Tip # 2009.012 - Find out what your recipients think about your email.
The Email Advisor

Email really is a relationship channel - and as such, should be conversational. To achieve true engagement from your audience you need to encourage some two-way communication streams outside of the ability to hit "reply" to your message - in the off chance that someone is on the other end of that email address.

• Keep it short: People are busy and they are doing you a favor by responding to the survey - so be considerate of their time. Keeping the survey short and sweet will be appreciated by the respondents and minimize abandoners for you.


• Be ready to deliver: The questions you ask will likely set some expectations for the respondents. Asking questions about points such as frequency or messaging language may cause recipients to believe they are setting a preference and not just providing a response.


• Share the responses: Bring the process full circle. Give recipients some insight in to what you learned from them and how you plan to leverage the insights gained. Getting customer input is just the beginning of the process - sharing responses and acting on it (openly with the respondent base) proves to the recipient time was not wasted.

So in true Email Advisor fashion - we are asking for your input about Tip of the Week. We don't send this out just because we can - we want to actually provide you with information you can use, and if we are missing the mark we need to know. So if you could take a quick, two-minute survey it would mean the world to us! We'll share our findings with you in next weeks Tip.

Proceed to Survey>>

So yes, tell-a-friend system are continuing to be in Dutch (trouble), but more recently are now being regulated in the Netherlands (Dutch) as well.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission last year approved four new rule provisions under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM or the Act). The provisions were intended to clarify the Act’s requirements. One of those four provions stated that as a general matter, if a seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding (tell-a-friend) a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act’s requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests. A web page that has a “Click here to forward” feature that allows someone to forward a message or link to someone else (and that does not provide any encouragement to do so) would not be considered an inducement.

It was reported last week in the Netherlands that there are now joint regulations on tell-a-friend web site created by the Dutch Telecommunications Authority (DTA) and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DDPA)

As some of you are aware already, in most countries outside the U.S., privacy is a fundamental right and nearly if not all programs/process to share data require an OPT-IN. The basic principle is that the sending of unsolicited electronic messages for a commercial, non-commercial or charitable purpose is not allowed without the demonstrable, prior consent of the recipient. Because the recipients of tell-a-friend emails have not given their demonstrable, prior consent to receive these emails, “Tell-a-friend” systems in principle violate that right.

The question at hand that created these regulations was whether or not tell-a-friend forms are allowed under Dutch privacy laws. In the new regulations the DTA and DDPA mandated that tell-a-friend forms are ONLY allowed if;

1. The communication takes place entirely at the Internet user’s own initiative. The controller of the website does not hold out the prospect of any (chance of) reward or other advantage, neither to the sender nor to the recipient. So in other words, the website site visitors sends the email invite at their own initiative.
2. The website operator does NOT offer rewards to its visitors for using the forward to a friend form. 
3. It must be clear to the recipient who the initiating Internet user of the email is.
4. The visitor must have the opportunity to read the entire message that is sent in his or her name before he or she decides to send it, in such a way that he or she can take responsibility for the personal contents of the message.  
5. The data controller or website operator may not store the email addresses and other personal data of recipients. 

Most of these points seem to be easy to comply with, but as you see in the U.S. you can still use the forms if you entice someone to forward, but in the Netherlands if I read this right you can NOT even use the forms if you entice as stated in point 2.

Something else that comes to mind, does point 4 REQUIRE you to allow them to edit the message? I would assume no. Just allow them to read and cancel the process if they do NOT like the contents.

These new regulations apply to all websites that send email invitations via tell-a-friend forms to Dutch email accounts. So it sounds like this would affect Dutch web sites and international wen sites that have Dutch visitors from what I read.

So this means then you need to either flag email addresses with .NL at the end of them or ones with Dutch postal addresses to them. Failure to comply would would be handled by the Dutch Data Protection Authority it seems.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Don't miss the eec's webinar on April 29th, New FTC Chair, New Rules? Update Your Email & Digital Strategy. This great event will feature speakers from the FTC, DMA, Return Path, e-Dialog and Eloqua. We'll provide more information in the coming weeks. 

Jerry Cerasale, DMA

TBD, FTC

Rick Buck, e-Dialog

Dennis Dayman, Eloqua

Stephanie Miller, Return Path

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

I have just read yet another prediction of the death of email. Mostly I just ignore them, but today’s eMarketer Daily with the subject line: Social Nets and Blogs More Popular Than E-Mails is so shocking in its (mis)use of research and gratuitous brownnosing of social networking; that I felt forced to respond immediately.

The article begins as follows: “In the US and several other countries, more people use social networks and blogs than use e-mail. Does that mean the days of e-mail as an effective marketing tool are numbered?”

WHAT? More people use social networks and blogs than use e-mail!!!

My BS meter sprang into life immediately - for starters it is impossible to sign up for any blog or social network without an email address. Then you have to factor in the fact that all social networks and blogs etc. use email to reach the people (most people in the world) who DON’T spend every minute of every day reading blogs or their Facebook page.

So how can there be more users of Social media than email?
  
I decided to take a closer look. The article is based on a piece of research by Nielson entitled Global Faces and Networked Places and shows a chart as evidence of this staggering claim.

I found that the research:

-         does NOT claim that more people USE Member communities than email
-         does not define active reach
-         does not define email
-         does not equate active reach with unique users
-         shows that email use is growing faster than search

Even if “active reach” was a measure of the number of unique users does anyone truly believe software manufacturers sites are more popular than all social networking sites and blogs put together?

Apart from that, what I find most irritating is how lazy commentators become when they see something that panders to their emotional beliefs; especially when it comes to the flavour of the month!

To quote Warren Buffet “it's wonderful to promote new industries because they are very promotable. It’s hard to promote investment in a mundane product. It's much easier to promote an esoteric product, even particularly one [that doesn’t make money], because there is no quantitative guideline.”

Dela Quist
CEO Alchemy Worx
The Email Marketing Agency

Tip # 2009.011 - If you want to be found, send up a flare.
The Email Advisor

Let's face it, you're everywhere these days, or virtually everywhere. As companies scrutinize their marketing and event budgets more closely, you need to be able to rally a crowd for the events you are at - physically or virtually. So why not let your customers, prospects and subscribers know where they can find you and interact with you whether it's a trade show, industry event or even a webinar.

• Get some face time: Depending on the circumstance, your audience may be planning to attend an event you will be sponsoring or exhibiting at but may not know you are going to be there as well. Let them know where they can find you and what you will be doing while you are there. Closing deals over drinks is one of my favorite past-times.

• Make it valuable: When you are asking folks to take time out of their normal day, you better make sure it is worth their while. If what your offering your audience is something they can get from you any day of the week - then why would they bother?

• Demonstrate your expertise: Let folks know when you will be speaking or have been cited in an article as a subject matter expert. This validates existing customers' decision to do business with you and may motivate possible prospects to convert. This is no time to be humble. Brag a little!

Case in point, our founder, Kara Trivunovic will be presenting Email Design Best Practices with the webinar's host Real Magnet on Wednesday, March 25 at 2PM EST. She will be demystifying email design for the B2B marketer. And if you know Kara at all, you know it will be an action packed 45-minutes!

We really think you should register now!

My friend DJ Waldow does an excellent job of pointing out the fact that not following what you say you will or shall do with customers information within your privacy policy can get you into trouble with the end-users not agree with the mail they receive. However, I would also add to this piece that you could as well get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or a Data Protection Authority (DPA) in some countries by performing an unfair or deceptive trade trade practice. Not following process or promises within in your stated privacy policy can violate Section 5 of the FTC Act. Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the marketplace.

Per the FTC's site on Unfairness & Deception, a key part of the Commission's privacy program is making sure companies keep the promises they make to consumers about privacy, including the precautions they take to secure consumers' personal information. To respond to consumers' concerns about privacy, many Web sites post privacy policies that describe how consumers’ personal information is collected, used, shared, and secured. Indeed, almost all the top 100 commercial sites now post privacy policies. Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the Commission has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers’ personal information. The Commission has also used its unfairness authority to challenge information practices that cause substantial consumer injury.

Some Enforcement Examples:

http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/promises_enf.html

Make sure folks you have someone on staff that can understand privacy and not just email best practices.

A good information or privacy officer must:

• Hold a senior position
• Be familiar with how information is collected, stored, used and disclosed in the business
• They must understand how privacy impacts your business and it's customer
• Know how to ensure your company is in line at all times with it  stated polices
• Be experienced with client relations
• Be comfortable with legal matters   

This is a great piece DJ! Thanks for putting it out there and reporting on some of the industry discussions at the conferences.

--------

Who Cares About Privacy Policies?

March 17th, 2009 by DJ Waldow

Privacy Policies.

Everyone has them (even Bronto). You can usually find them in the fine print at the bottom of pretty much every website.

When I first wrote that last sentence, I was kinda joking, but then decided to test it out. Try it. Go to your favorite website. Maybe it’s Google or ESPN or CNN. Scroll to the bottom. I promise that you’ll see a link to some form of a privacy policy. Trust me (or google “privacy policy” now).

But, what do “privacy policies” really mean? Who actually follows them to the letter or even spirit of the law? I’d argue that the answer to that last question is very very few.

I sat in on a session at the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit 2009 yesterday afternoon and heard the following statement from a representative of a major marketer when asked about how they adhere to their email privacy policy.

“[Company ABC] has a pretty liberal privacy policy.”

It was followed by an uncomfortable, somewhat awkward laugh, then silence. I’m not sure, but I may have even seen a “wink wink.” That type of statement worries me…and it should also make you - as a consumer - uncomfortable. When thinking about email marketing, what exactly does “pretty liberal privacy policy” mean?

As a marketer, if I have a “pretty liberal [email] privacy policy” does that mean I don’t need to honor the rights of my subscribers? Does it mean that I can send them any email I choose because my privacy policy states it is okay?  Does it mean I can send third party emails? Because I have a privacy policy, can I just do whatever I want with “my” data or “my” customers?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you may be experiencing deliverability issues. After all, much of good deliverability is about sending relevant, timely, targeted emails to those who have asked for it. Loose adherence to privacy policies tends to break one - if not many - of the above adjectives. If you think slapping that privacy policy on your website is the same as earning permission to email those who use it, think again.

Is it time to review your privacy policy? What do you think?

*Happy St. Patrick’s Day

DJ Waldow

Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

------

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

So, some of you know I finally was able to "escape" the house this past week to attend the IAPP Summit in Washington D.C. and at the same time I attended the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) 2009 Gala where the attendees where given an induction to some of the potential changes to behavioral advertising.

As you may recall in a previous blog post I discussed changes to permission rules in the U.S future in regards to behavior advertising/tracking and the mechanism/policies behind those. In that blog post I explained some of the changes that our new FTC Chairman, Jon Leibowitz, is currently reviewing/proposing in the upcoming FTC inter-working's.

Chair Leibowitz once again reviewed some of his wishes and thoughts at the CDT gala last week with us, but at the same time in another speech at the gala Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, indicated that he intends to create an online privacy bill that would include behavioral advertising as well as all collections of information online. The bill itself would introduce a first party opt-out requirement for sharing of data and an opt-in for affiliates and non first parties for sharing of information, including transfers and collections from third parties. “Internet users should be able to know what information is collected about them and have the opportunity to opt out”. This could hurt a number of advertising practices for some of you or even email programs depending on how you track opens/clicks and refer to websites for turnover.

No bill has been written yet, but Boucher wants to make website owners disclose how they collect and use data, and give users the option to opt out of any data collection. Now, if I recall? don't most of us do that now in self-regulation? I know many do in fact... My privacy policy states that.

It takes a lot of backing to get a bill to the President's desk and if I also recall again I haven't heard Obama's administration really making privacy a big issues on his list of things to "clean-up" in the White House. Of course, President Obama DID pick Leibowitz himself to lead the FTC who would regulate such aspects of privacy regulations and who is a long-time privacy advocate himself.

Make sure you read that post I was talking about above. Make sure you beginning to look at some of the widely accepted self-regulated practices of information sharing, processing, permissions, etc. As the post discusses, many people, business, and trade groups are working to tighten their practices so maybe they can prove to the regulators that a bill is NOT necessary.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

buy my own what? is that a new car model with the latest gas savings technology from Volkswagen? or is it the latest email coalition trying to get me to give them money for membership or attend another overdone and repeated panel on email best practices? or is it the ability to make my own mark on this thing wonderful thing we call the Internet?

Well, the latter is a better answer.

One piece of advice for readers, if your a marketer or non-techie... please read this post till the end. I know it contains some icky technical stuff, but you should be aware of it. In fact, after this I suggest you go find your technical group and hug a geek and discuss. I know that techies and marketers tend not to mingle in this space, but as things like what you are about to learn keep popping up, both sides should be more involved in each others work.

Ok, now follow me on this because this Internet thing isn't as easy as making a content piece, hitting that old send button, eyes closed, and hoping for ROI.

A "generic top-level domain" (gTLD) consists of well-known extensions like .com, .info, .net, .edu, .gov, .mil, and .org domains. 

With me so far?

Overall, these are designated as generic-restricted, and registrations within them are supposed to require proof of eligibility within the guidelines set for each. These are maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use on the Internet. IANA is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, root zone management for the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet protocol assignments. Basically, they are the people who maintain IP address and domain names structure we use today. It is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN. ICANN (pronounced - eye-can) is a non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably IANA.

Confused yet? don't be... ICANN bascially is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers like IP address and domains.

So why am I tell all this to you? Well, ICANN is working on a new procedure (Warning Science Content) that will allow any company or persons to register their own gTLD like .com for their own purposes. ICANN's new plan would expand the number of potential gTLDs by several orders of magnitude, and would allow for extensions 3-63 characters long. Pretty much whatever you or any companies may want. Somewhere between 200-800 new domain name extensions could be purchased/created.

So instead of being limited to gTLDs which describe the purpose of traffic on the domain, such as .gov, .edu, end users or companies could apply for their own top level domains. The city of Dallas could be .Dallas; the Texas Rangers could claim .TexasRangers, Coke might by .coke, Calloway might swipe .golf or.calloway, and GM (if still around) might try for .cars or .gm.

Basically for 25,000 or even more (180,000+) depending on the number of applications or value for a particular gTLD you can buy .eloqua. So in essence my company could buy .eloqua and then create on our web-servers and email systems the structure marketing.eloqua, sales.eloqua, delivery.eloqua, support.eloqua, etc. Would be just like today how we might put up marketing.eloqua.com or sales.eloqua.com, except we own the "space" or gTLD and control all contents within it.

Just as with intellectual property applications, there will be a public opposition period. There are four (4) stated reasons for opposition:

• String Confusion
• Existing Legal Rights
• Morality and Public Order
• Community Objection

Another few concerns from my point of view and some discussion with others in DC last week at the IAPP Summit.

• How do you apply tracking cookies to gTLD since it's only applied to the domain like eloqua.com.
• How does a browser function like in Google's Chrome with a single fully intergrated address/search bar tell you if this is a search term for att with google results or you want att.att or mobile.att or att.com as a website?
• How can we effectively teach end users what is really Bank of America email? does Bank of America now work under .bank? bankofamerica.bank? do all banks work under that?
• Where does email authentication then fit into all this? Does email from Bank of America come from bankofamerica.com, bankofamerica.bank? accounts.bankofamerica? 
• Will things like .bank be effectively managed in terms of accountability and security with what banks might be able to be listed under that gTLD?

To be perfectly honest, I don't see the benefit in doing this. This is NO small change. This just opens the flood gates to fraud and continuous erosion of the email accountability and security that we already are treading water with.

Why is ICANN doing this? MONEY! 

Applying for a new domain will cost an estimated $185,000, with an additional $75,000 a year fee to keep the domain registered. You do the math... 800 possible gTLD's? $148 million in applicant fees and $60 million a year "rent." 

Is the money really worth the problems? the continuous erosion of certain aspect of the Internet like email? Would love your thoughts on this.

 

ICANN’s plans to start accepting applications in the second quarter of 2009 and role all of this out in one year. So your companies may want to consider depending on needs and money if you want to buy your own mark on the Internet.

Wonder which one of us will buy .email first?

Anyone want .spammer?

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Your e-mail recipients are ready, willing, and able to whitelist corporate e-mail senders, but your chance of reaching the winner's circle is about one in four, according to a new study of consumer e-mail behavior and perceptions.

Database marketing agency Merkle's "View from the Inbox 2009" study shows recipients will take steps to make sure the e-mail they want gets delivered to their inboxes, but not every sender qualifies for preferential treatment.

How can you boost your chance of scoring inbox placement? Relevance and frequency still matter. Giving recipients ample opportunity to whitelist your sending address doesn't hurt, either.

First, a few statistics from the Merkle report:

• Whitelisting goes mainstream: 53 percent of consumer e-mail recipients have added at least one permission-e-mail sender to their address books.
• Recipients are picky: On average, only 25 percent, or one in four companies, gets whitelisted.
• Irrelevance is top opt-out driver: 75 percent said they unsubscribed for that reason, while 73 percent opted out because of high frequency.

These statistics highlight how your deliverability depends on maintaining a good relationship by sending relevant e-mail at acceptable frequencies.

Relevance, however, isn't so easy to achieve until you accept that it's what your subscribers, not you, say it is. This means e-mail that meets your customers' needs and answers their questions.

Are You Listening Where Subscribers Are Talking?

As an e-mail marketer, you probably spend a lot of time making sure your e-mail looks and says exactly what you want, both in content and appearance. But do your messages answer your subscribers' most pressing needs and questions?

These next strategies can uncover questions your customers are asking and guide you in devising strategies to answer them:

• Ask your front-line customer-service people what the number one issue your customers contact you about is. Answer customer questions before they arise. Listen in on phone calls or review recorded calls and transcripts. Look for topics that you can turn into messages and insert into your customer-lifecycle messaging program.
• Be sure your landing page and e-mail opt-in process support your highest traffic-generating search terms. Someone who queries a search engine is actually asking a question. Does your landing page answer those questions or direct visitors to the answers? Also, your landing page should invite visitors to subscribe to your e-mail. This way, your automated "welcome" message can answer more questions with company or contact information and links back into your Web site. This makes your first contact with new subscribers or customers more relevant and sets expectations for future messages.
• Use survey data to improve relevance. Include quick polls or questions in your regular messages, or send standalone surveys, then store the responses in the respondent's profile. Use it to improve segmentation or to create dynamic content for future e-mail.
• Ask the right questions at opt-in. Watch for incorrect assumptions. Gender is a classic misleader. I often shop online for gifts for my wife as well as my own needs. My profile says I'm a man; but if you don't follow where I go on your site, you'll miss opportunities. Ask me which product categories I prefer to shop, or track where I'm clicking and look for broad variances from my profile data. You'll likely send me more relevant messages.
• Create messages triggered by page visits and time on site. Someone who moves all over your site or records a long time on a single page and leaves without converting might have unresolved questions. Approach this two ways: Create a hover form often used for acquisition (like a virtual salesperson asking, "How can I help you?") or, if the visitor is a subscriber, trigger an e-mail follow-up message with contact information for more help or a targeted offer, such as a discount on the product they viewed.

Don't Forget: Ask for the Add

The Merkle study shows people are willing to whitelist. So keep asking them to do this, but also promote it early and often:

• Add instructions at opt-in, before confirmation. Don't wait until the "welcome" mail goes out (but do include them there, for backup).
• Explain the benefit: "Don't miss your preferred-subscriber specials! Add our e-mail address to your address book now."
• Include the request in your e-mail template but not in the pre-header. Reserve that for your offer or key message information. The second line is fine, or include in your regular administrative copy.

Find more address-book advice in this earlier ClickZ column, "Address-Book Additions Boost Inbox Arrivals."

Stefan Pollard - Responsys

ClickZ Article

Here we are in the worst economy of our professional lives, and yet every day in my inbox I see marketers making it too hard for subscribers to act on email messages.  If you want to keep your revenue at a lackluster level this quarter, try some of these "sales prevention" strategies – all examples taken from real live messages in our inboxes this week. 

Don’t laugh.  I mean no disrespect.  There are many reasons why marketers don’t always follow best practices. Some of them are legitimate.  However, these practices will take a toll on your sender reputation, inbox deliverability and response rates.  So if you are going to do it anyway, at least know the risks involved.

Review this list of "don'ts" and if you see yourself doing any of these, please reconsider.  Be sure you aren’t actually preventing sales from happening!

(NOTE:  These practices are not good.  They will prevent sales from happening!  Avoid them!)

1.  Put everything into an image.  That way, your subscribers can’t see anything when the email opens, or find the call to action.

2. Hide the links.  Use really soft colors or don’t call them out with highlight colors or underlines. Oh, and don’t put any links on your images, either.

3. Clutter up the template with lots of sidebar offers and secondary news.   Every touch point is an opportunity, so be sure to tell your ENTIRE story in every message.  Don’t let your subscribers focus on the main message, instead, distract them or confuse them into inaction.

4. Make the unsubscribe link in the footer impossible to find. Put it in a really small font.  Bury it in a paragraph of other type.  Call it some other thing, like “Feedback” or “Preferences.”

5. Don’t bother to sign up for ISP complaint feedback loops – easily available from most major North American ISPs.  And if you do get that data, don’t worry about actually using it to clean your file of complainers.  Consider the complainers a bunch of whiners, and don’t review the data to see if perhaps a particular source or type of customer is most likely to complain.  Keep your mailing pace and content the same, even if you realize that it may be untenable to some of your subscribers.

6. Segmentation is for expensive channels.  Even though response and revenue will increase dramatically when targeted messages are sent to key segments, it’s cheap and easy to just blast the whole file.  Take a short term view of this – we need revenue now, and who cares that in future our file will be less valuable.

7. Send a welcome message using a different brand than where the subscriber signed up (e.g.: the corporate brand), and do a lot of heavy selling in it.    Many new subscribers have little knowledge of the products or benefits, so push hard on the sales message even though they have no basis for which to evaluate.

8. Be vague about frequency and message type.  Subscribers who are in the dark about how often you send and what types of messages to expect will surely be delighted to get a bunch of mail about things they didn’t want or expect.  Although that confusion drives higher complaints for many other brands, which can depress response for all your mail, your brand is well enough known to withstand it.

9. Pull out any old file you can find – even inquiries from five years ago.  You don’t (legally - in the U.S) need permission to mail them, so blast away an introductory letter and see if you can dig up a few new leads.    A lot of these messages will bounce, many others will complain and that will have a negative impact on your ability to deliver to your main file.  Most all of them will have forgotten that they ever were interested in your company.  But hey, it’s pretty cheap to send to them, so might as well try it, even if it prevents more engaged subscribers from seeing the message because your deliverability dropped and everything went to bulk mail. 

10. In this economy, people are bargain hunting. So anything on sale – whether it’s relevant or not to the interests or past purchases of the subscriber – send to everyone on the file.  Sales are good service.

11. If you have a catalog or offline list which doesn’t  include email addresses, append email address to this file and send them a note welcoming them to the email family.    Assume that just because these customers have a relationship with you that they want to receive email promotions.  We might piss them off enough to prevent their buying from our catalogs anymore, but at least our email file will have grown.

Just typing out this list makes me blush with embarrassment and shame for our industry.  I know there is a lot of pressure to optimize short term revenue, especially in a recession.  But I do care about the email channel and our long term viability in the marketing mix.  I know you do, too.  Let's all stay focused on the goal:  great subscriber experiences that build brands, drive response and delight customers.

Tip # 2009.009 - Know How Engaged Your Audeince Is.
The Email Advisor

Identifying email recipient engagement and acting upon it is always a hot topic of conversation. There are two schools of thought in the industry today: one believes that you keep an email address in your database until they unsubscribe, bounce or complain. The other believes that you should segment out, and ultimately suppress, those that have not engaged with an email communication during a defined period of time. The time definition typically varies based on the frequency of communication and the determination of suppression is either interpreted as “completely remove” from the database or “suppress” from all future messages. Regardless of who you side with on this debate, it is irrelevant unless this is something you actually track.

• Testing alternate content for inactives: Tired messages can lead to customer indifference. Try mixing it up a bit and occasionally test an alternate message by using different content or images to those that have not interacted with previous message.
• Re-confirm subscriptions: If your subscriber isn’t opening your message or opening infrequently, ask them if they want to continue receiving your communications. In an "image-off" email world, it is difficult to accurately assess who is actually opening so you may want also factor in click-activity.
• Invite them to update their profile: If users can update their personal profile on your website, invite them to keept their inforamtion up-to-date. As message content becomes more data-driven, zeroing in on that which makes your subscribers unique and add to the relevancy of your message.

You can lead a horse to water, but at the end of the day you can’t make them open their email. Focus on the quality of your database. If you consistently have an inactive subset of your database that isn’t opening up your communications, you need to ask yourself the question “what is the value of keeping them on the distribution list. The answer is different for each email marketer out there. You just need to find the right one for your organization.
 

Was just reading a post from my my friend Laura Atkins and halfway through it found myself shaking my head in disbelief at those marketers who approved the notion that sending more email in this down economy would make up for their CFO's revenue loses.

Her post:

------

I get a lot of email. On a typical day I will get close to 2000 messages across my various work and personal accounts. About 60 - 70% of that mail is spam and caught by spamassassin or my mta filters and moved into mailboxes that I check once a day for false positives. About 15 - 10% of the remaining mail is from various discussion lists, and those are all sorted into their own mailboxes so I can keep conversations straight. The rest of the email is divided between mail directly to me and various commercial lists I have opted in to.

Up until recently, the commercial mail was all just dumped into my inbox. Nothing special happened to it it just sat there until I could read it. Recently, however, the volume of commercial mail has exploded, swamping my inbox. After losing track of some critical issues, I sat down and fixed my mail filters. Now, all my commercial and marketing mail (ie, mail I signed up for with tagged addresses) is now being filtered into its own mailbox.

There are two takeaways here.

One: the volume of commercial mail has increased significantly. Companies who were previously mailing me once a month are now mailing me twice a week. This contributed to the clutter and resulted in me pushing all commercial mail out of my inbox. I don’t think this increase is limited to just my mailbox, I believe many recipients are seeing an increase in commercial and marketing email, to the point where they’re finding it difficult to keep up with it all.

Two: Recipients have a threshold over which too much email makes their mailbox less usable. Once this threshold is reached they will take steps to change that. In my case, I can just filter all the commercial email as I use tagged addresses for all my signups. In other cases, they may start unsubscribing from all the mail cluttering their mailbox or blocking senders.

It is the tragedy of the commons demonstrated on a small scale.

-------

Laura, I am right there with you this past few weeks. I have found myself unsubscribing more and more these past few weeks from many of the past normally welcomed hotel deal emails I get due to my extensive traveling. I have seen as many as 2-3 more emails than normal from many of the hotel chains trying to get me to spend money with them or take one of their fabulous vacation deal. To be honest, I found myself not wanting to unsubscribe originally, but really needed to because I was tired of spending my mornings deleting emails that truly were not meeting my expectations or what I signed up for. I found in too many cases that some hotels chains were changing my frequency and content preferences without my knowledge or permission and began to send me non-relevant emails. I did email one of those top hotel chains asking what the deal was, but all I got in return was a permanent (hard) bounce saying the email address didn't exist. They never said in their email that I couldn't reply to them.

Maybe we all need a refresher in a post that our friend Stephanie Miller did back in July 2008 on how more email isn't always the best thing when it comes to making revenue. How sending more email can cause lost in revenue instead of making it.

Is anyone else seeing what Laura is? Increase in commercial email as the economy is going down?

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

George Bilbrey over at ReturnPath blogged about a new white paper published on the conversion and delivery rates of three symbolic spam campaigns. Since he always has great insight to the analytical nature of email, I had to read it.

Disclaimer: this is a very technical and empirical overview of the lower level protocols measured when sending email. You could probably just skip to the conclusion if you want to bypass the framework of the experiment and get to the point, although I would highly suggest reading the entire paper to spur ideas on how we in the email industry can measure the affect of spam on our email at ISPs. While none of us reading this blog presumably send blatant spam, we are directly impacted by the defenses ISPs put up and constantly change to thwart new spam attack vectors. This directly impacts email deliverability.

A few thoughts:

• The team who executed this test explained how their approach was ethical. By only acting as a proxy, not originating any new spam email (but rather capturing mail already in flight) and rewriting URLs to be benign, they side stepped a potentially dangerous situation. From my experience, granted it's nothing compared to the researchers who have a lot more education than me, punishing recipients or introducing a punitive bias doesn't work in the business world. It just pisses people off if and when they find themselves at the receiving end of an experiment they didn't opt in to and can run afoul of the law in this case.



• No authentication was tested as an additional variable to the spam delivery rates. It would be interesting to see how the presence of DK/DKIM/SPF/SID would affect this.



• No open rates were measured. It would seem that if links could be rewritten in the message body, spacer images could be inserted to indicate an upper bound of emails being rendered on client email programs.



• The CBL (Composite Blocking List) was heavily monitored during the time frame to see when blacklisting occurred and at what rate. It would be interesting to measure other RBLs as well to show the efficacy of one v. another.



• Finally, the presumption that the TLD (or ending extension of the recipient's email address such as .au or .com) shows where the recipient is actually located is a bit limiting. I'm not sure how you could avoid this, other than some sort of geo IP mapping with the calling IPs for links/images, but there are definitely recipients who get an email address at one regional ISP but take that with them when they move to another region. For instance, in my experience with EU addresses, there is a tendency for recipients to get a .com (usually US) address regardless of where they are located. Although a small segment, this would directly correlate to the causation of the spam education affecting lower spam conversion.

Net of the paper is that while spam might be a revenue generator, the amount of profit derived from the spam campaigns tested (pharmacy, post card and April Fools) is driven down by the amount of expenses associated with keeping an email infrastructure in place. The cost of hosting bad domains over a period of time and setting up/maintaining alternate routes of detection is considerable.

This is good news for legitimate senders in that spam doesn't directly cause one to become rich and thus decreases the appeal to entering into the business in the first place. Or at least I hope.

Suppose half of all doctors measure heart rate differently, and police departments calculate auto speed in multiple ways. Then, suppose the doctors and police use equipment that doesn't measure accurately.

I'm betting most of you would hope that these professions would move to ensure consistency and accuracy.

So, when Josh Baer, founder of this blog, recently questioned on Twitter the value and point of the EEC initiative to standardize and rename the open rate, I felt compelled to respond in more than 140 characters.

Here is a sampling of what Josh said:

"@LorenMcDonald while I agree with the logical argument, I think the whole thing is a waste of time. Not solving a problem. Open rate is fine."

"@LorenMcDonald when I say 'open rate' to ANYONE they know what I mean from the name. No one will know what 'Render Rate' means."

"@LorenMcDonald @Mostew who cares what the actual open rate is? How is reporting 1/3 less opens hurting me? I can still A/B split to compare."

Josh is not alone in his comments. But believe me, there are so many other things I'd rather talk about than the open rate, or, what I hope will become the recognized successor: the render rate. (Read feedback on the EEC blog and download the render rate document (PDF).)

Like the current irrational debate about single versus double opt-in, the core reasons that the EEC Measurement Accuracy Roundtable (which I co-chair) is recommending the render rate have gotten lost among the hyperbole and blog comments.

Why should you care? It starts with these essential points that are simple, straightforward and irrefutable:

• Inaccurate: The open rate has become extremely inaccurate because disabled images, use of preview panes and HTML-unfriendly mobile devices lead to an underreporting of the true number of opens. Fellow eec Roundtable member Morgan Stewart has done analysis across several ExactTarget clients and estimates a typical underreporting of from 5% to 35%. Meaning a measured 30% open rate is actually from 31.5% to 40.5%.

• Inconsistent: It's inconsistent, because different email service providers and marketing software providers calculate and report it differently. Among other things, some providers incorporate a click on a text message or HTML email where the tracking image has not loaded in their open rate calculations, and many others don't.

• Misused: It's being used to assess how well a message performed. The open rate, even putting aside its inaccuracies, does not tell you how well an email performed. It does tell you how well the combination of your "from" name, subject line, brand reputation and potentially preview-pane copy/images motivated recipients to open their email.

Oops! We don't even know if it measures that, because the email might load in the preview pane without the recipient viewing it.

Open Rate Measures Process, Not Output

Only a metric that measures whether the campaign met business goals, such as total revenue, revenue per email or conversions, can accurately reflect success or failure.

The open rate is a process metric, meaning it measures actions on the email. It's not an output metric, which measures business goals, but many marketers treat it like one.

The open rate can help assess process-related problems with your emails. But, it won't tell you whether your email delivered more revenue, leads, demos, or downloads, helped retain clients or collected more referrals.

I've met thousands of email marketers over the last several years, but not a single one has told me he or she would get a raise or bonus by increasing open rates.

I'll also agree that the open rate has its uses:

You want to use it to measure a branding campaign instead of a revenue-generator? That's fine. Newsletter publishers want to measure whether subscribers are reading their articles? OK.

Or, you are a combo brick-and-mortar-plus-online retailer such as Borders or REI that uses opens to help measure reach and the impact of email in driving people to a physical store? Got it.

Why Should You Care?

Josh, you and others should care about redefining and renaming the open rate because the average marketer still doesn't understand what an open rate is or actually measures.

In expert hands, the open rate is still inaccurate but not harmful. The metric is worrisome, however, when uninformed marketers communicate the success of their last campaign or newsletter to their management based on a few percentage-points' increase in their open rate.

If we are going to move the email industry forward – away from the batch-and-blast, just-send-more, "deliverability is someone else's responsibility" attitude of many – then ground zero starts with redefining the open rate.

Talking about the open rate might be a bore and waste of time, just like talking about blocked images, blacklists, authentication protocols and bounce rates are a poor use of a marketer's intellectual capital.

We should be talking about integrating email with other channels, lifetime customer value, cool uses of dynamic content, kick-ass trigger-email approaches and the like.

So, why are we talking about redefining the open rate? Because, until we can move the industry beyond talking about open rates as a key benchmark, we likely won't be able to talk about those higher-level matters.

Putting aside philosophical arguments about the role and value of the open rate, fundamentally the point of all this can’t be said more simply than – the open rate is inaccurate and measured inconsistently. For those reasons alone all industry participants should support an initiative designed to standardize the metric and ensure it is measured and communicated consistently.

If you haven't already, please download the EEC render rate document (PDF) and then post your comments on the EEC blog.

We might be seeing a change in email or marketing rules here in the United States soon and I'm talking more restrictive ones.

Recently a customer of mine called me challenging whether or not their attorney was right in requiring their marketing department to include ADV in the subject line of their U.S. based emails.

Now, in my off the top head of knowledge I knew it was NOT a requirement to have ADV in the subject line based on Can-Spam, but I went ahead and emailed a few trusted colleagues the question just to see what their thoughts where on the use of it. In 2005, the FTC gave a report to congress on whether the use or requirement of ADV in the email subject line was a good or bad idea. In this report it was voted NOT to include it as a requirement. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/06/adv1.shtm

When my colleagues responded, one of them added this, "Look into Can-Spam Sec 5(a)(5)(A)(i) and (B). "clear and conspicuous identification that the message is an advertisement or solicitation" is required unless there is prior affirmative consent. There is not specification on what constitutes "clear and conspicuous identification" which says there is not a standard format for doing this".

when another colleague responded he also reminded us of some changes in the FTC to come and that also in the report to Congress FTC Commissioner Leibowitz heavily suggested the use of ADV in the subject line. "In his dissenting statement, Commissioner Leibowitz said, “Requiring commercial e-mail to be labeled is not a panacea but, as the CAN-SPAM Act clearly recognizes, there is no single bullet theory for solving the spam problem. An ADV labeling requirement could be a modest tool to empower consumers to filter and sort commercial e-mails – to read them later, evaluate them individually, or delete them in bulk if they choose – and for that reason I respectfully dissent from the majority and urge Congress to consider a labeling requirement.” Again, the Commission voted to submit the 2005 report was 4-1 with Leibowitz dissenting.

So here's the interesting part in all this, on February 27, 2009, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Jon Leibowitz as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Just two weeks prior to the announcement, the new chairman also warned media companies and marketers that the FTC's new privacy protection guidelines could be their last chance to avoid regulation. "As the Report points out, targeted advertising can benefit consumers, subsidize free content, and promote a robust online market. But the concomitant online tracking and data collection, coupled with inadequate notice to consumers about what information is collected and how it is used, raise critical privacy concerns. How companies collect, combine, disclose and dispose of this data has serious ramifications for consumers." 

What does this mean for us in the email world here in the U.S.? Will we see stricter rules on email permissions, labeling, handling, and a step up in Can-Spam violation prosecutions if you don't do it right.

This also means then we could be seeing possible regulations on how behavioral marketing is performed. We could be seeing a fundamental shift in current U.S. law to one the MIGHT resemble how the European Union (EU) protects it's consumers with default opt-in choices on email, cookies, etc

How will react to changes from the FTC when it comes to permission or requirements on email, advertising and cookies? How does your company measure up to the self-regulations I just blogged about.

Folks, start looking at this stuff now. Starting auditing you companies data flows and permissions. I would suggest you start creating committees in your company that consists of decision makers from each department that's in charge of customer data. Everything from IT, sales, and marketing. These committees should be discussion at a minimum how you secure your data and handle consumer permissions. These groups should be the people who store the data for you, back-up the data, obtain the data, transfer the data, use the data, touch the data in any way (including third parties). They should meet weekly to discuss changes to your systems or process to understand the impact it will have on consumers and your company or even future self or required regulations.

I know a few email/privacy coalitions and alliances are watching this one carefully. Maybe your company should be as well.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Folks, if we have said it once, we say it a million times, please don't ask customers for PII through an email or email link. (Man I feel as if I just punished the twins)

AT&T who is my phone, TV, mobile, and Internet provider decided to send me an email inviting me to join the AT&T U-verse research panel. It was a quick and simple email... went something like this.

Thank you for selecting AT&T U-verse!

As a U-verse customer we are inviting you to join the AT&T U-verse research panel.

U-verse Panel members will have the opportunity to provide insight into U-verse services and products via web based surveys and your feedback will assist AT&T in designing and improving U-verse services.

All responses to surveys will be kept completely confidential and will be used for research purposes only. Participation within this research panel is completely voluntary.

Please take a few minutes to complete the questionnaire by clicking on the link below. Your participation in the U-verse research panel will be greatly appreciated.

http://www.insightexpress.com/ix/EnterPanelist.aspx?m=RANDOM STRING

Thanks for your assistance,

REMOVED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT

Privacy Statement:

http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=RANDOM STRING

Please Note: To ensure delivery of our emails to your inbox, please add M38211att@opinion-central.com

Opt-Out: If you received this email in error or if you wish to unsubscribe please respond to this email with the word remove in the subject line. to your address book. Thank you.

As you hopefully have already surmised in red, the link in this email is NOT pointing to an AT&T website nor does anybody outside of the blog really know what Insight Express is. When you click on their special link, I am then sent to a website that looks like this.

First, your asking me for a piece of information that I normally hold pretty dear to my heart in my household.

Second, can this page look any more like a phishing email? "FOR VALIDATION PURPOSES", simple small box on a large blank page, and CLICK TO CONTINUE in caps.

Finally, doesn't even log me into my account, but some other site/URL that seems to be hosted by again a company that no one knows.

Come on AT&T... While I understand this is you and you were trying to make this easy for me to take your survey, you are confusing people as to whether they should click links and offer up PII via email's or whether they should take the security advise and training to not do such things these days.

Here are some things we well consumers and what you should NOT being doing.

http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html

My suggestions and I am opening this up to the readers here. This was a random email to me. I never asked for it nor was I prepared for a survey in email. 

If you want me to participate in survey's then do what TIVO did for us years ago.

1. Offer the survey in our account updates so that we can decided to participate in them if we want and also be aware that we will see them soon.
2. Let us know who and where they will be coming from.
3. Use recognizable/branded URL's 
4. Send the survey's to email accounts we signed up or opted-in to receive them at.
5. When you ask me to whitelist a domain so I can get these emails, make sure it's a domain or email address I know or I can trust and not something random like m38211@opinion-central.com
6. Instead of making me input my own PII, use a service or software package that will send out a link in the email that contains a random serial number that eventually when I click on it will link to the account number in the back-end you want to associate the survey with.

I know the suggestions can go on and I hope that many others here can offer up some more.

TRUSTe has a nice How To document here about how to differentiate yourself from phishing emails

http://www.truste.org/pdf/How_Not_Look_Like_Phish.pdf

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

P.S. This email went to my junk folder as a 7.1 out of 5.0

P.S.S. I also sent a note to their reply address about this a few days ago, but no response as of yet.

I'm not re-posting this because I think that all these points are a need to know for the audience here. I just loved #5. If you take anything away from this today, take #5.

You should already know the other four (4)

Stop making emails so dang complicated. I'm also tired of other employee's stealing my iPhone from me to see what the email is supposed to look like since it didn't render on their Blackberry ;)

Think of the email as a teaser of what's to come when they click the link to get more information. Short, Sweet, and to the Point in your email.

Also, test your emails through services like Return Path or Pivotal Veracity before you send them out. See how they render and work in many of the email clients used today. See if your sending emails that will fail any one of the standards test there companies will run for you.

------

Top Five Mistakes from Emailvision

http://directmag.com/magill/0303-emailvision-marketing-mistakes/

UK-based e-mail marketing software-on-demand provider Emailvision has compiled a list of what it claims are the top five e-mail marketing mistakes based on its observations of its 1700 clients.

Here is an edited version of the list:

5) Trying too hard—designing an e-mail as if it was a Web site. Heavy use of flash or java script often doesn’t render properly in the finished e-mail and can be complicated to design. It’s better to keep it clean and simple, according to Emailvision, allowing the reader to click through to a Web site.

4) Adding the wrong return e-mail address—either by accident or on purpose to avoid filtering responses. Replies can provide valuable information from problems with the e-mail to inquiries about the product.

3) Missing information – having a comprehensive and segmented database is fundamental for any e-mail marketing campaign to work properly; there is nothing worse than Dear____ because the first name field is not completed, according to Emailvision. Even writing ‘Dear customer’ is preferable.

2) All image and no text—Many ISPs don’t automatically download images so recipients are left with blank boxes. This makes it hard to track response rates.

1) Stopped as spam – this is the number one fundamental flaw and probably the easiest to fix. Words in subject lines such as WIN A GREAT PRIZE will not get past spam filters.

“In today’s economy, return on investment has never been more important as marketing spend is now analysed and questioned by senior stakeholders,” said Nick Gold, UK managing director at Emailvision, in a statement. “Companies can’t afford to be making such simple mistakes and missing potential sales. The fundamental aims of any campaign should be high deliverability, targeted mailing, maximum click-through rates and basic personalisation – don’t let the e-mail be the reason customers go elsewhere.” 

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Given that at least half of your e-mail address list can probably be classified "inactive," the question of what to do with this silent faction is highly relevant to e-mail marketers, especially in these tough days when you're being asked to make more sales with less budget.

This issue came up at the recent Email Evolution Conference, where attendees were asked to vote whether purging or retaining inactives should become the e-mail industry's best practice.

However, the solution goes much deeper than "always purge" versus "always retain."

I support removing some classes of inactive addresses after identifying and attempting to reactivate them (details in my earlier ClickZ column, "The Right Way to Trim Inactives").

This doesn't mean you should dump anybody who hasn't acted on your first few e-mail messages, or even everyone who hasn't opened or clicked in two years.

Presumably you collected those addresses through reputable means, so they represent a considerable investment. Replacing them can often cost more than you spent to acquire them.

Why Target Inactives?

Your inactives probably aren't generating spam complaints or bounces. So why stir things up? Here are four reasons:

• They aren't helping you reach your business goals, which mostly means you aren't making any money from them. Instead, you're spending money to send them e-mail they're ignoring.
• They depress your true list performance, in both campaigns and any prelaunch optimization testing.
• ISPs are beginning to watch how often commercial e-mailers send to nonresponding inboxes as an added reputation factor.
• Long-inactive addresses can be turned into spam traps. Sending to them can get your messages blocked or filtered.

Three Tactics for Managing Inactives

Whether you choose to segment out inactives or let them slumber in peace, these three tactics will help you manage inactivity to improve list performance:

• Segment out inactives in optimization testing. If you conduct optimization tests before launching e-mail campaigns, your inactives might be watering down your responses and making it hard to determine the actual lift of your tests. Have you ever done an A/B split test on, say, the call to action where the difference was small, like a 29.4 percent CTR (define) on one version and 28.6 percent on the other so the test was inconclusive? One likely culprit is the denominator (audience selected for the test) is heavily weighted by inactives, suppressing the response rates.
  
  If you have a strategy for determining active versus inactive subscriber status, you can run your tests against each segment as well as against the whole list and compare the active segment's performance to the full list. In some cases, this testing could wake up a portion of your inactive file. But if you look at the test only across the whole audience, you might find the winning strategy is more difficult to see.
• Separate your former clickers from your never clickers. Experts regularly debate about how long a subscriber has to go dark before you can consider the address inactive, but what about those people who signed up with you and never acted on any of your e-mail? You shouldn't have to wait six months to a year before moving your never clickers to an inactive program, assuming you've done all you can to entice them into acting.
  
  This is an excellent argument for conducting a systematic welcome program, one that invites action by clicking through to fill out a profile, claim a special offer, or answer a short survey. (It's also an argument for double opt-in instead of single opt-in, because it demands a little more action from the subscriber to get on your list, but that's an argument for another time.)
  
  Somebody who never acted has a lower value to your e-mail program than somebody who stopped acting. With this latter group, you can at least try to recover them with a reactivation campaign. You gain nothing by continuing to send messages to those who ignore every mailing from the minute they opted in.
• Use inactives to hunt down problems with collection sources or processes. This strategy is a must if a significant percentage of subscribers have never acted on your messages. You most likely collect e-mail addresses from multiple sources (your official Web opt-in page, affiliate sites, coregistration programs, offline sources, etc.). Review your inactive file by source to determine if one collection method contributes a larger share of inactive addresses. You might find that a source delivers addresses that never engage. In that case, investigate the sign-up process after you remove inactives who never clicked.

One Final Thought

If your goal as an e-mail marketer is to send your messages to as many people as possible because you believe your messages have value whether your recipients act on them or not, then by all means, never remove an inactive e-mail address.

However, if deliverability is important and if you want to ensure your active recipients get the opportunity to engage with your e-mail, then list pruning should be a ritual.

Until next time, keep on deliverin'!

Stefan Pollard - Responsys

ClickZ Article

I have been noticing a rash of emails lately from companies which tout a “private sale”, “email exclusive”, “family and friends” or some sort of exclusivity in their offer because you are an email subscriber. Then, only to find out I have been duped because when I go to the companies site, I notice that my “private sale” is not so private in that everyone who visits the site gets to take advantage of the private sale or the family and friends event is really for every family or every friend who happens to just land on the site.

Here is the deal. If its an email exclusive, make it an email exclusive and not open to the world. If I am a subscriber to your email, make me feel special and offer me something that not any Joe can get just by showing up. As an email subscriber, I took the time to subscribe and read your email and when I joined (hopefully when I got your welcome email) I got this little note saying that I would be receiving exclusive deals in my email.

Touting something that is exclusive when its not is like giving me a photocopy of the Mona Lisa. Give me something unique or just send me an email with your logo and link in it or soon enough, I will tune out your noise

Before you dive into all this information I want you to understand my purpose here of this post. While the majority of you in the email industry tend to focus on the day to day email operations around best practices (complaints, hard bounces, blocks, etc), I feel as if many of you haven't taken the time to see what's next on the horizon for us. There is a new compliance issue coming and it's not as simple as the email stuff you deal with today. Some of you here have a great opportunity to learn something new and take your careers even further still being attached to email and marketing. I have two things I am responsible for here at Eloqua, email best practices for clients and our company and privacy issues for clients and our company. They go hand in hand in a lot of ways and in others they do not, but the compliance aspect of both are VERY similar when it comes to email. So, as you read this... think a little outside your email box today and see what you need to be auditing your clients and company for.

I know some of you email heads have been making sure you have a privacy policy that accurately describes all use of the data you collect and the internet technologies you use and how you monitor that any affiliate or partners that advertise your products, services or website are honoring their imposed can-spam requirements (you’re not free from their actions), but has anyone read or been concerned with some of the impending state legislation about email or website tracking? Now don't be scared just yet...

If your not aware of this, states like New York (NY AB 1393/SB 0616 - Assembly Committee on Consumer Affairs and Protection) are seeking bills to regulate online advertising networks and online preference marketing. It restricts the collection and use of information for online preference marketing, including barring the use of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in preference marketing, except for PII provided with consent, and requiring the ability for consumers to opt out of the use of their non-PII in online preference marketing. The bill also would require clear and conspicuous privacy and opt-out notices. Sounds easy enough? Well it is and is well supported throughout the advertising industry.

The New York bill like many others are similar if not identical to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) principles. The NAI Principles detail the consumer protections its member ad networks agree to provide with regard to the use and collection of personally identifiable and non-personally identifiable information for the purposes of targeting marketing efforts. Included in this framework are the principles of consumer notice, choice, and fair dispute resolution. Here is a graphical representation from the NAI on this if you don't have time to read the above linked principles.

If you not also aware, on February 12, 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a revised set of four principles for the self-regulation of online behavioral advertising. Goodwin Procter did a GREAT breakdown/client alert of these principles here.

The highlights from that alert:

Transparency and Consumer Control 

This Principle provides that a website utilizing behavioral advertising should provide a clear, concise, consumer-friendly and prominent statement that behavioral data is being collected. Such a statement should also provide that consumers can choose whether or not to participate. Websites are encouraged to provide  consumers with a clear method for exercising the opt-out option.  

 

Security and Data Retention Policies 

Websites that collect and store user data are encouraged by this Principle to use reasonable security measures to guard that data. Factors to consider in determining the appropriate level of security include the sensitivity of the data, the risks a company faces, the nature of the business and the availability of reasonable protections to the company.  

 

Express Consent for Material Changes 

The company should obtain consumer consent before it uses previously collected data in a way that differs materially from the privacy policy that existed at the time the data was collected. For example, if an acquisition prompts a change in the use of collected data, this Principle encourages the surviving corporation to obtain consumer consent for the new policy. 

 

Express Consent to Use of Sensitive Information

The fourth Principle urges companies to collect sensitive data via behavioral advertising only after a consumer expressly consents to its collection. Such data would include, for example, health information, Social Security numbers and information about children.

So where does your clients and company stand in all of this? Are you in support? Can you comply? Can you stay in business with the methods you use today? This isn't like dealing with Can-Spam here folks. For many this is a whole new ball game for you.

Talk to your attorney's or compliance people  about this.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

These results should NOT be a surprise to ANYONE here, but Return Path ran a study to find out if Internet Service Providers (ISPs) treat IPs differently when it comes to filtering decisions.

You should consider that these results are also a factor of many things such as which ISP's serve which demographics, user perception in personalities for those demographics, how spammers target different ISP's because of their differences in filtering, etc.

What's more notable in this study is that in some cases you could see a "7x difference in accepted mail from the same set of IPs when comparing their behavior at two ISPs". This should point out the fact that if your not following sender common best practices that prescribe such things as having rDNS on your sending IP's could heavily effect you at some of those ISP's. In other words some ISP's have different policies, but following the strictest of rules should help you with many delivery differences at most ISP's.

ISP's will probably for the most part continue to have delivery difference because of budgets, laws they must comply with, differences in how customers are raised, competition with each other, etc.

I think its nice to finally have a third party prove that there can be differences and that NOT all ISP's will treat your mail the same. Not trying to say it's right or wrong, but that your customers should be aware of this. It's still think it's their responsibility to handle their reputation. I would be willing to stick my neck out here today and say that most ESP's from the best common technology standards standpoint are all doing the same thing to get your mail delivered. Many ISP's have the same technology required to deliver to us standards. It's now up to you to ensure your reputation is good no matter which ISP your sending to.

------

Inconsistencies with inbound traffic across ISPs

John Young, Ph.D.

Director of Product Analytics

We encourage receiving networks to share data with us at Return Path so that we can in turn provide solutions and information that will help their filtering decisions. We believe that you can learn from another company's mistakes and success. And, when working in a collaborative environment, receiving networks can learn from cases where one system accepted mail that another system was blocking erroneously or vice versa.

We decided to dig into our data to find out if Internet Service Providers (ISPs) treat IPs differently. We took a random sample of 400,000 IPs that attempted to send messages to four different receiving networks in early 2009. The ISPs used from our network consisted of two webmail providers, one cable operation, and a hosted business email provider.

By looking at IPs that mailed to all four networks, it became clear to us that receiving networks make extremely different decisions about how to treat those mailers.

From the data, we found that when ISPs make decisions on what to do with inbound mail, they cannot agree on IPs from smaller volume mailers, especially when that IP has no rDNS. Also noteworthy was a 7X difference in accepted mail from the same set of IPs when comparing their behavior at two ISPs. Now, that's not as interesting until you note the variance in complaint rates across ISPs, which vary as much as 3X between them.

One would assume that the more email sent, the higher the probability of a user complaining. However, for this set of IPs and their corresponding data, that is not always the case; especially when looking at those smaller volume IPs with no rDNS. For example, one IP sent ~100 messages to ISPs A and B. The IP had ~90% delivered rate at ISP A, 4% Delivered rates at ISP B, but less than 0.2% complaint rates at either.

Another interesting pattern indicated agreement in the treatment of IPs with a lot of trap hits. However, there was a significant percent of IPs with a large amount of traps who ended up in the disagree buckets respectively. Again, it was mostly smaller volume mailers averaging less than ~200 messages a week.

It is evident that ISPs could benefit from sharing their experiences and their data in their fight against spam. By doing so, they could minimize the amount of spam impacting their systems, and the overall costs associated with filtering.

We are currently in the process of conducting a larger study to see if the data we found in our initial analysis holds true. If you are a receiving network who would like to participate, please contact us. In exchange for participating, you will receive detailed reporting on how your filtering differs from other ISPS as well as reputation data that would greatly improve your filtering and blocking decisions.

------

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!