Agency says current plans for anti-spam registry are flawed, may actually boost junk e-mail.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it won't endorse a national 'do-not-e-mail' registry, saying current plans are so flawed they might actually boost the amount of junk e-mail.

The FTC said in a report it was convinced that the registry, as proposed, would be difficult to enforce because current technology cannot prevent spammers from obtaining copies of a registry and mining it for new addresses.

The FTC would be "largely powerless to identify those responsible for misusing the registry."
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:08 PM  |  Permalink

A national registry of consumer e-mail addresses would make things easier for spammers and could actually increase the total amount of spam, the Federal Trade Commission has concluded.

As part of the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which became law in January, the FTC was mandated to report on the feasibility of establishing a National Do Not E-Mail Registry, similar to the wildly successful Do-Not-Call registry. Today, the FTC published its report, which concluded the idea is a wash.

"We learned that when it comes down to it, consumers will be spammed if we do a registry and spammed if we do not," FTC Chairman Timothy Muris told reporters at a press conference today. "Spammers would ignore the law," Muris said. "Even worse, they'd use the registry as a source of valid -- and spammable -- addresses. It would be virtually impossible to stop them."

According to the report, a national registry would fail to reduce the amount of spam consumers receive, might increase it, and could not be enforced effectively.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:05 PM  |  Permalink

Major emailers, broadcast firms, filter vendors, corporate mail managers, and ISPs all converged for three days in San Jose last week. EmailSherpa Editor Janet Roberts reports the topic that obsessed everyone was - you guessed it - getting good mail delivered while filtering out the bad stuff.

Here are her notes from the show, including an update on AOL whitelisting (make sure your email tech team acts on this), and the big debate/headache over possibly paying for whitelisting.
(Open access until June 20th)
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 10:22 PM  |  Permalink

Last week we told you we expected Google's Gmail service to move from beta-tests to public launch roughly in August (which is par for the course for most Google launches).

Turns out we were wrong. Gmail's already launching beyond the limited pool of beta users (which is why you're seeing Gmail accounts show up on eBay). Here's a quick update memo on what we've figured out for you.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 10:20 PM  |  Permalink

Health care and finance e-mails accounted for almost 80% of spam in April, according to data collected by Clearswift.

The largest share of spam continues to be "health care" messages, which are mainly ads for lifestyle drugs like Viagra, Xanax or diet pills. This type of spam receives the most responses and is the most profitable sector for spammers. Due to the lack of regulatory control, many people now use the Internet to buy drugs more cheaply and easily than through regular means. Apparently these purchasers are unaware or nonplused by the fact that the drugs may be substandard, altered or illegitimate, and often come from fraud artists in Eastern Europe or Turkey.

Other popular categories for spam include finance -- mortgages, loans, and stock tips – which is a close second to health care in "spam-share." Direct products, such as cable descramblers, holds steady ground for another month at 12.8% of total spam. Pornographic spam accounts for less than 5%.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:28 PM  |  Permalink

Gmail's coming! Gmail's coming! Google's free e-mail service is creating reactions among e-mail marketers that range from apathy to serious concern.

Still in beta, Gmail will likely be available to the masses sometime in the next few months (no official timeline has been announced by Google). We believe there's no time like the present to begin preparing for Gmail's onslaught.
Why?

First, despite concerns about privacy resulting from Google's use of e-mail text searches to display targeted ads, Gmail will, without a doubt, be a huge success in a short period of time. For most B2C marketers, 45 to 60 percent of all subscribers are users of one of the current top three e-mail services: AOL, Yahoo and MSN/Hotmail. In the next few years, Gmail will eat into their share, and that of other providers', to capture five to 10 percent of the market.

The second reason marketers should get ready for Gmail is because it, like all e-mail services and e-mail clients, has specific features and rendering issues they must understand. Ignorance of how the Web-based service treats permission e-mails could cost both subscribers and revenue.

So let's look at how Gmail treats your e-mail during the delivery process, and how it treats mail once it's in the inbox.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:16 PM  |  Permalink

Are you writing business-to-business (B2B) e-mail in a tone that "clicks" with your prospects -- or are you inadvertently alienating them?

One way to find out is by using DISC psychology. DISC has been used by many major investment firms to profile their high-net-worth audiences and the brokers who sell to them. By taking a 10-minute personality test, you can learn if your style matches or clashes with your clients -- and learn how to adapt your selling style.

If this approach works for face-to-face selling, it's got to work in copy, too.

Here's a rundown of the four personality types and how to sell to them:
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:16 PM  |  Permalink

America Online plans to have SPF e-mail authentication in place by the end of summer and e-mail service providers (ESPs) not in compliance will lose their whitelisting status.

SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, authenticates the identity of the sender of an e-mail. Since most spam has faked addresses, SPF could be a powerful weapon in fighting spam, spoofing [define] and phishing [define].

ESPs are scrambling to comply with the AOL edict.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:14 PM  |  Permalink

Reversing a downward trend, and corroborating research announced just two days ago by another firm, Digital Impact reported that commercial email delivery rates increased to 93.9 percent, the highest level in a quarter. Bounces and blocks fell to about one in twelve emails in the first quarter, compared to one in nine the previous quarter.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:11 PM  |  Permalink

Much of the decline in email clickthrough rates may have more to do with amateurish email mistakes than it does with declining effectiveness. Bill McCloskey points out specific format errors, compliance errors and redirect errors, all of which he sees everyday. As email marketing is adopted by more and more companies, and management systems become available for novice do-it-yourselfers, a higher percentage of marketing emails have been rendered unclickable.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:08 PM  |  Permalink

Robbed of their second favorite past time, spam filter companies can no longer shout to the hills that the proportion of spam in email is growing, as spam levels are essentially remaining the same. Postini and Brightmail may disagree on how much of email is spam (about 80 percent versus 60 percent), but they agree it isn't getting larger. A director at Postini told DM News that at these high proportions, it would take a radical increase to begin to register in the figures.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:06 PM  |  Permalink

Pending solutions to spam could reopen opportunities for legitimate marketers

Email marketing has been taking a pounding. There has been so much abuse of email by spammers that the entire medium is right now in the pits. End users are increasingly avoiding email, because they don't want to wade through an endless stream of spam. Similarly, they're afraid to give their email addresses to legitimate companies, because they fear that those companies will sell their addresses to someone else.

The federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was designed to stop spammers, but its only notable effect was to frighten legitimate email marketers into avoiding email altogether. It certainly hasn't dented the volume of spam.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:50 PM  |  Permalink

Worried about the ads Google serves into its Gmail email service? That could be the least of your problems.

Yes, you could find a competitor's ad right next to your customer's order confirmation, your company email newsletter or a solo ad mailing.

But, Gmail also currently blocks all of your ads and images on download. Senders may not be able to track opens and click rates properly. And, Gmail could deliver a body blow to viral marketing, not to mention disappearing permission mailers' messages without a trace in the spam folder.

Google's free, Web-based Gmail service is still in beta testing right now, with an estimated few thousand users; so, its effect right now on your email operation should be minimal. However, if it launches essentially as-is within a few months, it will be one bulk-email-unfriendly service.

Open Access till June 13th
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:44 PM  |  Permalink

After signing up for e-mail marketing communications at 98 retail Web sites in the US, the e-tailing group was able to determine that while mass merchants represented a relatively low percentage of the sample, 15% of the e-mails received for the study came from such retailers.

In fact, mass marketers and books and music retailers both averaged the highest amount of e-mails sent per week at 1.6.

The e-tailing group received 1,000 e-mail messages during the time period of 6 October through 28 December in 2003. Other types of retail outlets that claimed the highest percentage of total e-mails received for the study were apparel outlets and home and garden outlets claiming 16% and 15%, respectively. Meanwhile, gifting and drugstore retailers represented a respective 14% and 11% of the total merchants studied by the e-tailing group, but each contributed to less than 10% of the volume of e-mails received.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:41 PM  |  Permalink

Despite the increase of e-mail filtering because of spam, recent findings by DoubleClick show e-mail marketing performing fairly steadily into the first quarter of 2004. Some metrics, such as click-through and open rates, declined slightly, but delivery rates were up from one year ago.

Click-through rates (CTR) generally stayed about the same or declined over the year, except for financial services e-mails. That sector recorded a CTR of 11.8%, compared to 7.8% in Q1 2003. Financial services also recorded the highest CTR, with consumer publishers and consumer services a couple of percentage points behind. Consumer products CTR declined the most, dropping from 14% to 8.5%. Overall, CTRs were down by 5.6%, sitting at 8.4% for Q1 2004, compared to 8.9% one year earlier.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:39 PM  |  Permalink

E-mail service providers have panned IronPort Systems' Bonded Sender program in an internal industry report, saying it does not treat commercial e-mailers fairly.

The E-mail Service Provider Coalition's vendor relations committee recently completed a report on Bonded Sender. The report, a copy of which was obtained by DM News, details several shortcomings the committee found in a test of the e-mail reputation system that Microsoft has endorsed.

The ESPC said three of its members tested the program with 39 Internet protocol addresses. Some clients saw incremental delivery improvement while others saw none. The report details several areas of concern that it concludes could make Bonded Sender a losing proposition for e-mail marketers.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:37 PM  |  Permalink

New state law could help curb junk e-mail

Spam -- unsolicited electronic junk mail -- is a serious problem. Come-ons for prescription drugs, chatrooms, credit cards and other dubious deals now constitute more than two-thirds of all global e-mails, one monitoring group reports, and the cost in pirated server time and Internet traffic slowdowns is reported to be in the billions of dollars.

This year, Florida legislators finally got serious about spam. The law signed last week by Gov. Jeb Bush isn't nearly strong enough -- a flaw shared by the much-ballyhooed federal CAN-SPAM legislation. But it does give state officials an opening to go after e-mail hucksters who gleefully divert other people's resources for their own profit.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 6:35 PM  |  Permalink