The Email Wars

Moms determine the majority of household spending. A study conducted by Lucid Marketing and EmailLabs identified mothers’ e-mail habits, as well as tactics to reach that target audience.

Researchers say 63 percent of the mothers surveyed receive one to five newsletters or promotional e-mails from online retailers. While 33.1 percent of respondents place a relatively high (6 to 7 out of 10) rank on the importance of commercial e-mail, a majority (39.3 percent) said they only subscribe if an e-mail address is requested as part of the purchase or registration process. Only 21.8 percent look to subscribe without being prompted.

Moms and E-Mail Marketing

AT LAST WEEK’S CAMPAIGN DIGITAL Conference in London, I started thinking about the current global market and e-mail challenges. It got me thinking about an article I had read on global warming and the changes it’s creating for animal populations; seeing a parallel I wondered “Is a similar thing happening in our space? Is e-mail being affected too?”

Case in point: I encountered the site of a former client that had decided to use an in-house e-mail marketing system. The registration form had this notice: “We have been blocked by AOL from sending e-mail to AOL Customers. If you have an AOL e-mail address you will not receive the confirmation message to activate your account.” This left consumers two options. They could discontinue the process or they could call the service center to get an activation code. Can you imagine the impact this has on consumer perception, company reputation and the hard costs associated with filling consumers’ code requests? With AOL representing more than 22 percent of the company database, this is potentially damaging.

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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.

Authentication and Accreditation: State of the Industry

EmailLabs’ David Sousa provides tips for legitimate marketers to distinguish themselves from spammers.

When recently asked about best practices for legitimate marketers to distinguish themselves from spammers.

To start with, if email subscribers give affirmative consent (actively opted in, rather than unchecking a pre-checked box, for example) to a sender, then they can usually distinguish that email from an unsolicited one. For true permission marketers, the challenges come when the first email received is many weeks after the opt-in date and when it arrives into a bulk folder or inbox overloaded with unsolicited emails.

That said, here are a few best practice tips to help subscribers easily find your wanted email in their inbox.

Canadian Spam Taskforce Issues Report

A 10-member spam taskforce appointed by the Canadian government and comprising government and private sector members, including representatives from the Canadian Marketing Association, submitted its report to the country’s Minister of Industry, ClickZ reports. The report calls for additional government legislation to prohibition spamming activities and establish appropriate penalties, enforcement mechanisms and industry standards to fight spam. It also recommends practices on business conduct, public education and awareness, and international cooperation with regard to spam. The group studied Australian and U.S. legislation, among others, to formulate its proposal. The proposal discusses bilateral initiatives to reach out to key partners, including the U.S. The task force anticipates an agreement to be signed with the U.S. government in late 2005.

Canadian Feds Ponder Spam Options

Email; Morning, Noon and Nighttime Too

As end users, we want our email. Even with the complaints of spam, viruses and phoshing, we want to get the messages we want from retailers, partners, friends, etc whenever they want to get them to us. So geting past the trenches, fences, barb wire, and troops put in place to protect these people at thier request the last few years.

Email is just as important as the phone and the US Mail. We need it now to communicate.

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Email Coalition Sets Authentication Requirement

The Email Service Provider Coalition is now requiring its members to implement authentication for all email they send on behalf of clients – many of them marketers. ESPC will also mandate that members use authentication when sending their corporate email, it suggests that email senders immediately implement the IP-based Sender ID Framework, developed last year by combining Microsoft’s Sender ID with the open source Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

Based on a recent survey of its membership, the ESPC found that 97 percent were authenticating outbound client email; and 73 percent were authenticating both client and corporate email. ESPC had previously required all new members to be compliant with the SPF standard and had urged existing members to become compliant.

ESPC members include Experian’s CheetahMail, Constant Contact, Digital Impact, DoubleClick, ProspectivDirect, Return Path, Skylist, and StrongMail Systems. In April, it expanded membership beyond email service providers to include email infrastructure providers, mail transfer agents, internet service providers, nonprofits, anti-spam application providers and deliverability solution providers.

Yahoo!, Cisco Launch New E-Mail Authentication Tool

WITH AN EYE TOWARD PREVENTING spam and phishing scams, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems late last week launched a technology called DomainKeys Identified Mail to verify the origins of e-mail messages.

Sending messages using a false address is a common tactic of spammers. Known as DKIM, the e-mail authentication technology uses key cryptography that allows users to verify and maintain message integrity, and identifies legitimate messages. It’s useful for companies that send transactional e-mail to consumers, including banks, telecoms, and online merchants.

Being offered to the industry royalty-free, DKIM borrows elements from Yahoo!’s DomainKeys and the network equipment maker’s Internet Identified Mail system. And while technical differences exist, each attaches a scrambled digital signature to a user’s mail, which can then be vetted to ensure that it’s actually being sent from the domain in the sender’s address.

Both Yahoo!’s e-mail service and Google’s Gmail e-mail have initiated DomainKeys, and a huge demand for just such a collaboration existed, according to Miles Libbey, anti-spam product manager for Yahoo! Mail.

“Yahoo! is receiving more than 350 million messages signed by DomainKeys per day,” Libbey said in a statement. “By collaborating with innovative companies such as Cisco and Sendmail, we have been able to tap into industry visionaries like Sendmail’s Eric Allman to help combat e-mail forgery. In doing so, we can offer a solution that increases the level of defense against fraudulent e-mails and phishing attacks.”

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Email users are starting to get comfy with the spamvertisers.

While industry watchers believe spam now makes up 75 per cent of all email, it seems people just aren’t bothered by the never-ending stream of offers for pills and porn pouring into their inboxes.

According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, fewer people find spam annoying or unpleasant than a year ago. Currently 67 per cent of email users say they find spam negatively affects their online experience, compared to 77 per cent a year ago.

Email users have also recovered their trust in email, with 53 per cent of users saying spam has sapped their confidence in email, down from 62 per cent a year ago.

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When is spam not spam?
Is it in the eye of the beholder – or the sender?

This is always an interesting thought. When does someone cross the line because they have access or own email addresses to send email that may have not be solicited?

Anybody involved in sending bulk email is quite aware of the risk they run of being labelled a spammer.

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Report from the UK Front, looks as if folks are claiming that the Brittish Anti-Spam Laws are failing. And what generals do they throw into the gladiator ring to appease the masses? Right, the Marketers.

Nobody really emerges from this covered in any kind of glory…

This week silicon.com revealed the results of a Freedom of Information Act enquiry into the DTI. We wanted to know why the UK’s anti-spam laws are so lame and so we asked the DTI just who it consulted with in drafting the laws.

We knew the Direct Marketing Association had been involved and we were pretty sure those who opposed tighter legislation were likely to have a vested interest in the perpetuation of email marketing but we weren’t quite prepared for how fatally flawed the whole process had been.

Read More….

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