There’s a new secret to reducing email compliant rates, but only a few senders are fully taking advantage of this new benefit.  List-Unsubscribe headers are now relevant factor in reaching nearly a half billion inboxes so understanding this emerging trend is critical.  Those that qualify and implement this service properly may be able to present an “Unsubscribe” button on the email client interface.  What’s more, that option may replace the dreaded “Report as Spam” button which lumps responsible advertisers in with outlaw spammers.

Co-Authored nearly a decade ago by a promising young lad, Joshua Baer, the list-unsubscribe header is code placed in email headers which tells receivers and anti-spam firms how to programmatically unsubscribe their consumers upon request.  According to the standard, RFC 2369 this header can specify either a reply to email or an HTML based web unsubscribe method.  This is where it gets tricky though.   Not all receivers are supporting this header in the same ways, so you need to know who accepts what and the impact that can have on your organizations ability to qualify for this program.

List-Unsubscribe Header Resources:
List-Unsubscribe.com Blog (Authored by Joshua Baer)
RFC 2369

Please feel free to contact LashBack directly for guidance regarding this topic:

866.838.0455
brandon (at) lashback dot com

Recent Statatistics
Sending IPs Monitored: 4,548,542
Unsubscribe Mechanisms Monitored: 270,142
Abused Unsubscribe Mechanisms: 6,053

Summary
Overall only 2.5% of unsubscribe links will yield more spam if the consumer uses this link to unsubscribe (i.e., suppression list abuse). That said, it’s important to note that the 2.5% unsubscribe abusers actually send a disproportionate volume of mail as compared to those that care about compliance. As a result, the average consumer can only unsubscribe safely and effectively less than 1 in 5 times without LashBack’s UnsubSafe services. With UnsubSafe consumer unsubscribe requests are suppressed when LashBack either doesn’t know the advertiser or that organization has a bad reputation with our proprietary probing and testing systems. Only advertisers who have established a track record of both honoring and protecting suppression files from misuse are qualified for UnsubSafe’s automated unsubscribe processing. On average each day LashBack receives over 100,000 actual consumer unsubscribe requests. This stream of data and the unsubscribe performance tracked within is the foundation for our UnsubMonitor clients ability to view and monitor the actions of their 3rd party partners/affiliates.

LashBack’s UnsubScore which is a “credit rating” for unsubscribe performance can affect an advertisers deliverability/trust, so paying attention to compliance is critical. Return Path utilizes LashBack’s UnsubScore to qualify and maintain those in their Sender Score Certified Program, formerly known as Bonded Sender. In addition, other anti-spam industry leaders such as MXLogic utilize LashBack data and LashBack’s UnsubSafe service powers Cloudmark’s new Safe Unsubscribe offerings.

Currently LashBack’s Unsubscribe Blacklist (UBL) contains the IP addresses of over 93,000 IP addresses which are sending to email addresses which have been harvested from suppression files. The UBL is used by other reputation companies as well as other corporations, receivers and ISPs to block potentially harmful advertisers/senders from reaching there valued clients. More on the UBL: http://www.lashback.com/ubl.htm

It’s very rewarding to see your small, privately funded company grow to the point to where it can not only attend, but actually begin to participate in important industry events.  In April, 2007 LashBack is proud to announce that it has begun crossing that chasm and become an industry underwriter for the 3rd annual Authentication Summit being held in Boston.

The Authentication Summit has expended its vision and agenda beyond authentication to now also include “Online Trust”.  I’m hopefully that this provides reputation service provides such as LashBack a venue to showcase emerging reputation services and their impact on “Online Trust” and consumer safety.