The Email Wars

An Internet standards group approved two “experimental” antispam proposals, sidestepping a controversy dividing Microsoft and its e-mail competitors.

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), a division of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), said it would publish two competing and overlapping sets of documents that define ways of confirming that e-mail senders are who they say they are.

The experimental Requests for Comment (RFCs)–Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for Authorizing Use of Domains in E-Mail and Sender ID: Authenticating E-Mail–have been the subject of intense jockeying by Microsoft, America Online and others.

Critics have accused Microsoft of trying to strong-arm the industry into accepting Sender ID. Concerns over Microsoft’s Sender ID-related patents have alarmed some involved in setting standards, and last year the IETF let a Sender ID working group expire.

“While many proposals for domain-based authorization have been under consideration, no consensus has yet been reached concerning a single technical approach,” the IESG said in a statement. “The IESG does not endorse either of the two mechanisms documented in the experimental RFCs–their publication is intended to encourage further discussion and experimentation in order to gain experience that can be used to write future standards in this space.”

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What’s Your Delivery Rate?

I SPEND A GREAT DEAL of my time visiting clients and other organizations in the e-mail industry and in any discussions that I’ve had recently, deliverability is a red-hot topic. But there is a lot of confusion around what this term means, and some of this confusion is attributable to e-mail service providers. For example, ask any e-mail service provider to describe their delivery rates and you will get as many definitions as the number of vendors that you ask.

The truth about e-mail deliverability is that no vendor can truly measure it. That is, no vendor can provide complete accuracy in calculating precisely how many intended recipients actually received an e-mail. This is not a failure on the part of any individual e-mail service provider, but a limitation of SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) technology.

Fundamentally, however, e-mail marketers are concerned with actual inbox delivery and any reason their mail isn’t delivered. Methods to measure these vary widely and the actions a company should take to combat these challenges differ as well.

In general terms, there are direct ways and indirect ways of determining if a message goes undelivered.

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Captain UnsubCentral and Seargent LashBack yesterday released a list of the top 10 U.S. “Unsubscribe Violators” - marketers and advertisers whose suppression lists have been misused, resulting in more email from more sources after consumers have opted out. The Can-Spam Act requires gives advertisers 10 business days to stop sending commercial email messages to consumers who opt out by unsubscribing. All advertisers on the list, including subsidiaries of Vendare Media and Experian, failed to honor opt-out requests.

Go JOE!

U.S. Firms Sending More Email Abroad

Have we dried up all of our prospects in the US? Now it looks like many companies are embracing the global marketplace. Well seems timely as there are so many more people in the world than just those that live in the US. It’s about time that we look to market in other countries. And are you up to speed on the laws of each? Better find out what they are.

U.S. companies are sending more email to customers and prospects abroad, the Direct Marketing Association reported yesterday, citing data from DMA surveys. DM News reports that 87 percent of respondents said they had increased sales because of email sent to international customers and prospects last year, and nearly one-third said electronic communications had replaced traditional mail. Approximately 28 percent of respondents to a multi-channel marketing Report said they are doing business abroad.

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Like Star Wars, “Spam Wars” is a story unfolded in a series of disjointed episodes, and with varying degrees of success. Here we are, halfway through 2005, and it appears we’re witnessing the first solid victories against spam in years. Research released in March revealed a majority of consumers say they receive less spam today than they did a year ago. That’s consistent with recent reports from America Online and Microsoft.

In the cosmic battle between Good and Evil, the good guys always find a way to win. Yet we can’t forget how Darth Vader and his minions, no matter how defeated or gone-for-good they may seem, fester in the background and resurface in the next episode to terrify the galaxy once again.

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Email Delivery High in First Quarter

According to Bigfoot Interactive’s 1Q 2005 benchmark analysis of email performance, released today, email delivery rates across all major vertical markets remained high. The best performances were by editorial newsletters (97.6 percent delivery) and service messaging from financial services companies (96.8 percent).

However, the rapid adoption of broadband internet access appears to be driving email address changes, accounting for the bulk of invalid addresses and bouncebacks. Together with frequent ISP and email address changes, broadband adoption will continue to have an impact on email delivery for the foreseeable future, according to the report.

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As you march on across the battlefield of email marketing delivery, you need to pay attention to the health and hygene of your troops (or email lists). Making sure to continually enable a way for your customer to update their profile and even ask for a second email address if one goes bad, is a good practice. If you have the ability to add a second email field, like you can in the emailROI system (User Fields) you can get a back up email address if one goes MIA.

Chances are you spent a fair amount of effort and money to build your database. If those names performed well for you in the past, keep them clean. Doing so minimizes bounces and customer defections; Increases open and click-through rates; and minimizes chances of being blacklisted.

The NCOA process typically performs the following types of hygiene on your list:

Identify e-addresses that are no longer deliverable (”dead” addresses).

Identify and correct obvious typos, such as bfoley@hotmial.com or ssmith@yaho.com.

Identify test and prank records, such as asdf@yahoo.com and test@msn.com.

Find and remove records such as abuse@hotmail.com that somehow snuck into your database.

Remove duplicates (you’d be surprised how many there are!).

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Authentication and Accreditation: State of the Industry

On the eve of many new weapons from ISPs hitting the fronts, we want to share with you what you need to know about the competing factions battling for control of delivery.

Ever since SPF (define) was announced, “authentication” and “accreditation” have been big buzzwords in the e-mail marketing industry. Though not silver bullets to eliminate spam, these concepts hint at how the e-mail ecosystem is evolving to become more abuse-resistant. Today, we’ll detail some recent events that underscore the progress and level of adoption occurring with authentication and accreditation services.

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Not only was is something that placed many people and companies in a bad situation, but there was no warning. Fortunately many of us already knew that this was coming down the pipe, and had our bases covered. But Millions of end users that own domains do not and will not for along time. Hope you don’t have a personal domain registered somewhere that you use to email anyone with a MSN or Hotmail account, they won’t see it most likely.

Get out a wet blanket, some wood and try smoke signals. You have a better chance.

Microsoft Anti-Spam Efforts Cause Hotmail Hitch for Some Emailers

After Microsoft mandated compliance with its Sender ID email verification program this week, some emails - mostly from small-to-midsize firms - sent to MSN Hotmail are being sent to junk email boxes, reports DM News. Specifically, emails from companies that have not published their Sender Policy Framework (SPF) are being flagged with a “Sender Unknown” question mark while a “safety bar” within the email reads, “The sender of this message could not be verified by Sender ID.”
More than 1 million domains have published their SPF records, according to Microsoft. According to one deliverability expert, MSN is providing the sender-unknown warnings when “there is a hard fail, or in situations where the spammer is making up a domain name.”

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Email still effective to reach customers

If that above subject line did not allow you to breathe a sigh of releif, then what will? I am come on, over night email marketing is not just going to disapear, we are actually seeing most companies thinking more clearly about what they are doing, who they are talking to and what other interference is going on around the customer/client.

We are only going to see email marketers grow and learn more with this medium as we are all even more addicted it than an SF Resident on thier Crackberry.

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No more free passes, and if you are not compliant, by the way the conplaince site was down this AM, then your email will not be delivered. No ifs, ands or buts. These are the Rules and Bill makes them.

MSN Requires Sender ID Email Authentication

MSN today launched its Sender ID email authentication program for email sent to Hotmail users. Starting today, those emails for which the sender cannot be verified will be relegated to account-holder’s junk email boxes. Yahoo has discussed a similar program but has not implemented it yet. The Direct Marketing Association alerted email marketers late last week of the program’s implementation, and email delivery firms informed their customers yesterday.

“Messages that have not been authenticated will most likely be placed into a customer’s junk folder or deleted altogether in conjunction with other spam filters,” the June 17 DMA email stated. Microsoft announced the Sender ID program last summer but did not give an implementation date. And it has not communicated with the email marketing industry about it for several months.

The DMA and email delivery firms have urged their members to implement authentication programs for several months. “Compliance with authentication programs is a necessary step to protect both corporate brands and consumer confidence,” said Jerry Cerasale, DMA senior vice-president of government relations.

“Compliance is Necessary”. This is my favorite part of this news, “Required”, “Deleted Altogether” and “Not Communicated”

The Great Red-mond wall is growing. Please Bill, talk to the “troops in the field” and let us know before you drop the napalm on our lives.

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FTC to Congress: Spammers Won’t Heed ‘ADV’ Label Requirement

Well tell us something we don’t already know. We known that spammers and junk mailers would not place the ADV label in the subject line for some time. It is not going to ever happen. Those that run outside of the law, know the risk factor. And these people affect those that play by the Rules.

In a report required by the Can-Spam Act, the Federal Trade Commission has told Congress that an “ADV” label requirement for the subject lines of commercial emails would not help consumers or internet service providers, AdWeek reports. As it had in an earlier report on the establishment of a do-not-spam registry, the FTC said most spammers would not heed such a requirement. It said ISPs’ spam filters are already more effective than a largely unheeded label would be. The FTC has preferred enforcement, education of consumers and businesses, and development of email authentication and reputation-systems to reduce spam.

Return Path: Bonded Sender Works

Well being a bonded sender ourselves we are a little apprehensive of this. Really it helps a little, and just with building credibility with your clients and with some ISPs. But truly when they were spamcop/bondedsender they were a hoax. You would pay an arm and a leg to be a Bonded Sender, buy IronPort servers and then the SpamCop Sheriffs still crawl up your “a$$” and do as they please.

As excited as I was to have Return Path buy them, I am also a bit mistrustful of deliverability monitoring companies that are also selling the equiptment that “makes you safe”. At least the spamcop bonded sender cartel has been broken up (at least on paper).

Return Path, the email services firm that acquired Bonded Sender a couple months ago said that using the system of guaranteeing spam policy compliance by putting up a bond that can be debited for alleged violations has been increasing mail deliverability rates by more than 20 percent. Bonded Sender users have been seeing their delivery rates exceed 95 percent, according to Return Path.

It is not very often that we come across articles that take the stance that many of the legitimate email marketing companies, marketers and how the ISP react. This is one for the books. It is the Enigma machine that cracks the code for the lay person.

What are the reasons behind why ‘SPAMMING’ is targeted by ISP’s, Software companies and Governments, and will their efforts be effective in reducing these types of communications.

http://www.creativematch.co.uk/viewNews/?91175

Browser-based attacks increase as viruses decrease

As the threat to IT operations by viruses and worms declines, browser-based attacks are increasing, according to a technology trade organization.

The Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, on Tuesday released its third annual report on IT security and the work force. The survey of nearly 500 organizations, found that 56.6 percent had been the victim of a browser-based attack, up from 36.8 percent a year ago and a quarter two years ago, CompTIA said.

Browser-based attacks often take advantage of security flaws in Web browsers and other components of the user’s PC such as the operating system. The attacks’ objective could be to sabotage a computer or steal private data and can be launched when a user visits a Web page that appears harmless but contains malicious code.

One of the ways to lure victims to a bad Web site is through spam e-mails that include a hyperlink. Phishing, a form of attack that typically includes e-mail and fraudulent Web sites resembling legitimate sites, is on the rise, CompTIA said.

Read More: http://news.com.com/Browser-based+attacks+increase+as+viruses+decrease/2100-7349_3-5747050.html?part=rss&tag=5747050&subj=news