and email marketing.  Congress is also stepping up, and two major initiatives around privacy protection and the role of the FTC are in active play.

Partnering with all of us in the email industry, and watching to make sure we self-regulate well, remains a key component of the FTC’s plans, says Lois Greisman, Director, Division of Marketing Practices for the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, who joined the second annual DMA/Email Experience Council legislative update webinar on May 19th.  “Our goal is to stop fraud and scams as quickly as possible, to shut down offenders, and, where appropriate, seize assets and reimburse consumers,” she said in the webinar.

The recording of the full event isfree for DMA/eec members: 

The US CAN SPAM Act of 2003, which regulates permission practices for email marketing, continues to be a key anti-fraud tool for the FTC.  Greisman noted several successes in prosecuting spammers and other deceptive practices and said enforcement continues to be a major priority.  “CAN SPAM has worked well to level the playing field among legitimate online marketers,” she said.  She also added that she was not aware of any active proposal by the FTC or Congress to expand or change the law.

However, there are two active proposals of new legislation that could have significant impact on email marketing and the email industry as a whole.

1. Online Privacy Protection Bill: 

A “Discussion Draft” of a bill to require notice and consent to any individual PRIOR to collecting or using personal information was released in early May in the US House of Representatives from Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA)and Cliff Stearns (R-FL).  Industry and consumer groups alike are not happy with the draft, including the DMA.  Although it may seem at first that the so-called Boucher Bill was just about online behavioral advertising conducted by large marketers; it turns out that it’s very broad and far-reaching on privacy and data security.   In the webinar, Jerry Cerasale, VP, Government Relations for the DMA, gave a very good overview of coverage, exceptions and terms of notice.  Basically, it impacts nearly all kinds of “first party” senders as well as any other company that has access to that data as a “third party.”  It proposes coverage of an extensive list of “unique and persistent” personal data on consumers.

“One potentially bad impact this could have on the email industry concerns the scope of covered data, including email address, IP address, and other unique, persistent identifiers,” says Tom Bartel, CIPP, vice president,  Receiver Services at Return Path, a panelist in the webinar.  “If the exceptions for transactional and operational purposes and for service providers are not effective and clear, this bill could interfere with many industry collaborations.  This includes IP-based reputation systems – data that determines if email messages reach the inbox or not.  It may also impact the operation of Feedback Loops provided to email senders by mailbox providers like Yahoo! and Hotmail.  These feedback loops are a key component in how the industry keeps bad actors out of the email ecosystem.”  

Both Representatives Boucher and Stearns have indicated a willingness to work with industry and have requested comments on the bill,  The DMA has already commented, Cerasale said.

2. Expansion of FTC Powers: 

Congress is also considering significantly expanding the powers of the FTC as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (HR 4173).    There is not a corresponding bill in the Senate, although Cerasale said in the webinar that one may be introduced later this year.   

Part of the proposed regulation would give the FTC “unbridled authority” to create rules around “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” for many industry sectors.  Cerasale expressed concern about this, and said that more checks and balances are needed.  It is also unclear how this expansion will impact emerging technologies like social or mobile, he said.  

Another part of the proposed bill increases the FTC’s enforcement powers to seek civil penalties. “That may be helpful in catching spammers and other abusers of email marketing,” said Rick Buck, CIPP and VP, ISP Relations and Privacy at e-Dialog in the webinar.   “Marketers who feel they are exempt from prosecution because they are legal under CAN SPAM may be following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.  I encourage everyone to go beyond the legal requirements and aim to provide email experiences that are welcome and engaging to subscribers.”

The FTC’s Greisman said only that, “We welcome any support from Congress that helps the agency be more effective and efficient.”  There are some “tools that we lack which Congress may grant us the power to use,” she said.

A third element to this proposed legislation is on responsibility/liability of the delivery provider (broadcast vendor, ESP, MTA Vendor) if their clients do not follow CAN SPAM or other regulations.  “This aiding and abetting aspect is very concerning,” said Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy & Online Security at Eloqua,another panelist in the webinar.   “Blurring the lines between purveyor and sender may place an undue penalty on others in the ‘chain of responsibility’ for all brands involved in online advertising or other online acquisition efforts, like third party email senders and publishers,” Dayman said.

Greisman also reported in the webinar that there is no significant update on the behavioral targeting protection guidelines that the FTC has had out for comment for over a year. “Nothing will happen without input from industry,” she said.  Since the mandate from the FTC has been, “self regulate or else,” the webinar panelists gave a number of suggestions for marketers to follow best practices, including:

1. Ensure transparency in disclosure and notice of permission and use of data
2. Be very clear about opt out vs. opt in.  CAN SPAM requires only an opt-out, but that is the “bare minimum,” Buck advises.
3. Update your Privacy policy and provide prominent links
4. Audit your data usage practices
5. Be clear on use of data in all web forms and at the point of collection/sign up.

Marketers and everyone in the email industry can support the FTC, Greisman said.  She suggests:

1. File a complaint. When those complaints are also referred by the DMA, they are particularly helpful, Greisman said.
2. Make sure your opt out mechanisms are working.  (E-dialog’s Buck recommends checking this at least annually, and preferably monthly.)
3. Be clear about the sender and the advertiser relationships.  (Return Path’s Bartel recommends first party senders consider “framing” the content from third parties or advertisers and clearly distinguish between editorial (original content) and advertising.)
4. Keep data clean, particularly around new sources.  (Eloqua’s Dayman also recommends care around affiliates’ use of data.)

The legislative update webinar was sponsored by Eloqua, E-Dialog and Return Path, with technology sponsor GoToMeeting. The recording of the full event is free for DMA/eec members.  More details on these and other legislative issues important to digital and direct marketers is in the DMA’s quarterly government affairs newsletter, Politically Direct.

There is a growing subculture emerging in the Email Industry.   This narrow subculture is built around the role of the Email Deliverability consultant.  These email folk heroes often hold “silver bullets” that dramatically alleviate problems caused by poor email deliverability.  Whether it’s resolving sender reputation issues, aligning sectors of your email program to meet legal compliance, or ensuring that all technical considerations are met, these masked magicians with assistants named Tonto can help.

There seems to be a critical knowledge gap that needs to be addressed.  Often the requests to hire an industry “folk hero” (consultant) originate from a marketer who wants to fully optimize the organization’s email program.  Factors that optimize programs include, but are not limited to, list quality and data collection, increased open rates, better ROI tracking, and achieving optimal inbox placement rates.  As much as marketers might want an optimized program, they often do not fully recognize the technology challenges of getting email delivered to achieve these desired results.   When that happens, for certain organizations, it’s time for The Email Deliverability Consultant: Email’s Lone Ranger.

A Marksman who gets his hands Dirty

Depending on the scope of the project, these consultants offer a wide range of deliverability services, including, but not limited to a deep understanding of list quality and data collection, email authentication best practices, setting up FBLs, bounce handling and infrastructure.  Consultants also commonly help with sourcing, installing and configuring optimal specs for both commercial and open source MTAs.  Frequently, the scope of the project grows into in-depth consulting on email engagement, response or retention campaigns or designing strategies that integrate complimentary marketing channels such as mobile platforms and social media.

Masters of Disguise

As we know, consulting by nature is a feast or famine type career.  And often, email deliverability consultants are positioned in precarious situations and exploited by bad actors.  Suspect senders often pump consultants for information on where to find responsive email lists or, even worse, ask about revealing key contacts at Yahoo, or other ISPs.  Deliverability consultants’ clients largely come from referrals and word-of-mouth.  That said, they live by a strict moral code of conduct, because they sometimes face important ethical decisions; at times, they must choose between a paycheck and literally firing a client. 

The Audit Process

The Audit Process is a “state of play” snapshot of the deliverability climate within the organization.

Usually, deliverability consultants will require answers to a set of detailed questions  and an analysis of overall infrastructure (technical setup) before any type of contract is in place.  During the audit, clients may seed consultants on different types of emails (marketing, transactional, etc) where they could begin reporting on items such as blacklist status, reputation, authentication tests, content, and inbox placement rates, etc. Consultants will then try to identify trends within the email list, such as attrition rates, opens, clicks, and sign up rates.   Some feedback is then given to the client, but deliverability consultants generally need to access additional data, such as bounce handling, FBL monitoring, send rates, and identifying email streams.

Contracts

A typical contract is somewhere between 30-90 days, with ongoing support in place.  However, most organizations are likely to add to the scope of services and have other goals in mind beyond deliverability.  These days, organizations that have prevalent stakeholders will go to great lengths to gain an edge over their competitors.  So, in many cases, an ongoing contract can grow out of the original short-term agreement.

The behemoths in our industry are companies like ReturnPath , Pivotal Veracity (Unica) and Goodmail which is widely known for certified inbox placement.  These companies collaborate extensively with established ESPs and large enterprises.  However, below I’ve listed a few other respected industry resources, the majority of which have over a decade of email deliverability experience.   Each has experience with organizations that range in size from ESP startups to F500 corporations.

In their work as Email’s Lone Rangers, these consultants can most often revive a company’s deliverability afflictions, so that key members of the organization can hop back in the saddle without too much damage done to its sender reputation. 

This article was inspired by:

· Jaren Angerbauer, DeliveryVision

· Andrew Bonar,Emailexpert

· Micky Chandler, Whizardries

· Greg Kraios, Den of Deliverability

· Laura and Steve Atkins, Word to the Wise

 

"Hi-yo, Silver, away!"

 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

Repost from Unica Blog

We've heard reports from numerous ESP partners and clients that AOL has been sending back large volumes of bounces due to the deactivation of old and unused email accounts. Although the exact reasons for what constitutes an inactive email account aren't 100% clear the numbers and reports we've been seeing range anywhere from the documented 30 days in their Terms of Service (this document specifically applies to screen names but also appears to cover email) to 90 days and upwards of 6 months.

Marketers have to be very careful and take immediate action to prevent these accounts from receiving further messages because it can seriously impact their overall reputation and ability to deliver email to AOL domains:

• The number of hard bounces generated by an IP is tracked by AOL and other ISPs.
• Sending too many hard bounces is an indication of poor mailing and list hygiene practices and will negatively impact your IP reputation.
• AOL has deactivated old and unused accounts in the past. Once the accounts were deactivated they lay dormant for a period of time and then were reactivated as spam traps to monitor the behavior of mailers. Its quite possible that this could happen again with this new batch of deactivated accounts but AOL hasn't said one way or another as to what their plans are.

The deactivation appears to have started on or around May 20, 2010. Marketers should expect to see higher than normal hard bounces (due to deactivation) until they've mailed and received the bounces for all addresses in their house files that were deactivated. There isn't a specific bounce being employed for this, rather the two hard bounces normally associated with permanent failures:

550 Mailbox not found
This error indicates that the AOL Member no longer exists on AOL or the address is misspelled.

550 Mailbox not found
500 5.1.1 : Recipient address rejected: aol.com
Senders using scripts to remove unknown users automatically, should be looking for both the new error code and the old one.

Overall this is potentially a good thing. A healthy list is one free of inactive users and hard bounces. Consider this a kind of spring cleaning and get those hard bounces out of your mailing systems as soon as you can. If you are waiting for more than 1 hard bounces to mark an email address as dead, consider shortening that to 1 hard bounce for AOL bounces received in the last five days and going forward for a number of days in order to refrain from re-mailing the deactivated accounts.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Unica | Pivotal Veracity

If you haven't heard, Hotmail is looking at taking the old This is Spam button and bringing it into the 21st Century. Coming to a Hotmail inbox near you will be a new feature called "Sweep" which essentially does just that, sweep's unwanted email away from your inbox, but without the consequence of taking a negative hit to a senders reputation score.

Why are they doing this you ask? Well it is simple, many of us know there is a gray area in email that isn't outright spam, but isn't something you really care about as well like a personal note from your friends. Per Hotmail, Sweep is a virtual broom that lets you super easily "sweep" the mail you don't want out of your inbox into either folders or oblivion, leaving your inbox clean.

The great thing about the new “sweep” feature for managing gray mail is that Hotmail users can get the same result, i.e., not receive the gray mail they don’t want, but it won’t negatively impact the sender’s reputation score.

To be honest I still worry a bit here about this. Will it solve the problem of preventing ok email from being marked as spam if the users don't want it anymore even after signing up for it? Will users be more educated using this feature to know they could just as easily unsubscribe from within the email if they don't want it anymore? Could this new feature cause more confusion? perhaps...

What are your thoughts?

More on this

• PCMag
• TechRadar

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Ken Pfeiffer, Director of Deliverability for Blue Sky Factory, wrote a great article that he and I thought you might want to read.

-------------

Al Iverson is right on the mark again.

In “How Not to Respond to Public Spam Allegations”, outspoken anti-spam crusader Al Iverson shares some of the typical responses he gets when he calls someone out for spamming him.  My response to this article?  Well said, Al,  well said. I just wanted to extend (as much as I hate this phrase) kudos to Al on his points in this article.  I couldn’t agree more with his points, and in fact, what he said is directly translatable to working with an email service provider (ESP).

In my role as the director of deliverability at Blue Sky Factory, part of my job is to monitor the email traffic originating from our network (in as close to real-time as possible).  I look at many different things, including complaint rate, bounce rate, and the email’s content.  From time to time I will notice a campaign that looks a little “off” – maybe the bounce rate is higher than normal, complaints seemed to spike, or I receive divine intervention and just call it a gut feeling. At that point I’ll touch base with the client to see what’s going on.  Inevitably, the client “found” a new list that they decided to load and send.  The list, in most cases, lacks the key things needed for a successful campaign: engagement, timeliness, and relevancy.  The typical responses I receive mirror many of the things Al highlighted in his email, but I have a few more points and comments to add:

Click here to read the rest of his comments and points

Ken Pfeiffer
Director of Deliverability, Blue Sky Factory

Whether there are dozens or hundreds, the email messages that arrive daily in your inbox vie for a share of your time and attention.  Because of persistent issues with spam, messages face continued scrutiny.  In order to appeal to subscribers, messages must be authentic, carefully crafted with a specific purpose in mind.  The question is, what kinds of messages will catch subscribers’ attention and resonate with them?

 

One type of authentic email messaging is laced with charitable goals and good intentions. Subscribers find the idea of charity emotionally appealing, and they will gain satisfaction when they know that proceeds from purchases of your product or service will ultimately benefit other human beings in need.  The wisdom of partnering with a charity and creating inspirational messaging cannot be overstated.  Charity-related messaging has a proven positive effect on overall brand awareness which transcends generic “sales event” campaigns.

 

The Higher Purpose

 

Buried deep within every organization is a sense of purpose.  That sense of purpose is a voice that reverberates through the minds of conscientious employees.  The voice should be a constant reminder to an organization which perpetually asks, “What is the higher sense of purpose for our company?

 

Created by Dr. Abraham Maslow more than 50 years ago, a sense of purpose is the highest form of self-actualization. Creating email messaging with a higher sense of purpose and aligning your emails with a charitable organization will allow you to develop intimacy with your subscribers.  Advancing, the focus is no longer on a conversation with your subscriber, but instead, there is a deeper connection because both brand and subscriber are working together to reach a common goal associated with a relevant charitable organization.

 

Respected Subscribers = Fewer spam complaints

 

By respecting your messaging, you respect your subscribers.  Rather than bombarding them with mundane “30% off Campaigns,” inform them about noble endeavors, events and/or goals your organization has genuinely organized with your charitable partner. With consistent focus on your charity, the spotlight moves away from your subscribers and gravitates toward your organization’s higher purpose.  In turn, your subscribers will naturally have a higher sense of loyalty and respect toward your brand. Cultivating this type of relationship between your subscribers and your brand will undoubtedly reduce spam complaints and have a positive effect on deliverability.

 

Case studies show that when companies link a purchase to a charitable contribution, awareness increases dramatically.  As subscribers become aware of your charitable intentions, the fewer spam complaints you will receive.  In turn by activating Social Media as an extended channel, brands will dramatically enhance the overall awareness of your efforts by offering greater exposure and endorsement. Charitable efforts yield emotional stories which ignite passion for brands.

 

Play Host and Connect Emotionally

 

Let’s recall that abundance comes from good feelings that result when each encounter in the universe is based on good intentions.  When an organization plays host to a charity, your brand is developing a higher esteem for itself. By extending appreciation toward the charity, your brand becomes a conduit between your subscribers and the charitable organization.  The intention of giving allows your brand to communicate via email on a higher frequency than competitors who are not linked to a charitable cause. Imagine when a few of your subscribers donate directly to your charitable partner through a direct link from your email.  What ensues is a mutually beneficial negotiation with your charitable organization which will actively pursue recipriocation because your subscribers made direct donations, attributable to your brand.

 

The Impact of Charitable Marketing

 

Besides the increased brand awareness, and impact on credibility and consumer perceptions, charitable marketing has also proven to help the bottom line. There are numerous case studies on charitable marketing, but one stat that stands out above the rest is this:  In a recent study by Cone and Duke University found that 87% of consumers said they would switch from one brand to another comparable brand based on its association with a charitable cause.  Also, when consumers were aware of a given company’s charitable efforts, they consistently rated the company more highly in terms of trust, endorsements, bonding, and innovation.

 

So, what’s the best way to align your brand with a charitable organization? Ask your subscribers!

 

The opportunity exists further to develop greater intimacy with your subscribers simply by surveying them? Whittle your list to four and ask your subscribers, which charity they would like your brand to be associated with?  Again, by allowing your subscribers to choose the charity, you are empowering them to make significant decisions about the future of your organization; which is the highest form of respect.  

 

This article was inspired by Melinda Krueger of Ogilvy One.

 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reposted from the Unica Blog

The last week has been an exciting one filled with travel, a speaking engagement, meeting new people and a few I've never met face to face and a spate of calls from recruiters seeking Deliverability Stormtroopers. Suddenly I feel like the popular kid in high school, which is great as it's making up for the relative anonymity of my formative years. The rash of phone calls and "in-network" messages has left me scratching my head and wondering, why now? What's going on? And what have all these companies been doing before they started their search?

A few positions as I learned were for the inevitable attrition that occurs at every company, people leave, move on and have to be replaced with qualified personnel to pick up the good fight. However, there seemed to be several that were just getting onto the bandwagon and deciding that it was time to dedicate a resource to email deliverability. Well to those that are looking to replace individuals I wish you luck, there seems to be more demand than available bodies, but that's always the case for a niche position. For those that are just getting into the mix and deciding to throw money at the problem I applaud your efforts and desire but I also implore you to consider the following.

The Myth Of The Bat Phone

I fear that some of these new position and hiring managers might still be under the impression that an ideal  deliverability candidate is nothing more than a walking Rolodex of phone numbers to the guardians of the inbox: postmasters. For those of you that still think there's such a thing as a bat phone I'm here to tell you, change that bat channel and stop drinking the kool-aid.

Deliverability is not predicated on who you know or how many cases of beer you send to an ISP; it's within your grasp and most certainly squarely on your shoulders to improve. The fact is that ISPs are strapped for resources just like marketers. It's a lean market and there simply aren't enough people around to adequately staff postmaster teams.

To help marketers help themselves many ISPs have created a wealth of information on their sites to get the job done in lieu of picking up a phone. From an automated reputation checking tool on AOL's postmaster pages to the bulk sender guidelines of Gmail and Yahoo!'s list of bounce codes. These are the real keys to the kingdom and information that every company should be researching, cataloging and incorporating into their marketing programs.

Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes, Turn & Face Your Mail

If you're not ready to change how you do business, or your internal culture regarding deliverability I implore you not to waste someone's time by anointing them the deliverability messiah. Deliverability is not a stop gap measure or a cure-all for bad mail practices. The value that a qualified deliverability person brings to any company is being an advocate for best practices and a check and balance for over-eager mail practices, ok, the dumb stuff we all want to do in the name of ROI.

That list you found on a laptop in a drawer at the back of the store room is not going to help your bottom line. Quite the contrary it may be something of a slap in the face if not a 2x4 to the head. Your deliverability storm trooper is your conscience, they are there to help you help yourself. Be prepared to make some important changes that may mean you send less mail but the quality and the responsiveness of that smaller list will certainly be far superior to the flood of marketing that disengaged your audience in the first place. Oh and remember all those hard bounces you thought might deliver if you clicked your heels enough time, he or she will most certainly put a stop to that!

Invest In The Right Tools

I can't stress this enough. Your deliverability jedi needs a light saber, an elegant weapon as Obi-Wan put it, not a crude blaster. Ok, but sometimes we have to start with the crude before we can arrive at elegance. However you get there, just do it, invest in your own reporting capability, give this person the tools he or she needs to help you achieve delivery bliss. This will include access to log files, reporting like you've never seen and some really great delivery and rendering tools.

Consider joining appropriate industry groups like MAAWG and the EEC. It's important to understand the developments that surround messaging, not just email marketing, but the kinds of things that ISPs face on a daily basis. Keep this in mind as it will help frame the problem, marketers talk about deliverability, ISPs talk about messaging abuse. Legitimate mail, and that stuff that barely passes the sniff test, makes up a fraction, a really small fraction, of the billions of pieces of email that are blasted across the net every single day. The problem of spam and false positives is far more complicated than you might think at first. This is where your deliverability expert can step in, help educate internal users and external clients and set proper expectations.

Keep in mind, we're all in the same boat floating on the same planet, well most of us anyway, and striving toward the same maxed out ROI, but there's the force and the dark side. Be prepared to be humble in this endeavor and you will do well. Oh and consequently if you know of anyone that meets the above criteria, we'd be interested in speaking to them too.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Unica | Pivotal Veracity

Reposted from Unica Blog

We've been monitoring what appears to be a deliverability delay at the ISP. Since about 7am PST/10am EST, mail bound for AOL has been delayed without any bounces sent back to the mailer. This scenario is generally indicative of a problem at the ISP; when the issue is corrected the queues will drain and mail will arrive to the intended recipient.

However, in the mean time don't expect to see any bounces, or any clicks or reads for that matter until the message queues are cleared of mail. We ran the following delivery chart across all our clients showing the impact of the delay. You can see that around 9am CST delivery to the ISP began to plummet. In the past AOL has asked marketers, when the problems were bad and there were massive issues on the back end, to slow down or halt mailings to their domain to allow them to fix the issues. There have been no such requests made, nor any announcements of any problems so we're assuming the problem is well in hand—or at the very least, hoping that's the case.

AOL Delivery 4/27/2010 12:00am - 12:00pm CST

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Unica | Pivotal Veracity

Usually, before a couple marries, they engage in hundreds of intimate, layered conversations, in an effort to establish realistic expectations and build a foundation for a successful marriage.  The same principle can and should apply in the context of a business partnership.  As with any partner, in business or otherwise, at the outset of each relationship is a set of clearly defined goals.  Also, and very often unexpectedly, misunderstandings occur and can lead to a painful breakdown in communication, which often leads to resentment and, at times, permanent separation.

At the Email Insider Summit last week, it became evident that, after four exciting holes of Golf on Sanibel Island, it was time to abort because of heavy rain. What followed was a conversation that was far more engaging than golf: it was a conversation that transpired between Jeremy Swift of BlueHornet, Dave Baker of Razorfish and myself about why marketers leave ESPs.

Reason 1: Unrealistic Expectations

According to Dave, the relationship between a marketer and an ESP usually begins to deteriorate after about 18-24 months.  The “marriage” between ESP and marketer goes through a honeymoon phase, during which everything is promised by the ESP to the marketer, including, but not limited to, increased deliverability to the inbox, cannibalistic pricing, dedicated professional services teams and streamlined integration.  Because of the mission-critical nature of email marketing, if these expectations are not satisfactorily met, a breakdown in communication occurs. As a result, resentment ensues, leading to separation and, ultimately, divorce. This course of events has negative effects for both parties; communication breakdowns leave the marketer feeling bewildered and the ESP scrambling to find another client.

What to Do:

Set proper expectations.  Account Managers and professional services teams at competent ESPs must set clear, realistic guidelines outlining what the client should expect over the course of the relationship, including a well defined timetable.  Milestones should be clearly defined at the beginning, and once they are met, they should be celebrated.  Sometimes ESPs can get into a mischief where if the client is hooked, they can capitulate and ultimately flip on pricing since the cost of switching would be prohibitive.  But, as with more casual relationships these days, it’s easy to switch.  Clients don’t have to sign on until death do they part.

Reason 2: Lack of Dedicated Account Management

Let’s face it. The growth trajectory of the email industry is such that providing an adequate support infrastructure is challenging for ESPs.  According to Jeremy Swift of Blue Hornet, marketers are frustrated with the overall lack of highly skilled customer service representatives and attention to detail from ESPs.  This is a direct result of the prolific growth of the industry.  Additionally, the lack of ability to scale efficiently is a direct result of the organizational challenges ESPs encounter.  The inability to allocate enough competent account managers to proactively service client accounts leads to bitter disappointment. ESPs are forced to confront several questions, such as “Should we offer platform training? Are there costs involved? Is there an active support community that clients can instantly engage with?”

What to Do:

The industry will face continued realignment/consolidation, and ESPs must be prepared to deal with this natural turbulence.  To counteract these effects, if you are an ESP that vows 24/7 customer service, you must ensure that someone is available at all times to provide feedback. This is necessary because marketers will test and track the level of service they are receiving, including the response time of support queries. With 150+ ESPs to consider, it’s a definite buyer’s market, and clients will seek timely resolutions, robust platform features, and more importantly personal references.  Outstanding customer service will ensure that your ESP stands out positively to clients in the midst of an increasingly crowded field.  Just as in marriage, prompt, clear communication is the cornerstone of a successful client/ESP relationship.

Reason 3: Insufficient Complementary Services

At the Email Insider Summit last week, we learned that venture capitalists and angel investors will partner with competent ESPs and offer highly relevant complementary services that are congruent to the ESPs core group of offerings, such as social, mobile, database management and the ability to scale globally.  Proficient ESPs may have dedicated in-house design teams, professional services teams, technicians, and deliverability consultants that work harmoniously on behalf of clients.  On the other hand, if an ESP has disparate and/or contrasting services, the relationship will be erratic and communication will suffer due to additional points of failure. This again leads to added frustration and more aggravated clients.  Finally, as a point of reference, if an ESP’s platform does not offer social media integration and/or the user interface is too rigid or complex, marketers will likely withdraw, resulting in “divorce.”     

What to Do:

When shopping for a new ESP, carefully weigh these aforementioned factors and identify if they align with your marketing objectives.  It’s important to understand explicitly what these services mean by asking the right questions. Before entering this type of relationship, it’s crucial to understand how the ESP’s services will be executed in the grand scope your email initiatives.  For example, a good technical services team should help define your requirements and might offer a customized roadmap as you accumulate advanced data points from your subscribers.  For instance, they might ask you to tag each link in your creative with an acronym, to locate a micro segment that is highly profitable on your list. It’s important to know who you are as an ESP and as a client.  Clone your bright spots, and play to your strengths.

Arranged Marriages will likely Fail

Finally, remember that collaborating effectively with your ESP should alleviate some pain points. Through effective collaboration, you should be able to determine which complementary services you currently need, and which of those you will require in the future. Finally, arranged marriages don’t work well in the Email Industry.:) You’ll want to take your ESP out for a test drive and evaluate the product in your own environment. Test driving different platforms will lead to a more confident option in a long term partner.  It’s important that you know what you are getting into before you make a commitment to “marry” a particular ESP. But as with marriage, if you take proper precautions before committing, you will pave the way to a long and successful relationship.        

Special Thanks to Dave Baker of Razorfish, Jeremy Swift of BlueHornet and Christy Barret Weymouth of ExactTarget for their contributions.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

The Email Experience Council (EEC) has just scheduled its yearly legislative update webinar on May 19, 2010 from 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM EST.

If you attended last year's webinar event, you found the advice and updates very useful. Check out Return Path's Stephanie Miller post from last years webinar to see what was said.

This year's webinar will cover:

• The proposed expansion of powers of the FTC and any impact on CAN-SPAM
• Permission legislation revival in Canada
• Behavioral targeting protections under consideration by the FTC
• Online privacy legislation under consideration in the House of Representatives
• Five-year review of Children Protection Act and how website content affects email marketing (or any outreach marketing)
• Security breach, data management and identity protection legislation.

Speakers:

• Tom Bartel - CPO & General Manager of Accreditation Services, Return Path
• Rick Buck - Vice President Privacy/ISP Relations, CIPP, e-Dialog
• Jerry Cerasale - Senior VP, Government Affairs, DMA
• Dennis Dayman - Chief Privacy Officer, Eloqua
• Lois Greisman - Director of the Division of Marketing Practices, FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection
• Stephanie Miller - Vice Chair, eec; VP, Market Development, Return Path

Need a small price break? Use discount EECS on the event registration page.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Our good friend, Ken Pfeiffer Director of Deliverability for Blue Sky Factory, asked us this year if he could do a guest blog post here and of course we jumped on that great opportunity to have a well respected and trusted person in the industry post for us. Thanks to Ken and the Blue Sky Factory team for sharing this!

___________________________ 

As the Director of Deliverability for Blue Sky Factory, an Email Service Provider (ESP), the question I get asked the most often is, "how fast can you send my mail?"

This is a great question with a very simply answer; one that is the same every time I respond: We can deliver as fast as the receiving mail server will accept. This can be a little difficult for some people to understand. 

Most of us are accustomed to near instantaneous delivery. Think about it. If I send a one-off email to you, it's likely that you'll receive it within minutes, if not seconds. There may be a slight delay, but for the most part after you click your send button that email shows up in quick order to the recipient. ESPs on the other hand are senders of bulk email. So rather than just sending email to one recipient at a time, ESP’s send and transmit multiple emails at one time to the receiving mail server.   When I say ‘multiple’ I mean hundreds or thousands or even millions!

Nearly all ESPs use Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs). An MTA is software that is used to transmit email from the sender server to the receiving server.  ESPs use MTAs to optimize email delivery and a good MTA will allow configuration based on the limits of the receiving mail server.  The larger Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have published settings for bulk mailers that will outline how many emails over what period of time they will accept.   Many ISP publish these settings on their postmaster FAQ pages for example (http://security.comcast.net/get-help/comcast-post-master-page.aspx  and http://postmaster.info.aol.com/faq/mailerfaq.html#msgconn).  These are the ISP’s way of saying – if you want to send bulk mail to us, this how you should do it. 

Take for example AOL – they state you can’t send email to more than 100 recipients per message and no more than 1,000 recipients per connection.  The senders MTA should be configured with these values in order to follow with AOL’s specific limits.  If you try and send 2,000 emails to AOL over one connection they will start rejecting your email.  Another scenario to mention is rate limiting.  Some ISP’s rate limit the number of messages you can send for a given time period.  Road Runner limits you to 1,000 messages per hour to non-whitelisted IP’s.  So if you have to send 10,000 emails to Road Runner subscribers you better make sure you only send to 1,000 per hour or you will see your email bounce.  If an ESP were to ignore these settings then most likely Road Runner would begin to reject connections and the emails would bounce.   A bounced email is not what a sender is paying an ESP for. Part of our job is to help clients give their emails every opportunity - for a technology perspective - to be delivered. Whether their emails get blocked or bulked due to content is another story. 

Another factor that can influence delivery time is simply just how busy is the receiving ISP.  ISP’s receive massive amounts of email daily, they like you have limited amount of computing power at their disposal. 

They are only capable of processing so many emails.  Think of it this way: ISP’s are a lot like your local highway.  It’s usually pretty easy driving, except during rush hour where there are just not enough lanes of traffic to handle all of the cars. So a drive that normally takes 15 minutes might end up taking 45 minutes to an hour.  During heavy marketing periods (think Christmas) campaigns that normally in your subscribers’ inbox in 10 minutes might take 30 minutes. 

Keep in mind that each ISP will have different limits, so proper MTA configuration is essential.  If you have concerns or questions, ask your ESP about their connection settings.   From the sender standpoint the best advice I can give is to plan your campaigns carefully with the above factors in mind. If you have a time-sensitive email campaign, be sure to give yourself plenty of lead time to avoid any congestion around sending thresholds and seasonal volume. You may want to consider breaking up your send into a few batches.

I hope I was able to shed a little light on some of the inner workings of email and how it can affect your campaigns and provide a full answer to a question I’m asked all the time. 

___________________________

Ken Pfeiffer

Director of Deliverability

Blue Sky Factory, Inc.

 

Don’t just deliver, engage!