The cats who brought you “SERP SERPBACKS Badass Song” and “SEO Soul” introduce you to Funk 2.0, “I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!,” the newest flick from the Calacanis Collection. Veronica Belmont stars as the foxy heroine, who fights the ringleaders of the spam underworld. Can you digg it?
One interesting issue is that it is in essence stating that there cannot be any barricades to removing yourself like needing a password to any other identifiable information other than your email address. So what does this mean to preference centers that are currently controlled inside of social media, news or community sites? I was thinking about all the sites I log into (is Facebook) in order to change my preferences. Will this be illegal under these new changes?
From one source:
Does the above mean that passwords will not be allowed as part of the unsubscribe process?
Yes. This provision is in direct response to some sites that would require you to login in order to process the unsub. The best example of this was something that a product group at Microsoft used to do: One of their divisions or products would send you unsolicited email and when you clicked to unsub, it would require you to put in your password.
Since you didn’t opt-in and didn’t have the password they were looking for, it would force you to register, requiring name, postal address, etc., and then email you a confirmation before it would finalize your sign-up and send you the coveted password. Only *then* would it allow you to log in and set your mail preferences. They stopped doing that after being blacklisted and having to clean up a database full of
obscene street names.
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;”
Accordingly, the Commission adopts final Rule 316.5, which prohibits the imposition of any fee, any requirement to provide personally identifying information (beyond one’s email address), or any other obligation as a condition for accepting or honoring a recipient’s opt-out request.
Here is the FULL Document.
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/05/R411008frn.pdf
MySpace has informed us that on Monday it was awarded $234 million in statutory damages, the largest anti-spam sum ever made under CAN-SPAM and apparently ever under any law. This is also the first time damages have been awarded under the California Anti Phishing Act.
The case was won against two notorious spammers, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. Wallace earned the nicknames “Spamford” and “spam king” for having sent as many as 30 million spam messages per day during a period of time in the 1990s.
We know that every so often email campaigns get sent out with an error, to a wrong list, or even with the wrong offer. But what to do afterwards is often a question we get. There are many things to consider before you react.
One: Will it be harmful to your business?
Two: Is it something that needs to be corrected?
Three: Did anyone notice besides you?
If you can answer any of these as yes, then you need to act. Think carefully as to what you are going to send out as you could have a negative impact on your subscriber list. I found this recent example from Virgin and how they handled it. Good clean up guys.
Virgin lands in the rough with email invitation to golf resort event
Virgin Trains has apologised to customers after mistakenly inviting up to 76,000 of them to a day at a golf resort.
The company sent an email on Thursday inviting people to an event at The Grove Golf Resort Hotel, Herts, an 18th century country estate.
But the offer was intended only for the 75 members of its first class Traveller club.
A spokesman said the email was sent accidentally to “quite a large number of people”.
This new tool called Xobni is a great plugin for Outlook users. It is one of the best tools we have seen for Outlook for some time now. You might ask “What does this do to help with frequency measurement and planning?”, well here is the hook. You can use this tool to take a look at your own campaigns as well as those of comp that are in your inbox. Using it you can see times of day, days of week and frequency that they are using to market to you and you to your consumers/prospects. It is a simple way to get a clear grasp on what is going on in the inbox for yours and others in your space that you might subscribe to.
We have found it useful in taking a deeper look at email marketing frequency and planning. You can see when the prime times might be to message and interact with people. What if we could tie this into emailROI on a one to one basis and send out a campaign over a period of time for everyone in a campaign when they typically read emails from us? Something to consider for the next build? I think it is worth looking into.
Now not only is it good for your email marketing campaign planning, but is it also a slick application for managing your own email search and communications. It does cool things like show you how long it takes you to respond to emails and even shows this down to individuals you communicate with. I loved seeing it on one of our employees screens as to how long it takes them to respond to me… Little fodder for the next review..
Final Can-Spam Regs Define ‘Sender,’ Preserve 10-Day Opt-Outs
Mediapost by Wendy Davis, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:00 AM ET
After mulling new rules for e-mail marketers for three years, the Federal Trade Commission Monday issued final Can-Spam regulations that spell out how to determine which marketer is the “sender” when more than one advertises in the same message.
The new rules provide that marketers advertising in one joint e-mail can designate which company will be considered the sender and will be responsible for Can-Spam compliance. That designated company will have to make sure that the e-mail gives recipients a way to opt-out of future ads, and also will have to put its name in the “from” line and have a valid postal address in the e-mail. The multi-sender scenario often occurs with travel marketing, where airlines, hotels and car rental companies send one combined message to e-mail recipients.
Janis Kestenbaum, an FTC lawyer in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the new rule aims to allow marketers who want to use joint e-mails to easily to do so, while also providing crucial information to recipients. “We were looking to help consumers to readily identify who the quote-unquote ’sender’ is within the meaning of the Can-Spam act,” she said.
The final rule marks a change from the FTC’s 2005 proposal, which said that any company that controlled the content of an email would be considered a “sender.” But the commission decided that standard wasn’t workable because all marketers typically have some input into the ad copy, Kestenbaum said.
The FTC also will continue giving marketers up to 10 days to stop sending messages to consumers who opt-out. The 2005 proposals would have curtailed the time to three days, but the agency decided that change wasn’t necessary.
“There wasn’t any evidence that people were using that 10-day period to mail bomb people, so it wouldn’t help consumers to shorten it,” Kestenbaum said.
The new guidelines also clarify that marketers may not require recipients to pay a fee or complete a survey, or provide other extraneous information when opting out of future ads.
When the FTC proposed the rules three years ago, more than 150 organizations, companies and advocates weighed in with comments, including the Online Publishers Association, Time Warner and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The new regulations will become effective 45 days after they are published in the Federal Register, which is expected to occur later this month.
Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server… so does this mean that they should be blacklisted? How does an issue like this when it comes from an ISP deserve to be treated by other ISPs? Do they give a courtesy to one another when this happens? I know that if it happens to a corporate mail server it gets slammed and blocked faster than me accepting and Irish Car Bomb drink on St. Pats. AND that is fast.
Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server A newfound flaw in Google’s Gmail allows would-be spammers to treat the service as an open-relay server. Compounding the issue is the fact that services such as Hotmail and Yahoo “trust” Gmail. This may facilitate e-mail delivery, but it also makes it easier for spammers to reach their intended targets.
I wanted to share this great one year wrap up of the latest project the eec has been working on. This is the second year of helping a non profit get an email marketing program together. Countless volunteer hours were put in by some great people in the email marketing industry to make this not only a success, but also a system that the Women’s Bean Project can continue to leverage and use to help grow their donor base support.
This is just one of the great things that the eec is doing for the not only the non profits out there, but the email industry as a whole. Way to go guys.
How E-mail Impacts Society
This week I wanted to share something inspirational happening in the e-mail industry — and some best practices! It’s a recap of the Email Experience Council’s (EEC’s) Eality project. The Eality project originated as a way to enable peers and competitors in the e-mail marketing industry to put business aside and work as a team to create the best e-mail efforts for a good cause.
In 2007, the EEC selected the Women’s Bean Project (WBP) as its Eality focus. Stephanie Miller from Return Path volunteered countless hours to lead this initiative and its team on behalf of the EEC. I spoke with Miller to get the inside scoop on the project.
Shoppers who want to save some trees soon will find a new option for rejecting receipts at the checkout counters of major retailers.
A service that will enable consumers to receive digital receipts through big box stores, such as Best Buy and Target, is set to launch May 16.
I have always loved how Apple stores do this for me and it is about time others do as well. I don’t need any more paper receipts crammed in my wallet or pocket. They get lost or thrown away. In the inbox is a great solution. Not sure the “green” factor as some studies I have been reading actually put data use in higher carbon/greenhouse gas levels than commercial airlines by 2010, but it makes sense none the less.
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9937567-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
My question is have they thought about making this a transaction email marketing opportunity instead of JUST a receipt. If they follow best practices of a 20% use of the email for cross marketing/promotion, they might just drive online or even back to store sales with an offer….
So it is official and the first emails went out to save the date. Our annual throw down, drag out, party till the break of dawn event is going to be at the new eROI HDQs at 5th and Couch in Old Town Portland. We are going to christen the new offices with a very untraditional party. Not to leak to many of the details upfront, as the emails over the next 6 weeks will reveal more of what is going to happen.
The team is hard at work procuring music, entertainment, booze and maybe the return of the now iconic ice luge. This year it is going to be a little more locked down as we can only hold 700 quests we assume and the fact that we are in Old Town, we need to have some security with all the bars and fun neighbors around.
So IF you did not get the email, you need to get on the list. And not just you, unless you are attending solo, but anyone you want to bring with you. It is going to be a blast and we are really excited to have you over from near and far. So email those that you might know at eROI and get on the list.
Here was the hold the date email that went out, with a little easter egg hidden in the FIVE logo that drives you to a peak of what may occur.
Really it is 30 years today that the first documented spam email was sent. And look where we are today, still fighting the battle that Gary Thuerk started. Interesting history on Wikipedia, but would be even more interesting if we could mark this the year that we killed it off.
Mashable has a good article around it as well.
What can we do this year as email marketers to make it die a painful death?
1. Stop sending to people that don’t want your email. Sure they opted in in 2002, but they have not read it for the past 3 years and you keep them on your active email list. Time to purge them. They are of no value to you and you are of no value to them no matter what you think.
2. Start segmenting your lists and send relevant campaigns based on their profile, what they tell you, and past behaviors.
3. ESPs need to be more vigilante on the lists that their clients load into their systems. Although sometimes tricky when you are bringing a client onto your email platform that you have no history with, you need to set some guidelines, educate them, and keep your eyes on the feedback loops and bounce reports from an account by account level.
Help us all help each other. No one no matter who they are want spam emails. Really.
So many examples to show you, but this one really hits on the simplicity of ecommerce email marketing. What is so special about this? Well not special, but it just clearly communicates the levels of interaction and what you can get by clicking the links. Not over the top, not too much copy, and the value proposition is right there in every call to action bucket.
Often times I see emails with so many things to do, too much copy, and not laid out in a format that is going to display right in the inbox. This layout rocks.
Now to have full disclosure this designer used to work for eROI. So he earned his chops at the school of hard knocks. And it just doesn’t hurt as well that this designer is also my younger brother. Nice work Bryan, you make me proud that you stayed awake at eROI U.
Best part about this is his using Twitter as another communication vehicle in the footer. Not over the top, but right in link with his audience of young urban hipsters. Guess the tech addictive measures run in the family as well.
Still time to get your own shirt or limited run hoodie from his new line.
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