Not sure how to go about this today without embarrassing a company, but I feel the need to make a point today about unsubscribing, list management, and Can-Spam.

In the past few days, Kodak or kodakgallery.com started to send emails to one of my own personal spamtrap@ addressees that is not used for anything, but harvesting of email address off my personal website. This means obviously that I wouldn't use it to sign up for accounts, newsletters, etc using that email address. I just have it sitting out their on the Internet waiting to be scraped up by some spammer. 

So, Kodak sends me this email which basically says they have sent emails in the past or I have had some sort of interaction with this in the past and that I have an account with them which I do NOT nor do I see any other emails from them in my spamtrap database. This is the online version of that email

Now, what is upsetting is not the fact that they probably bought some list from a spammer or someone used that address to sign-up somewhere on their site and they didn't bother to confirm it really was me, but the fact that when I unsubscribed or ATTEMPTED to it didn't follow Can-Spam rules.

As some of you should already know, the final Can-Spam rules ensures that senders provide an easy, straightforward way for recipients to unsubscribe from unwanted email communications. Must only require unsubscribers to enter their email address and associated opt-out preferences – cannot ask unsubscribers to log in to access their accounts first. 

Guess what Kodak did?

At the bottom of their email there isn't anything there really to let me know how to remove this address of their list without hassle. No links to a preference site to see my supposed account or no way to one click unsubscribe myself. All that was there was some attorney's fine print about shipping charges, a way for me to update my email address to new one by logging into some non-existant account i don't have, help section which provides me no help, and a link to their privacy policy. 

Per Can-Spam folks, the FTC.gov’s web site states:

“(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender”

What does that mean?

 

• A link or Reply-To unsubscribe process must exist in every email sent and these unsubscribe processes must remain functional for at least 30 days following an email campaign
• The Reply-To send-an-email opt-out request must remove the address within 10 business days.
• If choosing a link to unsubscribe, the link must either immediately unsubscribe the user on click or, alternatively, lead only to a single page that contains a simple one-page one-click unsubscribe form. Remember this one as I will bring it up again.
• The unsubscribe form must consist of a simplified one-step form

Examples of unsubscribe forms that are not CAN-SPAM 2008 compliant:

• Clicking a link in an email that leads to a form that asks the recipient to verify their address, then emails instructions on how to ‘change’ or ‘update’ your subscription.
• Asking for a login or password before proceeding to remove the user.
• Advertising for your products or services on the unsubscribe form
• Using any kind of multiple step or multiple page process to complete the unsubscription

When I finally did some searching, I found in their privacy policy a way to create a choice for myself and remove this email address from it. They sent me an email to the address stating that it would take two (2) weeks to remove me from their lists it says. Two weeks? What about now? So what are my issues overall here?

 

• Understand your email address and database relations if you buy a list or ensure your message isn't speaking out of turn like this one which states I have an account with them. I don't have an account with them.
• They attempted to treat this message like a transactional one which doesn't require an opt-out per Can-Spam, but should have had one since I have no relationship with them or at best made it easier to make a choice. Ensure that in ALL classes of email like transactional or marketing that you have AN easy way to unsubscribe the target. Don't make them go through your privacy policy to find a way to make their choices be known. To me this is a marketing email as this point. Needs to be FULLY Can-Spam compliant.
• Remove the person immediately vs. the two (2) weeks they are promising me. In Can-Spam, you have ten (10) business days to remove the person. If recall correctly, two (2) weeks is fourteen (14) days? So since this is a marketing email to me, then they would be non Can-Spam compliant?
• Suppress such email accounts that have spamtrap in them. Talk to FreshAddress or your ESP to ensure they remove such blatant addresses from your database. We do here at Eloqua, but we also call you out on it :)
• Don't make the person have to put in an email address that will send them another email to be suppressed.

Like I said, my intent is not to embarrass them here, but to make all realize that many of you still don't have a good grasp on the rules, regulations, and also in many cases an understanding of what your relationship is with an email target.

-Dennis
Eloqua 

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

There have been quite a few posts around  email blogs lately giving advice on things such as relevancy, testing, segmentation, preferences, content etc..... However there is one thing that I truly believe in that I have yet to read much about and that is respect.

Respect your subscribers. Respect them as consumers, as customers and as real people.

Are you respecting your subscribers by sending them an email every day pitching your company?  Think about this for a minute. Would you call up a prospect EVERY single day and pitch them over the phone. Better yet..would you do it to a friend? Would you call them up 3 days a week to sell them something?  I bet not.  Its all about respect.

Respecting your subscribers goes a lot farther than just send frequency.   You respect them in many other ways including:

Respecting their privacy.

Respecting their choice.

Respecting the fact that they once took the time to register for your email.

Respect that they are intelligent human beings who support your program.

Respect that if you give respect...you will get it in return.

We are a society in which has very little regard for respecting one another. Just the other day, I was at a red light and when it turned green, I hesitated for 5 seconds to ensure that the coast was clear (as it was a dangerous intersection) and the person behind me blew her horn and gave me the finger.  Was that really necessary?  And was it really necessary to send that email 2 times or 1 time a day during the holiday season?  Was it respectful? Is it respectful to auto opt in a subscriber via an eAppend because you can?Lastly, do you treat your customers with respect or do you and your company just see them as a number? 

Respect should be the number one goal/challenge put forth to email marketers for the remainder of 2009.  In fact it should have been in 2008 and should be number one in 2010 and beyond.

LashBack has long recommended the best practice of using the List Unsubscribe Header (RFC 2369) as the mechanism to unsubscribe consumers from commercial email. Every receiver needs to adopt this standard. It’s great to see Google recently offering this powerful feature to Gmail users and more receivers need to follow their lead. We have to give props to Hotmail for being first out of the gate and seemingly taking the service one important step further. In nearly 6 years of monitoring unsubscribe performance, LashBack can publish a fascinating statistic showing how using the List Unsubscribe Header does work, but also offer critical insight on that same data when not to trust a seemingly worthy sender’s unsubscribe process.

Current LashBack data shows there is a 1 in 10 chance that a sender using the List Unsubscribe Header will not be successful in unsubscribing consumers.

In this 10% of unsubscribe failures, believe it or not, a best case scenario for the consumer is that they continue to receive email from only the original sender. Don’t get me wrong, if this continues it annoys the consumer and has serious negative consequences for the marketer. It will lower the marketer’s UnsubScore- a measure of unsubscribe performance, and probably cause consumer spam complaints, further harming the marketer’s email reputation which defines deliverability. The worst case scenario for consumers, in .5% of failed unsubscribes for organizations utilizing the List Unsubscribe Header- is when the process breakdown causes the consumer’s email address to end up on a compromised suppression file (opt-out list) which ends up getting hammered with spam. The consumer unsubscribes once, and in return gets even more email. Trust then becomes the real issue.

Hotmail is not only using the List Unsubscribe Header, but also checking the reputation of the sender for that 1 in 10 chance it might not be a good idea to unsubscribe from a source that would most likely appear to be trustworthy as part of the  List Unsubscribe user segment of the email sender population. However, appearances do not define reputation. Historical unsubscribe performance data does show who can be trusted with a consumer’s unsubscribe based on several datapoints derived from constant monitoring and testing over time. That’s why LashBack implores all commercial email senders to follow all unsubscribe best practices and constantly monitor and test their unsubscribe process and that of their sending partners, to protect reputation and most importantly the email experience of consumers.

More LashBack Resources:

List Unsubscribe Domain Reputation Data

Reputation ToolBox

Coverage:

Unsubscribing Made Easy from Google's Blog

Gmail Tries To Make It Easier To Unsubscribe From Spam Newsletters, But Fails from TechCrunch

UPDATE
Gmail adds in sole unsubscribe feature in message details. So, there are two ways to have Gmail notify a sender about a recipient's request - one via the message details (pic below) and the other via marking it as spam and getting the unsubscribe option.
It's been spreading around the net like wildfire, but the rumors were finally put to rest this afternoon when Gmail itself officially announced it's usage of the unsubscribe feature within their web client. For senders, this requires DKIM and/or SPF authentication, a good reputation (as decided by Gmail) and a List-Unsubscribe: header in the form of an email address.

What I'm dying to see is this in action.

I haven't been able to reproduce this myself (after trying with a bunch of senders in my Gmail account) and would love to hear back from anyone who has.

Full post from the horse's mouth here.

Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability, Bronto Software

Just received this message from the Yahoo Postmaster:

Hello, For those enrolled in our Complaint Feedback Loop  program, we have an ongoing issue, which started late yesterday, in sending out the feedback reports. If you're seeing a lower-than-usual stream of user complaints of late, this is likely the reason.

We're continuing to investigate the problem and will keep the list updated of any progress. Stay tuned.

George Bilbrey
Return Path

Not to big of a surprise in terms of a stat headline, but Return Path today released a new Email Deliverability Benchmark Report that shows marketers may not be still not getting it or that some just can't get a break no matter what they do right.

Return Path looked at more than 500,000 campaigns to determine what percentage of email is delivered to the inbox versus being diverted to the bulk folder or completely undelivered/blocked/dropped.  What's interesting in this report is that they also reveal that MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail Are The Toughest U.S. consumer inboxes to reach for marketers and Primus.ca, Shaw, Aliant, SaskTel, and Inter.net in Canada.

Commercial, permissioned emails reached only 79.3% of inboxes in the United States and Canada during the first half of 2009 (January through June), according to the report. With the undelivered email, 3.3% is routed to a "junk" or "bulk" email folder and 17.4% is not delivered at all - with no hard bounce message or other notification of non-delivery.

Hey Matt Verhout! The US deliverability rates are slightly better than Canada with an average of 82% inbox placement rate, while Canada's inbox placement rates are lower with just 75%. :P

As I said in the beginning though I wasn't surprised by some of the stats in this report i.e. Business Inboxes are even tougher to reach or Deliverability rates vary by ISP. As they said in their report and that many should already know today is each ISP has a unique recipe for determining what is appropriate for inbox placement, much of which is based on feedback they get from their customers. Understanding deliverability at this granular level is important for marketers who want to optimize their email marketing efforts.

As my good friend Sam Masiello just twittered. "Goes to show that permission is not necessarily king. Content and relevancy are still key factors to good deliverability metrics"

You can read more here on Return Path's blog as well

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

If you haven't seen these and also need one, you should check out the Email Experience Council (EEC) Email Checklist Series. These are a neat set of shared and time tested resources from the Email Design Roundtable. The roundtable is chaired by eec members Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon and Megan Walsh of Williams-Sonoma.

The latest in the series is Email Checklist Series: Anatomy of an Email Newsletter or Email Checklist Series: Email Design. You can compare each of your email/template designs against these checklists before approval and coding. This way you won't find yourself wasting valuable deployment time.

The most recent checklist in the series "Anatomy of an Email Newsletter" gives GREAT email image examples and also a checklist that covers Overall Design & Style when it comes to formatting, fonts, and images and also Elements of an Email Newsletter like Preheader Text, Header & Navigation, and Tables of Contents. These are just a few to name, but there is MUCH more within the checklist itself.

Well worth the download if you haven't already seen them and also when you find yourself scrambling every time for a review of your creation by the industry experts. That's not typically cheap on its own :)

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

It's not the first time this has happened to me, but it still surprises me every time. I send an unsubscribe request by email as instructed in the email I received, and then it bounces back to me because of a spam filter. Here is the latest:

Delivery failed:
421 This server implements greylisting, please try again in 236 seconds

----- Original message -----
Message-Id: <1F669FC8-C55A-42C8-843E-E2548DF7CC61@xxxxxxxxxxx.com>
From: Joshua Baer
To: unsubscribe@walkersresearch.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v935.3)
Subject: Unsubscribe
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:10:50 -0500
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.935.3)

Please unsubscribe me

----- End of message -----

It's an easy mistake to make, but one that email marketers should be aware of and prevent. You don't want to send your unsubscribe requests through a standard email system with a standard spam filter because they can catch legitimate unsubscribe requests and block them as spam.

Not only is this a bad customer experience, but it can get you busted by the FTC for violating CAN-SPAM. Your obligation is to honor unsubscribe requests. Getting caught in your spam filter is not a good enough excuse to avoid responsibility.

To make things worse, the very word "unsubscribe" is a common spam term in filters. SpamAssassin will increase the score of your email just for including it.

So what's a marketer supposed to do? This is one reason for sending unsubscribe requests to a web page or to an email address directly at your email server, rather than using the instinctive <unsubscribe@example.com>. Any address @example.com is likely to be going through the corporate spam filter. By using an address that goes directly to the mail server such as <listname-unsub@lists.example.com> you're probably going to bypass the default spam filters that would be applied.

How else do you handle this with your email?

Joshua Baer
Chief Evangelist, Datran Media
Founder & CEO, OtherInbox

You can follow @deliverability on Twitter here

From late May and continuing to June, Yahoo! Mail was sporadically blocking inbound SMTP connections from certain IP addresses with an error message indicating that it was due to a Spamhaus listing. While we do use Spamhaus data for rejecting incoming connections, the problem was, some of the blocked IPs were, in fact, not listed in any of their blocklists. Today, the issue briefly reared its ugly head again, although at a much lesser scale.

It's worth mentioning that this wasn't a sender- or Spamhaus-specific problem; it was something on our end that was causing the spurious blocks. With that said, we have identified the root cause of the problem and fixed it.

With our apologies, senders can rest assured that these erroneous blocks are no longer happening. Furthermore, it did not affect the sending reputation of any IP that was mistakenly blocked.

-Carlo
Yahoo! Mail Anti-spam team
http://postmaster.yahoo.com

Repost of my article over at the EEC blog explaining the pros and cons of going with a dedicated IP versus a pool of IPs and impact on email deliverability.

If you have ever dealt with onboarding at an ESP, you probably know one of the main topics of discussion around scalability and reputation is whether to go with dedicated or shared (pooled) IPs.  Are you ready to "drive solo" with a dedicated IP, or do you stick with the "carpool," an IP pool.  It can be daunting and sometimes a bit ambiguous as to which model fits your needs best.  With that in mind, here are the top 5 factors you need to keep in mind when determining which path to go down.

1. How much mail are you planning to send?
The way email is relayed from sender to receiver is fundamentally based on the IPs (or network fingerprints) involved in the handoff.  The more IPs you have, the more inroads you can create with getting mail delivered to an ISP (such as Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.).  Many ISPs have hard requirements around how many messages will be allowed through and how many active IPs you can use at one time.  If you’re looking at sending more than 20,000 per week, you should see if having your own IPs to send through will give you the scalability needed to match that.  However, if you’re not going to be sending at least that much, you might have more horsepower than you need which is where a pooled group of IPs helps – it spreads the load like peanut butter over the different IPs from the grouped senders.

2. What is the deliverability impact?
Email deliverability, at least right now, is heavily weighted on IP reputation.  What does this mean?  Like a credit report, ISPs will determine what sort of mail they can expect from an IP based on the history of mail that’s been coming from it.  If you have mail that is strong enough reputation wise, which includes low bounce rates and end recipient complaints, a dedicated IP might work.  You will only have to worry about your own mail’s impact as opposed to allowing the possibility of other mail going out the same IPs impacting your delivery.  But, proceed at your own risk – when using a dedicated IP, you determine your own fate.  Pooled IP senders usually rise and fall with each other depending on the sum total of mail being sent out where one particular sender won’t necessarily sway the pool as a whole.  This is why choosing an ESP that has good deliverability rates on a pool is of paramount importance – you’ll be judged by your peers.  A bad reputation will cost you in the long run.

3. How is dedicated v. pooled different in implementation?
Typically, a new IP will be warmed up (or pulled from an already warm pool) and allocated to a sender on a dedicated system.  This means special attention should be given to initial sending and ISP feedback.  Dedicated IPs also require a bit of inflight tweaking as the ISPs learn what sort of mail will be delivered.  But, once this initial ramping has completed, you’re free to do as you like as long as you don’t violate any ESP best practices.  You also have more wiggle room for making your IP specific to you since you’re the only one it’s representing.  Pooled IPs generally don’t require much technical implementation since the sending IPs are ready to go and have a critical mass of mail already being sent out.  However, the business investment with vetting and passing certain ESP requirements can be heavy since the new sender has to prove they won’t do anything to risk the pool’s reputation and thus the existing senders using it.

4. Does the cost make sense?
Dedicated IPs require more time, effort and maintenance to get everything setup.  They use their own bandwidth which subsequently means the cost isn’t shared.  Most ESPs charge for this as a result.  Pooled IPs?  There’s usually no cost associated above and beyond the normal sending charges.  This means money saved for smaller sender.

5. How much autonomy do I want?
This is a critical question for anyone sending email.  Do you care if your messages go out with custom or group headers?  Do you want to be able to send on your own schedule whenever you want (again, as long as you stay within the ESP’s published best practices)?  How about not having to worry about what other senders in the same pool are doing?  With dedicated IPs, you get to be in control of a lot more of the decisions around how email is actually delivered.  Many clients don’t care, though, as email is just a component of a much larger marketing strategy and as such, they don’t have the resources or capitol to afford dedicated IPs.  In a pool, you’re more heavily scrutinized depending on any hiccups along the way impacting the greater good.

There’s a tendency for email marketers to see the issue as black or white wherein they fall into one or the other side with strong convictions.  It’s not that simple and as email becomes more widely adopted as a marketing and end customer communication vehicle, taking into account the above points will help you achieve success no matter where you land.

Ever wonder how your email marketing program would look if you let a team of your subscribers run it?  Think about it the next time you push that button or work your creative with folks.

Next time you walk into a meeting with executives or people wanting to send out an email, ask them "what would our subscribers do?"...then stand back and watch the blank faces. You see....no one in marketing wants to imagine a customer running the email program. Most often people don't want their customers running their marketing.....let alone a medium such as email.

What would your subscriber really do if he/she would run your program?  Why not ask?

Wow, we really will buy anything that is one to a customer...

I had the pleasure of working on a study (beware large file) that was just released today by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working group (MAAWG) titled, "A Look at Consumers' Awareness of Email Security and Practices" which includes graphs, detailed findings and analysis. The report is free.

MAAWG's press release

I, like many others reading this report or who helped create it, was SURPRISED at the outcome of what some people will do when they get an email. Eight hundred (800) consumers in the U.S. and Canada were asked about their computer security practices habits as well as awareness of current security issues.

A few highlights:

• 48% said that they have never clicked on a spam email (doesn't that means the other half has clicked on or responded to spam?)
  
• 1/3 said that they were interested in the product or service being offered and admitted to responding to a message they knew was spam (WOW - that's 1 in 6!)  
• 17% said that they made a mistake when they responded
• 13% said they simply had no idea why they did it (anything that is one to a customer perhaps?)
• 6% wanted to see what would happen
• between the ages of 24 and 44 are more likely to use email for banking and bill statements (my always right wife and I do)
• 80% of users doubted their computers were at risk of ever being infected with a "bot" 
• 2/3's of the 800 polled felt they were somewhat experienced in Internet security. RIGHT!... not by what I read :)

So as many have already noticed, the number of people who still respond to spam is scary because it's an economic incentive to spam per this report. I can't imagine me wanting to respond to the crap in my junk folder just from today!

Take some time to read how people use email today. Down the file and find yourself a nice quiet corner. Let us know your thoughts about this or if you dare let us know if you have ever responded to a spam message.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

So my new friend Fred Tabsharani of Port25 Solutions wrote a paper that should help give readers a clearer understanding behind email authentication and its potential value. We would love to hear from you on this!

------

The nature and origins of an email message are often falsely presented by email senders and as such present a host of challenges to legitimate marketers, both large and small. 

The adoption of DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) an initiative produced through a merger of Yahoo!’s Domain Keys and Cisco’s Identified Internet Mail (IIM) provides a foundation for distinguishing legitimate mail and develops a means of associating an identity with a particular message.  With this identity in place, a receiving MTA (Message Transfer Agent) can make decisions about the further handling of the message based upon an assessment (using reputation and accreditation services) of the identity that the message is associated with. 

Receivers who successfully verify the DKIM cryptographic signature can use information about the signer as part of a program to limit spam, spoofing or phishing, or any other unwelcome conduct.  The integral role of DKIM is to determine the verified identity as taking responsibility for the message.

Verifying Identity

Consider an attack against your organization, or even customers of your organization. The name of your organization is linked to particular internet domains and attackers may leverage this either by using the legitimate domain name, without authorization, or a “sister” domain name that is similar to, but not controlled by, your organization.  A receiving organization that employs DKIM can differentiate between domains used by known organizations and domains used by others.  In this role, DKIM positively identifies messages associated with justifiable identities rather than negatively identifying messages with problematic identities.  However, whether a verified identity belongs to a good or bad actor is a question for later steps in the validation process, owned by reputation services. 

DKIM, by itself, does not necessarily increase the chances of a message arriving in someone’s inbox.  What it does, in its simplest case, is validate the integrity of the message, assuring that it has not been tampered with during transit.

DKIM Enables Trust

Email receiving services and organizations are faced with a very basic decision once a message arrives: whether to deliver the newly arrived message to the indicated recipient or not?  Behind this decision is the question of whether the receiving service trusts the message enough to label it as “safe.” Most receiving transfer agents offer services that allow for such a quality assessment.  These agents use reputation and accreditation services such as ReturnPath or Pivotal Veracity to further evaluate the sender.  As the engine processes information, it either raises or lowers its trust assessment for the message.  For example, trust is increased based on the reputation of the sender by IP address. 

The next step, as I see it, is for reputation services to evaluate digital messages by domain as well.  Evaluating messages based on “domain-reputation” instead of IP addresses can better define who the sender is, since IP addresses incessantly change: suspect senders (spammers) still have the ability to utilize different IPs at a moment’s notice.

In order to determine reputation information, established identification is required.  When using an IP address, accuracy is based on the belief that the underlying communications or infrastructure supplies an accurate address.  When using domain-based reputation data, some other form of validation is needed, since it is not supplied independently by the infrastructure.  DKIM satisfies this requirement by declaring a valid “responsible” identity about which the engine can make a quality assessment and by using a digital signature to ensure that the use of the identifier is authorized.  However, by itself, a valid DKIM signature neither lowers nor raises the level of trust associated with the message.  But it allows other mechanisms to approve the message. 

Establishing Message Integrity

Middleman attacks are few and far between; however, it is possible for a message to be modified during transit.  DKIM’s cryptographic method validates the message integrity.  If, for any reason, it has been changed, the message will not be verified successfully on the receiver’s MTA without using DKIM.   DKIM’s authentication of email identity can assist in the global control of “spam” and “phishing.”  There has been a trend to using more than one mode of authentication too.  For example, Ralph Lauren and Southwest Airlines, both use Domain Keys and DKIM to authenticate digital messages.  This theory allows for senders using dual mode to “cover their bases” as fewer receivers rarely check for both Domain Keys and DKIM.

As DKIM gains traction in the digital messaging marketplace, organizations and ISPs are likely to develop business rules that reward senders and receivers that use any one of these authentication methods.  In a recent OTA (Online Trust Alliance)  town hall meeting, hypothetical solutions for when organizations choose not to authenticate messages were discussed.   Many ideas were proposed and the discussion of their merits is on-going, but one interesting thought to come out of this meeting was the idea that organizations choosing to bypass authentication may be subject to a digital tariff.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Google announces they're rolling out their own version of anti-phishing protection - the super trustworthy, anti-phishing key . Unless you're a financial institution, you probably won't be able to get this for your own email for some time. But, at least you'll know it might be coming out of beta at some point.

From Brad Taylor, Gmail's Anti-spam Czar:

"Super trustworthy...means 1) the sender, usually a financial institution, is a target of phishers, (2) all of the sender's email is authenticated with DKIM, and (3) Gmail rejects any fake messages that claim to come from this sender, but actually don't."

Full story here.

***This post is an oldie but a goodie from my own blog***

Effective immediately.......please stop sending email if any of the following conditions exist:

1. You send email just to sell stuff and are not worried about establishing a lifetime relationship with your subscriber
2. You send out more than 3 promotional emails a week with no analytics defining your list attrition.
3. You don't welcome people into your program with a healthy, clear, concise and truly welcoming email.
4. You don't segment.
5. You can't clearly represent your value proposition.
6. You don't have frequency caps/cadence worked out.
7. Everyone in your org is calling it an email blast and deep down inside you kinda agree with them.
8. You are more worried about pushing the email out than the strategy behind the push.
9. You have used an eAppend to acquire 90% of your list.
10. You are more worried about incorporating a share to a subscribers social network feature than serving up dynamic relevant content to the subscriber based on propensity models or user behavior.
11. Short term revenue achievement is more important than long term subscriber engagement.
12. Last but not least....you spend more time reading blogs and tweets from self proclaimed industry experts (like me) about best practices and the latest trends rather than implement ANY of the suggestions from us folks.

Until next time.....

I was in a well know home furnishings store over the weekend with my wife. As we were checking out, the clerk turned to me with a nice smile and said "Would you like to sign up for our email list to receive special promotions in your inbox". In my mind I said "hell ya" being the email dude that I am.

After I said yes, she said "that's great...go ahead and fill out that sheet on the counter and we will be sure to enter you into our system." When I looked down on the counter there is was..in plain view, a sign up sheet (like the ones you had in school) with peoples names, address', birthdays, phone numbers and email address' right there for the world to see. I asked why they have a sign up sheet like this to grab my information, why they have it for everyone else to see my information on it and asked if they were concerned over my privacy as a customer. She smiled and then said "well our legal department says its ok..." as if she has said it a million times and totally felt comfortable saying so.

Folks..think about it. Just because its legal, doesn't mean its the right thing to do. Yes, grabbing my email address at the register is a great thing for companies to engage in. Asking me to put it down on a sheet with a bunch of other information is a horrible violation of my privacy and makes for an awkward customer experience. Sure..it may be legal to do and your attorneys say its fine, but in the age of privacy concerns, its the wrong thing to do.

Just because its legal, doesn't mean its the right thing to do should carry over to many aspects of your email program. If you want to do something,  spend the time and do it right. I wonder how many attorney's would fill out their information on a sheet of paper and wonder how many of you reading this would too.

I spent much of May and June on the road in eight cities with the Online Marketing Summit
(www.onlinemarketingsummit.com) Whistle Stop tour.   It was great to get out and meet with so many smart digital marketers.  

Here’s a few observations/trends:

1. Email rocks.  It’s still a very important part of the online marketing mix.  In fact, email this year has been elevated to a sort of celebrity status.  Lots of executive attention due to the low cost and high return.  It’s the biggest revenue driver in the toolkit. 

2. No amount of celebrity can trump the realities of lean budgets.  Marketing budgets do not seem to be growing, but the investment continues to be strong with email and search, where the immediate revenue and return is.    For email, there isn’t so much innovation as preservation: Preserving our jobs and our team, growing our database assets, tying the various eCRM elements together (even loosely) and maintaining our  list hygiene and deliverability budgets.    

3. Top challenges around email are still deliverability and breaking through the clutter (relevancy.)    Especially with tight budgets. Marketers need immediate return.

4. There is still a LOT of confusion between “delivered” as reported by most ESP systems (which is really your bounce rate) and inbox deliverability (which is if your message actually reaches the inbox and can earn a response).  This something that I blogged about last month (ADD LINK).  It is also that I’m working on with a group of industry volunteers through the DMA’s Email Experience Council.  We want to publish new definitions of these terms to eliminate confusion and ease benchmarking comparisons.  (Email me if you want to participate!  We’d love to have you.)

5. Data integration is finally starting to be possible, but too many marketers, even big brands, can’t do it efficiently.   The promise of truly end-to-end eCRM is very attractive.  But remains elusive for most.  A lesson for all of us in the vendor community – we just have to make this easier, more automated and tied to stronger analytics.

6. My session was about how complaint and deliverability data are essential parts of a good email marketing optimization effort.   You can’t make good decisions about your program if you don’t have access to inbox deliverability data.  Period.  Think about what happens when you see erratic or suddenly poor campaign results.  What do we do?  We blame the creative.  “Oh, that offer must have been terrible.” Or “Gee, subscribers must hate blue backgrounds.”  Actually, what is likely is that the messages never reached the inbox – they were blocked by the ISPs like Yahoo! or Gmail or Orange due to a weak sender reputation or an infrastructure glitch.  If you don’t have access to inbox deliverability data, ask us or your ESP for it.

If you would like a copy of the handout from my session, just email me at stephanie[dot]miller@returnpath[dot]net.

A quick Wiki on the world's laws governing email suggests that four of the largest, fastest growing national economies and much buzzed about 'BRIC' countries have one thing in common: a lacuna of legislation or enforcement to regulate commercial email. Brazil has a short section in its Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicações (Portuguese) on email published in 1999, but it is quite vague and lacks enforcement capabilities. Russia loosely addresses advertising email in Russian Civil Code 309. China has actually passed the most clear legislation on email with its 2006 "Regulations on Internet Email Services", which holds ESPs responsible and requires opt-in, as well as the placement of the word "AD" at the beginning of subject lines. However, India has recently passed an amendment to its IT Act of 2000, without addressing commercial email. Below is an overview of IT regulation so far in India.

Overview: The closest legislation relating to email in India is the newly amended Information Technology Act of 2000. It was previously ammended in 2006, and Indian lawmakers amended the IT Act again in December of 2008. However, the 2008 amendments have yet to be published in the Gazette of India and still do not address email. The law addresses the following, summarized by Justice Rajesh Tandon of the Indian Cyber-Regulations Appellate Tribunal:

-Tampering computer source documents

-Hacking with Computer system

-Loss/damage to computer resource/utility

-Hacking

-Obscene publication/transmission in electronic form.

-Failure of compliance/orders of Certifying Authority.

-Failure to assist in decrypting the information intercepted by Govt. Agency.

-Un-authorized access/attempt to access to protected computer system.

-Obtaining license or Digital Signature Certificate by misrepresentation/suppression of fact.

-Publishing false Digital Signature Certificate.

-Fraud Digital Signature Certificate.

-Breach of confidentiality/privacy.

Enforcement Effects: Interestingly enough, India's 2008 amendment to its IT Act has reduced the punishment for "cyber crime" from 5 years to 2-3 years and has made violations of the act bailable offenses. However, the amendment has apparently closed a lot of loopholes in the existing law. As India's economy develops, a stronger IT infrastructure and a greater presence in the online marketplace will come to fruition. Without enforceable email laws specific to India, the online reputations of companies with a global reach could potentially suffer.

Industry Self-Regulation: CAUCE India was founded in 1999 and later merged with CAUCE Australia to form APCAUCE (Asia-Pacific), a volunteer organization lobbying against unsolicted comercial email. APCAUCE is a division of iCAUCE. In a growing economy, Indian companies with a global reach are in the right position to develop functioning rulesets that are fair to both marketers and consumers. Many email marketing laws around the globe find their roots in industry-developed best practices.

Relevant Resources:

Department of Information Technology (IT Act 2000)

iCAUCE - International Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email

Cyberlaw India- Information on the IT Act, amendments, opinions, articles and resources from Mr. Pavan Duggal, a prominent India IT legislation advocate. 

IT Act 2008 (.pdf Actual Legislation in English)