As technology becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives, direct mail becomes less relevant and email seems to be the logical next step. That point is made by the ever increasing industry of email marketing. Less overhead, more revenue and the fringe benefit of not using so much paper! The less paper the advertising industry uses, the healthier our planet is, right? Well, that may be so, but there are some not-so-green side-effects of email…

According to a 2003 study (link) approximately every 10-20mb of electronic storage consumes 1lb of coal per year. Which doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that 3% of our nations energy is dedicated to the internet. With email marketing on the rise, the mantra is often bigger equals better. That is to say, the more emails sent, the higher the likelihood of hitting inboxes, and the higher the likelihood of reaching the consumer. But when you get down to it, smaller, focused email campaigns coupled with good email reputation will arrive in more inboxes, which is not only good for the marketer, but it’s good for the planet. Creating less needlessly stored email means less power consumption, and a healthier planet.

Food for thought, especially considering more and more households are going “paper-less”. It seems that making this transition could be as big a challenge as Hercules fighting to cut off one head only for two more to grow in its place, but as with everything else in this industry, responsibility is key. Pay attention to what happens with your email. Sowing seeds far and wide is not always as effective as planting in well cultivated soil.  The same goes for email; harvesting lists, working with less-than-reputable affiliates, and mass-marketing are not only detrimental to your reputation, but also the earth itself. Building good relationships with customers and focusing your campaigns will not only benefit your company, it could benefit the health of the planet as well.

I recently read an article by Karen J. Bannan of BtoB Magazine about email marketing to ‘Millennials’. As a card carrying member of Gen Y, I naturally felt curious as to how advertisers are responding to my peer group.  A common misconception among marketers, who always seem to be looking for the next big thing, is that Millennials aren’t all that reachable via the email channel. Social media is all a twitter; I’ve even heard people utter the phrase, “Email is dead”. In my experience, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Social networks aren’t killing email. Twitter isn’t killing email; it’s complementing it. Not only do we Millennials continue to use email for work, career opportunities and school, but also as a hub for connecting all of the social networks, newsletters, and blogs we have subscribed to after clicking on all of those relevant Tweets. There is something more formal, personal, deliberate, and business-like about email that the social networks lack. With that said, I subscribe to marketing material of the companies who are most relevant to me, and when they offer a specific call to action that benefits me on a predictable basis, I will respond. I like to know what to expect from marketers I have opted in to, and as long as they provide value in exchange for occasionally cluttering my inbox, I am happy to receive their communications.

The study by the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) and Pace University’s Lubin School of Business Interactive and Direct Marketing Lab quoted in Karen’s article states that 28% of Gen Y find email from companies to be relevant, while 32% have no opinion. The underlying question not whether or not you should market to Millennials through email, it’s how. The answer is- keep it short and sweet. Respond to the shorter buying cycles of Gen Y by acting quickly with relevant, genuine messaging. Believe the generalizations that we have shorter attention spans and that we know what we want when we want it. Use social media to reach us, but don’t stop sending us email.

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 passed the most clear legislation on email with its 2006 “Regulations on Internet Email Services“, which holdsESPs responsible and requires opt-in, as well as the placement of “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 (Actual Legislation in English)

Amsterdam is the place to be in June for all things email. LashBack will be attending the 16th MAAWG General Meeting,which takes place in Amsterdam June 9-11. The three-day event is expected to address a number of topics on the forefront of global email compliance, including cross-border enforcement mechanisms, botnet mitigation issues, inter-provider feedback mechanisms, spam on mobile, and deliverability in Europe.

MAAWG is also including hands-on training classes on both IPv6 and the implementation of DKIM email authentication.  As a leader in reputation monitoring and an advocate for email marketing best practices, LashBack champions the importance of industry collaboration globally to ensure the deliverability of legitimate messaging.  In addition to MAAWG’s event, the Online Trust Alliance will hold its Town Hall Regional Meeting June 8, which is available to all MAAWG, OTA, IAB, DDMA, EMMA-NL members. Click here for a list of OTA member resources for June 2009.

Congratulations to LashBack client ExactTarget, who has recently secured $70 million from three venture capital firms in order to expand internationally and continue to innovate their email marketing platform. The round of funding is one of the largest in the U.S. for 2009, which is an incredible statement for the critical role that email will continue to play in our global economy. 

The investment comes as no surprise, as ExactTarget has experienced three years of continued profitability and a record breaking performance in Q1 of 2009. It seems that as other marketing channels are shrinking, email continues to grow and prosper both in the U.S. and globally. Per the ExactTarget press release, Exact Target has added over 250 new clients and boosted revenue by over 40% in the first quarter of this year. This follows 2008, where Exact Target posted record breaking growth, adding over a thousand new clients and upgrading its email platform to include several key integrations. Exact Target now integrates with  Google, Microsoft, Omniture and Salesforce.com and is planning to expand globally with the announcement of a new international office location in the next thirty days.

In addition to boosting the economy by providing businesses with targeted, permission-based email marketing solutions, ExactTarget was recently voted one of the top ten places to work in Indiana and is continually adding employees. Antagonists of email marketing need look no further than companies like Exact Target to see the growth and innovation happening now, while other industries are waning.

Part of the reason email is still incredibly relevant is its implication in one-to-one, customer-oriented marketing in both the B2C and B2B spaces. Email continues to reinforce social marketing while maintaining the highest ROI of all marketing channels. Exact Target’s continuing success and the resulting capital investments in its solutions are a testament to the power and potential of well-targeted email marketing. We at LashBack are extremely excited to implement ExactTarget’s best-of-breed solutions in our marketing program, and can’t wait to see what the rest of 2009 will bring.

Since November of last year much speculation has postulated regarding the purpose of the Conficker virus infection. It was theorized to be a large scale infection that would wreak havoc on a global scale. Last month conficker’s true cause was identified and executed; to use the botnet it had created to send out massive amounts of spam email (link). Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab asserts that any given conficker-infected computer could be sending out as much at 80,000 emails in any given 24 hour period (link). Although this is a lot, it’s much less than was initially expected.

As an analyst here at LashBack I can tell you that we see a lot of commercial email everyday, and one of the things we check for while analyzing messages is whether or not the email has been sent through an open relay, which is a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. The use of botnets such as the conficker zombie-computer army is a common workaround for underhanded mailers.

Plenty of actions can be taken to remove this self-updating menace, and hopefully thanks to the publicity it has recieved it can be stopped altogether before inundating inboxes worldwide with unsolicited email.

LashBack Expert Contributions is a new way to share expert knowledge with LashBack TRUSTED  readers. This month kicks off with Austin based internet attorney Kavon Adli’s contribution on a new federal ruling on site terms with the right to modify.  In a recent case surrounding an advertiser’s site terms, a “unilateral modification” clause rendered a contract unenforceable. This type of clause is incredibly common in online advertising. Hence, it may be time to take a second look at your site terms.

Here is expert guest contributor and Austin based internet attorney Kavon Adli’s take on a new federal district court ruling:

In Harris v. Blockbuster, Inc., decided April 15, 2009 [2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31531 (N. Dist. TX. 2009)], a federal district court refused to enforce a contract on the grounds that it contained a clause permitting one of the parties to unilaterally modify the contract and make changes effective immediately upon posting notice on its website. The court reasoned that the existence of the clause rendered the contract “illusory”.

Notably, “unilateral modification” clauses such as the one in Harris are extremely common in the online advertising industry. In fact, they are so common it would not be unreasonable to say that they have become the standard in some areas. Few would suspect, however, that the mere inclusion of such a clause might subject one’s entire contract to invalidation.

A federal court of appeals found as much in a prior case (Morrison v. Amway Corp., 517 F.3d 248 (5th Cir. 2008)) in which a party attempted to apply a change made pursuant to such clause retroactively. That is, the party attempted to modify the other party’s rights as applied to events taking place prior to the modification. Harris, while a lower court decision, is arguably more significant since the court determined that such clauses render contracts unenforceable even where there is no attempted retroactive application.

The good news is that networks and other entities that would like to retain the convenience of these sorts of clauses may not be without options. According to the court in Harris, adding a “savings clause” providing that the modification clause “does not apply to disputes arising, or arising out of events occurring, before such publication” should avoid the potential for retroactive application (which is the primary concern), thereby protecting against non-enforceability or invalidation.

Disclaimer: The authorities identified above may not be applicable in the reader’s jurisdiction or to specific facts that differ from those presented in the cases cited. This article is not intended as a substitute for legal advice, and should not be relied upon for any purpose without consulting a licensed attorney.

As online marketers develop new channels for driving traffic, the evolution of industry-wide regulation is sure to follow. The email marketing channel procured the CAN-SPAM Act, as well as the need for a symbiotic relationship between advertisers and publishers.  For as long as advertising has existed, governments have attempted to regulate it, in the interest of both protecting consumers and curtailing deception. However, the rather lengthy processes for crafting government legislation can hardly keep up with the rapid changes in direct marketing. As a result, it makes sense for agreed upon best practice guidelines to arise organically from players within the industry.

With the rise of in viability of blog and review sites, one CPA network dedicated to compliance, has developed a set of industry guidelines to ensure these channels maintain credibility and respect the rights of consumers.  ClickBooth and its parent company Integraclick, in an open letter to the SEM marketing community, has released compliance policies to its publishers for blog and review sites.  In addition, they include a compliance audit process for publishers.

New guidelines for blog and review sites from ClickBooth are as follows:

 If Publisher Website adds user value and non promotional content is available and significant affiliate does not need to post “Advertisement” at the top of the page. However, if the review or blog site’s sole purpose is advertising, the website must contain the verbiage at the top of the site labeled “Advertisement.”

• Each such Publisher Website must contain distinct and legitimate content, substance and material.

• The Content appearing on each such Publisher Website including but not limited to testimonials, blog posts, and comments, must be entirely an accurate representation that is truthful and verifiable.

• Any testimonials appearing on such Publisher Websites must be accurate, truthful, verifiable and from individuals that have given their permission for such testimonials to be used by the Publisher in the manner so used on the applicable Publisher Websites. Where You have compensated an individual for the use of his/her testimonial, that fact must be disclosed, prominently, on the applicable Publisher Website immediately below or adjacent to the subject testimonial. Monetary compensations for testimonials are not allowed.

• Each such Publisher Website must have an asterisk next to Links to products leading to a disclaimer that contain a clearly worded disclaimer disclosing the fact that the proprietor of the Website has a commercial relationship whereby it receives compensation for referrals that result in sales of the product(s) featured on the Website.

• Review websites must disclose review process and steps taken to ensure a fair review. A fair review consists of tests or benchmarks conducted under the exact same conditions for all products reviewed.

• Each such Publisher Website should have images/videos that represent the consumer depicted, any images/videos used for dramatization must be explained with a disclaimer.

• IP address of user comments and other user submitted content must be retained and verified for authenticity.

These standards and other relevant web and search guidelines, along with Clickbooth’s compliance audit processes can be found here.

Growing concern over behavioral advertising, specifically ISP-based advertising has caused members of the House to propose drafting new online privacy laws.  There are two sides to the argument surrounding online privacy and advertising. One side is for greater government regulation, arguing ISPs and large companies have an incredibly invasive level of data on consumers.  The other side argues that the data a consumer provides online is never truly private, and regulating advertisers would only cause advertising-supported content to suffer.

In a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, members discussed the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, proposed in 2002, as a starting off point for drafting new legislation. The bill would require any firm that collects consumer information  to tell consumers what’s being collected and  how it’s used. It would also allow consumers to act on the notification. Industry reps, committee members and privacy proponents weigh-in at Kate Kaye’s post on ClickZ.  

The FTC has been taking a hard look at behavioral advertising as well, warning marketers that this may be their last chance to self-regulate. Read an interesting take on how educating consumers may be far more effective than regulation ever could at the Technology Liberation Front.

CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, is something we’re all familiar with…you’re just about to leave a comment, post a picture, login to a site, and this pops up:

This is about the time I let out a big sigh and squint my eyes in an attempt to decipher the captcha.  The obnoxious part is that when I come across them, I’m always about to do something…I’m not doing it yet.  So, the only thing standing between me and what I was about to do is that stinkin’ captcha.  The more tries it takes me to prove that I am a human and not a scheming bot, the less I appreciate captchas.

They exist for good reason.  Certainly they are a necessary precaution, but surely the process could be streamlined.

Google authors agree with me.  Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, and Shumeet Baluja have been testing out a new simplified captcha where users have to, “adjust randomly rotated images to their upright orientation”.  As the article below  mentions, humans are pretty good with orientation.  Bots, however, are not.  Well, not yet…

Google doesn’t seem too concerned, for now: “We ensure that our CAPTCHA can not be defeated by state-of-the-art orientation detection systems by using those systems to filter images that can be automatically recognized and oriented.”  This is all fine and good, but this statement is in reference to systems currently in existence.  Can a system be created that can penetrate this new filter?

I submit that it can and will.  The question is when.

The direction technology is headed in seems to suggest that man and machine will be one-upping each other into eternity.   This begs the question, is there even a wall to run into?  Will there ever be a failsafe method of discerning between the two?

Stay tuned and we’ll all find out together.

http://news.ebrandz.com/google/2009/2566-google-researchers-experimenting-witn-new-image-captcha-method.html