Melinda Krueger of MediaPost’s Email Insider recently did an informative post entitled Unsub Rates on the Rise. In it, she gives plausible reasons for the concern in the online marketing industry that unsubscribe rates are at an all time high right now. Included in the post are six ways to reduce unsubscribes.

One reason that Krueger lists for the rise in unsubscribes is the strengthening of CAN-SPAM. Consumers are no longer as worried that unsubscribing might subject them to more spam. In addition, smart phones make emails harder to read on the go, which gives people incentive to reduce the amount of mail coming into the inbox. As competition increases and consumers streamline their inboxes, providing value and using email best practices will be the only way to avoid the dreaded unsubscribe.

The first step in maintaining a quality marketing list is ensuring the people you are corresponding with do, in fact, wish to receive your email messages. Often, consumers opt in to a list without realizing or remembering it and are subsequently annoyed when they receive newsletters or offers in which they fail to find value. An important best practice is to ask for permission to continue communications via email.

On that note, our marketing department recently received a best practice email message from email service provider, Blue Sky Factory, Inc., which, barring personal information, read as follows:

“Subject: Blue Sky Factory: Please confirm ongoing email communication

Good afternoon, my name is ______ wtih Blue Sky Factory, Inc. based in Baltimore, MD. We are a full service Email Service Provider. Our records indicate that one of our team members may have had email communication with you in the past. I’m contacting you personally to see if you would like to receive our monthly e-newsletter along with periodic Webinar announcements related to upcoming email marketing best practice webinars? We would enjoy keeping in touch with you if you feel it to be beneficial.

We value your privacy and will not communicate with you subsequent to this email unless you contact me to tell me you would like to be added to our mailing list.

If you would like to be added to our email list, please simply reply to this email and say the word. Otherwise, thank you for your time and consideration, and have a great day!”

We feel the above message content is an excellent example from Blue Sky Factory of a best practice in email marketing on how to properly ask for permission, and we encourage anyone mailing to adopt a similar practice. Asking customers and contacts directly if they would like to receive communication and opting them in only when they respond positively is a great way to begin a trusting and long-lived email relationship. It allows consumers to see that your ultimate goal is to provide value with what you send.

Beginning October 1, 2008, the state of Nevada will begin enforcing legislation which requires all businesses that send cosumer identification data over the web to use encryption. Requiring all businesses to use encryption is aimed at securing electronic transmissions and ultimately aiding in the protection of consumer privacy.

However, the legislation, passed in 2005, provides a vague definition of ‘encryption’ and does not specify the penalties for violating the law. Some concern exists that the law leaves wiggle room to consider a password protected email to be ‘encrypted’, which may not accomplish the level of privacy for consumers that the law was intended to accomplish. Nevada legislators may have to better clarify the law, or wait for a possible lawsuit filing to establish new precendence surrounding the statute.

With cases of online fraud on the rise in the form of dictionary attacks, phishing, and suppression file theft, encryption to further protect consumer data is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Nevada legislators will be able to hammer out the details of the law and enforce encryption in a cost-effective way that both protects consumers and limits liability for marketers.

For more on Nevada’s email encryption law, read the article by Susan J. Campbell.

View a free one-hour on-demand email reputation management webinar featuring experts from LashBack, Habeas and Publishers Clearing House as they discuss:

-The competitive advantage of online compliance and reputation management in any economy-especially in an economic downturn.

-How to analyze, improve and manage email and Web operations with email reputation management strategies and tools.

-Case studies, best practices and tips you can leverage immediately for your business or clients

Register for the webinar and receive access to a new whitepaper, “Exponential ROI: How You Can Achieve It with Email Reputation Management

Upcoming Webinar: UnsubCentral MD5 Hashed Suppression Lists: A practical guide to use and implementation, September 23rd, 2pm EDT

Email list security is uppermost on everybody’s minds these days. With that in mind I am passing on what I think is a valuable opportunity to everyone in our industry.

UnsubCentral is offering a webinar September 23rd at 2pm EDT titled, MD5 Hashed Suppression Lists: A practical guide to use and implementation. It’s designed to give you the most current information on the use of this industry standard security process. While you may have been reluctant to use MD5 hashing, UnsubCentral has a desktop application which makes it easy. I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity to find out how it works.

Please mark it on your calendar for September 23 and use the link below to sign up. I encourage you to attend and invite any others you feel will benefit from this hour long webinar.

Register here.

In a reversal of its position on Virginia’s anti-spam legislation, the Virginia Supreme Court has declared the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional. After voting 4-3 to uphold the law only six months ago, the court stated the law violated the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and anonymous speech. Virginia’s legislation was directed at all forms of unsolicited email: political, religious or otherwise, whereas the Federal CAN-SPAM Act applies only to commercial email.

The decision was made in response to an appeal by Jeremy Jaynes, who was previously sentenced to nine years in prison under the Virginia law for sending mass email using false domains and IP addresses. The law made it a misdemeanor to send bulk unsolicited email using false routing info and a felony if more than 10,000 messages were sent in 24 hours. Virginia was one of the first states to pass its own anti-spam legislation. Other states have subsequently crafted laws which apply specifcally to commercial email, instead of targeting all unsolicted email.

To illustrate an individual’s right to anonymous speech, the court’s opinion noted that if Madison, Hamilton and Jay had published the Federalist Papers today under the pen name Publius and bulk emailed them, they would be in violation of the Virginia law. While Virginia’s Attorney General vows to appeal the ruling, the decision lends strength to the utility of the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which specifically establishes the right to send commercial mail so long as the Ten Guidelines of CAN-SPAM compliance are satisfied.

Read the full Washington Post article on the ruling by Tom Jackman.

To promote email compliance proccesses, LashBack and BlueHornet are teaming up to offer a free interactive seminar at the Lifecycle Messaging Email Conference. The pre-conference seminar will take place September 30, 2008, at the Coronado Island Resort in San Diego, CA. The CAN-SPAM Compliance, Reputation and Deliverability Lifecycle Seminar is from 2-4 p.m. with a cocktail reception following from 6-8 p.m. Listen to case studies and email “war stories”, and learn how to utilize best practices in interactive marketing in order to avoid becoming a statistic.

You Bring the Questions, We Bring the Experts:

Linda Goodman, leading CAN-SPAM and online compliance attorney, presents her top case studies to give real life perspective on actual compliance problems.

James O’Brien, LashBack’s Director of Marketing, outlines the ten guidelines to CAN-SPAM compliance- how to stay out of trouble and in compliance with federal laws.

Michele Eichner of Pivotal Veracity discusses the impact compliance issues can have on your email reputation.

Tim Marusich, VP and General Manager of BlueHornet shares tips on how your email service provider can help you get back on track and stay there.

The three day Lifecycle Messaging Email Conference in San Diego is geared toward conscientious email marketers looking to improve email campaign performance. Often the first step in improving long-term campaign performance is ensuring compliant sending behavior. The relationship between reputation and deliverability is as strong as ever. Hope to see you in San Diego!

Register for the seminar and learn more about the Lifecycle Messaging Email Conference below:

Email Compliance Seminar Free Registration

Lifecycle Messaging Email Conference

The Texas Attorney General is suing a weight-loss drug and skincare marketer who has allegedly been unlawfully debiting customer accounts. The firm has been reported to the Better Business Bureau 638 times over the past 3 years. In a majority of the complaints, consumers claimed products purchased on the site did not work or that they never received the products they had paid for.

Upon investigating consumer complaints, the Texas AG accused the marketer of making unreasonable claims, such as promising a guaranteed loss of 6-12 pounds in two days. The firm offered a “free” trial bottle of the weight-loss product, requiring customers to pay shipping and handling charges. However, they claimed to provide an easy cancellation process after the first bottle. According to complaints, consumers had a difficult time notifying the firm of cancellation, and the firm continued to deduct money from customer accounts even after they attempted to cancel. Several customers inccurred additional charges from bank overdraft fees, and many closed their accounts to avoid additional unauthorized billing.

A district court in Texas has put a freeze on the assets of the company and has issued a temporary restraining order preventing any more unathorized bank withdrawals. The Texas AG is seeking restitution of up to $20,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and a $250,000 penalty for actions designed to deprive consumers aged 65 or older of money or property.

When dealing with opt-in fraud, one might ask, “What types of problems, exactly, could this cause for my business?” LashBack Senior Client Service Manager Mike McGough responds, “If the data going to your email list has LashBack seeds in it, chances are, you are going to hear about it from one of your business partners.” LashBack clients have access to our reporting services, CAN-SPAM Compliance Monitor and List Monitor, so they will be notified when a partner is sending to a list that contains bad data.

The pitfalls associated with bad data from false signups do not end with suppression list seeding. If a list contains LashBack probes, it will likely also contain “spam trap” email addresses that are used to form various blacklists. Sending to these addresses could contribute to problematic listings on multiple blacklists and result in a severe decrease in deliverability.

A first step in combatting opt-in fraud and false signups is keeping a watchful eye on your email reputation and the email reputation of your partners. LashBack’s services can assist you in doing just that by monitoring your sending behavior as well as the sending behavior of your partners. The cost of bad data paid in the form of blacklisting, spam complaints and decreased deliverability is too high.

In the end, the investment in monitoring for compliance and best practice failures, not to mention having the ability to catch fraudulent practices is well worth it. False opt-ins and other fraudulent practices not only cost our industry lost money spent on bad data, but also hurt our collective reputation. Being proactive to monitor the quality of your data provides a return in real dollars saved and protects revenue and profit.

This post is part three of a three part post on opt-in fraud. Click the links to read part one and part two.

In a similar case of opt-in fraud, a website called Spamza.com has recently been shut down by its host GoDaddy for allowing visitors to sign up virtually any email address to what the site claimed was “hundreds of newsletters”. The site allowed individuals to anonymously subject their enemies’ email addresses to heinous amounts of fraudulently opted-in mail.

Signing up an email address at Spamza caused it to be resold from one illegal operation to another, posing a potential nightmare for single opt-in email marketing campaigns and compliant marketers unknowingly obtaining data containing opt-in fraud. This is why LashBack encourages not only compliance with CAN-SPAM laws but also best practices such as confirmed opt-in.

Anyone in the business of purchasing leads is well aware why opt-in fraud creates such a big problem. The leads gathered from fraudulent sign-ups are not legitimate single opt-in or confirmed opt-in email addresses. When false sign-ups occur, however, they pose a much greater threat in a single opt-in scenario than in a confirmed opt-in one. Due to the nature of the single opt-in, addresses could easily be signed up without proper confirmation from the address owner.

To be continued…

This is Part Two of a three part post on opt-in fraud and bad data. Click here to read Part One.

To read more about Spamza, check out blogs by Justin Premick, Word to the Wise, and Dancho Danchev.