The Email Wars

Over the past few months I have personally been under a massive attack from people now using the “Freemium” model that so many small business ESPs have opened up and offered to their “clients”/personally I want to call them users. This is a personal stance post here and should have no reflection on anyone but me, but I am quite tired of the free ESP services. Why? Well they are giving anyone with the ability to upload a list the ability to email me. It opens up the just because you can does not mean you should debate I often have with people new to email marketing (yes there are always people new to it).

I am a firm believer that not everyone should have access to an ESP platform unless they have some skin in the game. Use your gmail, msn, yahoo, personal email to get a personal relationship with me. Free accounts simply allow people to take liberties with email and blatantly goes against all the best practices and rules we all fight so hard to instill and drive.

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I have not come across this horrible spam Frankenstein ever. Now I have seen parts here and there but this one takes the cake and took some time to bake. Yes is is a horrible email and most likely you would not check it out, but here at eROI we take one of the team for you day and day out.

1. Spoofed from Field to be the same as the To Field.

2. Baked in some MSN preference center love to give the pharma spam some legitimacy.

3. For good measure ripped off iContact’s footer and preference center links

A complete rip off trying to legitimize spam. Man will it ever end?

But it’s not done here. What can we do to combat this or anyone else doing something similar? IS there a fix?

No matter what the next NEW idea is it only takes a short time until the clowns of the internet think of how to pollute it. I share with you one of my personal favorite tools, Twitter, and how the hucksters are quickly finding out that there is an audience there and that they have a chance at pulling the same scams as they have in all other online medias. It amazes me to see how these guys pop up as soon as a new idea gains some traction. Think about how it hurt email, myspace, facebook, RSS, IM and more.

These people pray on the uneducated online and in the end end up doing damage to the real people, marketers and companies trying to create a good experience. But are they the only ones to blame? Not exactly. Sometimes the technologies themselves are not able to act fast enough to head them off as they should. You would think that we would have all learned by know what to look out for and how to spot them and kill them off. But alas we are slaves to repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

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As I was working today I was forwarded an email from a co-worker that called to my attention something that did not completely shock me, but did surprise me. You would think with all the emails I see and all the articles I read that very little could shock me. But what was in this email threw me a little bit. Could it be because of the “economic downturn”, publishers reaching for revenue, or simply it was just part of our sales plan? Not sure the exact answer to my question really, but Ken Magill’s Direct Mag sent out a third party email. Wait, let me take that back… he rented his “list” to target us with an ESP ad that was neither targeted or wanted. Now I understand the publisher model of driving revenue with advertising, partnerships, exclusives and more… but what kills me is the lack of targeting.

Ken, with all of the things that you write about it throws me for a loop when you rent your list to other marketers to send non targeted offers. Now I know that it is part of the business and a great revenue driver for most publishers, but it just seems off brand for you to allow. I understand that you don’t have control over your publisher and the sales team, but you might want to have some level of oversight on how you are used as a brand for your own reputation. The articles you write slam other people for how they use their lists and as a “beacon of light” for the industry I would think that you would think twice about this practice, OR at best, maybe run a suppression or filter list against it to make sure that it was getting to the right people that might take action. Well maybe I am wrong here as I am not perfect.

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I think that I have a lot of understanding and knowledge of industry terms, but this unsolicited (check out the footer of one time email) email threw in the term in the header about “Please push your “picture bar located directly under the Subject line.” Am I confused? Can anyone shed some light on this term? 

I was thinking that maybe they meant that if images we not displayed that you could use the show images button in your email client. Maybe this is it, but I have never heard this term before the way that they wrote it. 

The other thing that made me just plain angry was in the footer that this was a one time send, no way to unsubscribe and that if I did not want it I should just delete it. Pure crap IMHO. Sorry we sent this to you and we have ZERO relationship with you. Matter of fact you most likely have no clue who we are and that is just too bad. But we promise you will never get THIS SAME EMAIL from us again. You might get another one, but it will be totally different. Just so we are clear, this is not spam, just an email that you did not want, ask for, nor want. Well maybe you did, but we won’t send it to you again, so read it and make sure you don’t want to talk to us. 

This is one of those emails sent by people that are clueless that drives our industry one step back for the three steps we are all trying to move forward.

Every once in a while even I unsubscribe from an email. When I get some emails that are just off the mark and make no sense as to why I would benefit from them, like DEX – when it the last time I used a phone book or even went to a phone book website – hello google. But what caught me on this one was when I went to opt out they tried to get me to opt in to others?

Now I would not typically fault this, as it is a good idea to give people options if they are leaving, but why would I want to sign up for offers from someone I have no idea who you are giving my email to? Is this a new trick to make some money from co-reg with the yellow pages? I know things are tough, but they could have executed this much better. Maybe give me some ideas of what I would be opting in to get? I am sure that they trick some folks with this move, as the unsub is not the marked select but the offer to get emails from others is. To me it is just bad brand marketing. 

So goodbye DEX and thanks for trying to make something off me.

I had to use that title for this post as I know that many of you out there are always jaded when it comes to list rental campaigns. Now I am not talking about buying lists, but partnering with other like brands or list managers that have double opt in lists where they have allowed subscribers to opt in for emails from like or relevant brands. 

Now here are 4 reasons why I dislike them (yes I changed my mind from hate).

1. They often will not perform to the expectations. Many brands expect these lists that are so well found and segmented to give them the same reach and performance from their own lists. This will not happen, ever. These are lead generation campaigns and if executed right can drive new subscribers to your lists and even sales/conversions. But don’t expect miracles. 

2. They are not from your brand. And they should not be. They should be sent from the brand that has the relationship and contain your offers. Many times they are sent from that brand and the disconnect with the user is bad for all. They can result in more list attrition from the list owner in the end if done wrong. 

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Well it has been one year since we released KillROI into the wild. He has been infiltrating agencies, high rises, corporate offices, and maybe even your office. He has been sitting, waiting, listening, and silently fighting the war on spam and good emails leaving your desk. 

We have begun to get reports, via photos, from places that he has been deployed. It has been like a secret mole from the Cold War days being activated by a call to action that only he knows. Yes, it is time. The holiday season bring so much email into our collective inboxes and that might have just been the impetus of his awakening. 

I ask you, if you have seen him around your desk, office or in your travels, to capture photos of him like we recently received and send them into us. We need to know of his exploits and his travels. 

If you have not found one yet, there are two ways to find out how to have one deployed. First please visit this site to learn about his battle and help him take on the fight. Then drop me a comment on this post and I will reach into the isolation cell (which has been locked since last December) and see if there are still some rumbling around. If I hear from you with a compelling comment, I will attempt to safely ship one of the remaining soldier of goodness to your clutches.

Also, if you are subscribed to our newsletter, then you will learn of his next exploits around December 17th. So subscribe to get the next installment. Trust me… It will be worth it.

Often brands have a hard time just saying no to email. Even when they ask at a preference center and at purchase. So when you ask for preferences, remember no means no. Even if you have a pre-existing business relationship as they did with him with a gift card, you need to honor your word when it comes to email. Or else you just might find someone posting your act here or on another blog.

A reader named James forwarded an unsolicited email from Circuit City that we had to post because it’s just so chipper about the fact that they’ve resorted to emailing him out of desperation. It cheerfully proclaims, “Now you’ll be the first to hear the latest news,” before informing him that he’d been “chosen” as one of their “best customers” to receive news that they deem relevant to him.

James says:

I’m sure you can surmise that I never signed up for email alerts to anything from Circuit City. I merely use their website to manage my (rarely used) Circuit City card. It’s good to see they still have the customer in mind.

The best part of the email is where they inform James that, in the future, he’ll get advance notice about “grand openings.” Isn’t that sweet?

Black Friday ads have bargain hunters in a tizzy this week, but it was a Circuit City, Future and Best Buy hoax that ruffled the most feathers.

A viral email falsely stated that Future Shop and Best Buy are owned by Circuit City (which filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago) and that gift cards for both stores are no longer valid.

“Subject: Gift Cards, etc. 

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:27:54 -0500 

From:

I wanted to give a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful 

that the cards will not be honored after the holidays.

Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even 

though the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. On the 

contrary, it is referred to as ‘Bankruptcy Planning).”

Future Shop and Best Buy both issued statements that the claims were false and affirmed that the gift certificates are still valid and will “never expire.” They also confirmed they are not owned by Circuit City.

Black Friday ads have received a lot of buzz this year due to the recession. Since money is a sensitive subject for a lot of people this holiday, it’s no surprise an email prank like this one has the power to cause such a stir. What a cruel way to take advantage of emotion.

Don’t panic. Neither store is owned by Circuit City and their gift cards are perfectly fine. It’s just some loser with too much time on his or her hands taking advantage of the Black Friday ads interest, trying to yank your chain. Happy shopping. 

Well it seems that the battle with the watchdogs is not only on the ESPs and clients but also on the ISPs themselves now days. Interesting take on this and wondering how Microsoft and Verizon are going to handle this. Will they shrug it off? Or will they take it seriously as all of us do? 

Microsoft is listed fifth in the Top 10 list of the worst spam service ISPs compiled by Spamhaus.org.

Spammers are advertising links to sites that “peddle fake pharmacy products, porn, and Nigerian 419 scams” on Microsoft’s Live.com and Livefilestore.com sites because they know that the Microsoft sites won’t get blocked by antispam groups, writes Brian Krebs on his Security Fix Blog at the Washington Post.

Spamhaus has been alerting Microsoft to the problem for some time, but to no avail, Richard Cox, Spamhaus’ chief information officer, told Krebs. Other security companies, including McAfee and Marshal, have also been warning about increases in spam and scams on Microsoft-hosted sites.

Read the full article and the comments >>

Study Finds Some Top Brand Marketers Are Struggling To Provide Adequate Email Unsubscribe Options

Twenty Percent of Marketers Sent Additional Email Messages To Consumers After Confirming The Person Had Unsubscribed

Twenty percent of top brand marketers sent additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, Return Path discovered with its new research study titled Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me.” Eleven percent of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request – a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Marketers risk impacting their overall email reputation with spam complaints if they have a faulty email unsubscribe process.

Return Path, the leading e-mail deliverability and reputation management company, conducted the study by unsubscribing from the email lists of 45 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries. Return Path originally subscribed to these email lists to conduct its Subscriber Experiences study.

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I know that the Facebook momentum has gained a ravenous pitch as I see more and more people jumping into it. And not only are they jumping but they are guzzling the addictive life streaming service at a pace that is at times scary. So as the Nigerian email scammers that rose to rapid fame/hatred have found it too. They realize that there is an opportunity to stop using email, as it might be played out, and now are using Facebook to run the same scams. 

Thanks for leaving email to us and jumping on the social media bandwagon. You will not be missed. 

Love to see this kind of news. Helps all of us. Seems that they are figuring that this “Colo” was responsible for close to 75% of the spam we see. Amazing that this is in a 30 story gleaming office tower in San Jose. Good work folks that took this down. 

Amazing how complicated this seemed to be and how organized this was. We know we are not dealing with amateurs but professionals in most of these cases. Love this news. Only helps us and helps our inboxes.

Read the news

As an email marketer and an ESP I am always looking at how other ESPs append the footer of an email. So many people HATE having any other brand in their footer around their email, and heck I don’t blame them. Why would I want someone else’s brand on my email campaign. Email does help with branding no matter how many articles of conversations I have with other people. 

But what struck me about this footer was the addition of “Report Abuse” in it. I had to think about it for a few minutes as it felt as if they are asking someone to press it and cause a delivery issue with that IP address. But then I looked a little closer. In essence it is an internal ESP feedback loop that channels the report back to the ESP and, I assume, channels that as a red flag to either their deliverability team or automatically suppresses that address in their account from ever being sent. 

Now if it works in this way I think it is a great idea. Why not ASK them to keep the report in your ecosystem rather than driving it out to the ISP? Right? If you can keep your abuse reports in your own backyard it might just help with keeping your lists clean and your IP reputation even cleaner. 

I am going to test it in some upcoming campaigns to see if it has that impact.