Beginning in January, Yahoo will join an impressive number of ESPs and email filtering services in using Return Path’s Sender Score Certified whitelisting program to give inbox preference to reputable mailers.  The Return Path whitelist is already utilized by many of the biggest names in email including Windows Live Hotmail, Time Warner, Spam Assasin, Iron Port and Cloudmark, affecting the deliverability to over 1.2 billion inboxes worldwide and growing.

Yahoo adopting Sender Score Certified has positive implications for legitimate email marketers who are already Sender Score Certified, as it will begin to improve their deliverability in Yahoo mail inboxes.  It also means caring about email reputation as a marketer has never been more important.  As more and more ESPs adopt strict, uniform standards for the mail that reaches their customer inboxes, getting a handle on your reputation as a sender could mean the difference between sink or swim. Mailers can apply to become Sender Score Certified at the Return Path site.

As I sit here looking at my inbox I wonder why I get Pamper’s, AARP, and Viagra based emails? I am a 37 year old single guy. Is there an email psychic out there that knows that I want these things? I don’t want any of these advertisements. What I do like to see are deals on computer products, health food items, and local events. I like to see messages that are directed toward my personal interests. Not some blind attempt to get my attention. It never works!

How did I get on these lists of annoying mailings? It was my own fault! I bought a phone through a website and hurryingly hit submit before I noticed a box checked allowing partners and affiliates to send me unsolicited email. Read the fine details. I have tried to unsubscribe without success. Now advertisements are sent to me blindly. This all being said, it seems that advertisers and publishers would want their mailings to reach their target audience. It would drive click through sales and increase deliverability. The current system is broken.

~MOE

A new study by Return Path, titled Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me”  shed some light on how top companies are treating opt-outs.  The study highlighted the importance of the unsubscribe process in the lifecycle of the customer experience.  Ken Magill also interviewed Bonnie Malone of Return Path on the study, which can be read at the Direct Magazine site.

Shockingly, however, the study found that as many as 20% of major brands did not immediately respect unsubscribes.  When handling the opt-out process, these companies all sent more than one email after the unsubscribe, and many sent four or more messages.  While many marketers think that the relationship with a consumer ends with the opt-out, sending additional messages could have a seriously negative impact on overall brand image, and may cause customers to stay away for good.

In addition, new CAN-SPAM regulations surrounding unsubscribes specifically make it illegal to require a consumer to log in in order to opt-out.  While most companies provide a landing page confirming the opt out has taken place, some send a confirmation email. Sending an email to confirm an opt-out from emails is controversial and found by many consumers to be a little annoying, as they have just finished asking not to receive any more mail. 

In other cases, forcing the consumer to reply with a message with something like “unsubscribe me” in the subject line is both time-consuming and bothersome.  I have had to fill out one of these emails before and found it to be an unnecessary hoop to jump through as well as inconvenient.  To add, I still received messages from this online clothing merchant after they forced me to mail them an unsubscribe message- and.  Needless to say, I won’t be shopping on their site anymore.

Return Path recommends that companies make the unsubscribe process as simple and convenient for the consumer as possible, as well as consider it a part of their customer relationship, rather than just a technical transaction.  Give departing customers the best possible brand experience and pay attention to the quality of your unsubscribe process with the same fervor as welcome messaging.  The first step to improving the brand experience, is as always, reputation.  Monitoring for compliance provides the necessary foundation for making the unsubscribe process a positve part of your branding strategy.

As we enter the fourth quarter, the busiest online shopping season begins and the economy waffles with uncertainty, email marketers will need to use every tool in their lineup to fight for their portion of the holiday consumer dollar. This tough economy means businesses, affiliates and competitors will be pushing the limits to stay competitive.

Last month, LashBack executives attended the eco/LAP Sixth Anual German Anti-Spam Conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, where they learned the implications of increasing cases of fraud and criminal activity in response to a global economic downturn.  In addition, instances of criminals leveraging corporate email infrastructures to send mail both through open relays and secured relays are on the rise once again.

LashBack feels the best way to respond to the recent downturn in the economy is by equipping your email program with intelligence tools that will enhance your competitive edge in the coming months.  That said, there is no time like the present to take full advantage of LashBack’s growing archive of 170,000,000 commercial email messages and constant stream of 3 million messages per day.

Affiliate Loyalty is a service that enables ad networks to see what direct affiliates are sending on their behalf and- for the first time- on behalf of the competition.  By using LashBack’s data, networks are able to learn who is loyal and see which offers are being sent with which networks.

BrandAlert is a service utilized by advertisers and email marketers that is powered by a searchable archive of over 170 million commercial email messages.  BrandAlert can be used both to enforce mailing policies and monitor the sending behavior of third parties, or to monitor the sending behavior of competitors based on search terms or key phrases related to specific products or brands.  For example, using BrandAlert, one LashBack client is able to vet traffic from third parties whom they have not given permission to mail on their behalf.  Other clients use BrandAlert searches to check out the specific email offers and creatives sent by their competitors.

ListMonitor is another intelligence tool which allows list owners and managers to automate seeding of their data directly or smartly seed any data collection website or reg-path with unique seed addresses.  By using ListMonitor, you can see the offers sent to your list for multiple seed addresses in one location to monitor frequency, volume and offer type and ensure your data is not being abused.

LashBack will be sponsoring this month’s Gateway Interactive Marketing Association event at the Monarch Restaurant in Maplewood. The topic will be E-mail Marketing- The What, Why, How, When You Should Send an Email.

Expert panelists will be discussing be speaking about all aspects of email marketing programs, including testing, reporting, segmenting, demo data, and CAN-SPAM. A panelist from LashBack will discuss how to protect email reputation and improve deliverability through email compliance and best practices. Hope to see you there!

When:
Wednesday, October 15, 6-9 p.m.
6-7 Networking - Eats and Drinks
7-8 Presentation
8-9 More Networking

Where:
Monarch Restaurant
7401 Manchester Rd.
Maplewood, MO 63143

Email Compliance: The Foundation of Reputation and Deliverability

“Learn the Process, Use the Tools, Get the Answers”

Date: November 3, 2008

Time: 1pm-5pm (refreshments will be provided)

Location: eec/DMA Seminar Center, 1120 Avenue of the Americas, 13th Floor, New York, NY.

This seminar is part of a ground-breaking series of email compliance-focused events. This specific seminar will cover LashBack and UnsubCentral processes and deliverables within a framework of educating participants as to the need for comprehensive compliance processes as a foundation to successful email marketing and email reputation protection.

Participants will learn the 10 guidelines of CAN-SPAM compliance with drill down on unsubscribe compliance, unsubscribe processes including suppression list best practices, the new FTC unsubscribe rule, and compliance’s overall impact on reputation and deliverability.

Speakers:

To register at the DMA website, click here.

Mailing to suppression files has been a problem since the inception of the CAN-SPAM Act. However, a more insidious issue that LashBack has seen recently is the rise in opt-in fraud. Email addresses are being harvested from suppression files and signed up directly on opt-in sites with false identification information. In response, LashBack has launched a new beta service called DataSource Validator.

The beta service, available to all LashBack clients, allows for submission of an MD5 Hash of opt-in email addresses and their respective opt-in IPs. DataSource Validator checks files for our list of seed email addresses which should never be opted in. In addition, it cross-checks against any IPs that have attempted to opt-in our seeds in the past. The goal of the new service is to alert marketers when they are receiving bad data from a particular opt-in source and allow them to take appropriate action.

LashBack has since rolled out the API to support batch processing of a lead file for lead source validation. Consequently, instead of having to submit each address line by line to inspect it for a suspicious opt-in IP, our clients can now submit entire lead files to be checked for bad data. In addition to being able to access this function programatically, clients can also process leads manually from existing UnsubMonitor accounts.

We urge any clients collecting new data to try this service. Bad data from opt-in fraud is costing marketers payouts for false opt-ins and resulting in higher complaint rates from consumers who have had their addresses fraudulently opted in. To pinpoint the origins of fraudulent data sources that may be tarnishing your list, please view our newest white paper entitled DataSource Validator.

LashBack client Publishers Clearing House(PCH) has embraced the service in an effort to monitor the quality of their lists to proactively promote collaborative compliance and report fraudulent data, protecting consumers and advertisers alike. Sal Tripi, PCH Director of Operations stated, “PCH is eternally vigilant of our brand, our consumer and our advertising customer’s experience with us. When this recent problem surfaced, we knew we had to act fast. Our advertisers and internal marketing partners expect quality. We knew this threat was real based on an alert from LashBack.” Read the full PCH press release on DataSource Validator here.

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

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

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.