DM News reports that California's "Shine the Light" law goes into effect tomorrow, giving direct marketers - both online and offline - the option of either letting customers opt out of databases where information is shared with other companies or allowing customers to receive on demand a list of all the companies with which firms have shared their information. If companies doing business in California decide to go the opt-out route, they must notify all their customers via a letter. If they decide instead to allow for disclosure of data sharing, they have to provide all information that was shared and the names and addresses of those who received it.


CA Law to Force Online Direct Marketers to Allow Info Opt-Out Posted by: DTB at 8:19 AM  |  Permalink

As a satisfied user of Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL service for the past dozen years, this week's news that the country's leading online service has made great strides in eradicating spam isn't lost on me.

AOL's spam filter is good -- perhaps too good given the amount of legitimate correspondence that I have to fish back out of the spam folder -- and it certainly has made going online a much more pleasant experience. I remember how embarrassed I used to feel as an AOL subscriber when I had to resort to the free email services of Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and now Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), because they were giving away features you couldn't get as a paying AOL member. That's no longer the case, for the most part."

Fool.com: Hiding Behind a Spam Filter? Posted by: DTB at 3:29 PM  |  Permalink

Sure, getting there can be half the fun. But for a marketer, if an e-mail doesn't complete the journey to its desired recipient it's no fun at all.

At Direct's annual e-mail marketing roundtable last month, deliverability was a major item on the agenda.

“As an e-mail marketer your business relies heavily on getting the mail delivered,” said moderator Geoff Smith, director of e-business development for Primedia Business Magazines & Media, Direct's parent company.

“It's been said that ISPs don't deliver nearly 20% of all opt-in e-mail,” Smith noted. “Considering that the top four domains — AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail and MSN — make up approximately 50% to 60% of anyone's consumer e-mail database, you can see that a problem with even a few blacklists can send your campaigns into a tailspin.”

E-mail Roundtable: Stand and Deliver Posted by: DTB at 11:47 AM  |  Permalink

Got filtered? Of course you have. Your messages have been filtered by ISPs for the past few years.

E-mail filtering is a necessary part of fighting spam. As ClickZ News reported earlier this year, AOL receives roughly 2 billion e-mail messages a day, of which about 75 percent are blocked and another 4 to 7 percent are sent to the bulk folder.

Dealing with this influx of spam is a major issue for ISPs. It's a tremendous drain on servers and human resources. It's also a major source of customer complaints, dissatisfaction, and churn. Minimizing the flow of spam to inboxes has become a major point of differentiation as ISPs battle to acquire and retain customers.

Long ago, smart marketers moved past the anger phase, all the way to acceptance. They're actively deploying a number of techniques to minimize ISP filtering.

Like the search engines' secretive page-ranking algorithms, ISPs don't share the specific types of filtering they deploy nor at what thresholds. Through dealing with ISPs over time, it's apparent there are quite a few key components. Though they may be approached differently at various companies, all are quite commonly used.

ISPs deploy a number of methods to reduce the volume of spam. They may include looking at:

Sender reputation (e.g., blacklists)
Sender authenticity
Volume of messages sent
Volume/percentage of invalid addresses (hard bounces)
Message content


Understanding ISP-Level E-Mail Filtering Posted by: DTB at 11:44 AM  |  Permalink

America Online yesterday reported a whopping year-over-year 75 percent reduction in spam-related complaints. The company said it receives about 2.2 million spam reports a day from subscribers, down from 11 million a day a year ago. An AOL spokesman attributed the drop to a combination of ongoing company efforts and federal and state anti-spam laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act, which went into effect in January 2004.

'Our members are telling us they are getting less spam than ever on AOL, and we're seeing a substantial drop in the number of spam messages reaching AOL members' spam folders,' said Carl Hutzler, director of anti-spam operations at AOL, in a statement. 'That means one thing: many spammers are raising the white flag of surrender for the first time since 1999.

AOL Declares Spam On Wane Posted by: DTB at 8:40 AM  |  Permalink

Commercial Mobile Radio Service carriers have until Jan. 21 to submit all of their e-mail domain names for wireless messaging to the Federal Communications Commission for inclusion in a master wireless domain names database. The agency made the announcement yesterday. It appeared in the Federal Register.

The database will include only domain names and not individual e-mail addresses of subscribers.

On Aug. 11, the FCC issued an order establishing rules to protect consumers from receiving unsolicited commercial messages on their wireless devices. With some exceptions, the order prohibits the sending of commercial e-mail messages, including e-mail and certain text messages, to wireless devices. The rule includes messages sent to cell phones.

Messages that meet the definition of “commercial” used in the CAN-SPAM Act, and messages in which the main purpose is a commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service are covered under the order. Noncommercial messages -- such as those regarding political candidates or updates sent to existing customers about their accounts -- are not subject to the rules.

CMRS Carriers Need to Submit E-Mail Names for FCC’s Wireless Database by Jan. 21: Posted by: DTB at 8:33 AM  |  Permalink

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told wireless marketing carriers that they must submit a list of domain names from which their marketing messages will originate by January 21, according to DM News. The move comes in response to last summer's orders geared to protect wireless customers from unwanted traffic. When sent directly to wireless subscribers, messages that meet the definition of 'commercial' content will have to come from a designated domain.

Wireless Marketing Carriers Must Register Domains with FCC · MarketingVOX Posted by: DTB at 8:25 AM  |  Permalink

ClickZ reports AOL's users are seeing a remarkable 75 percent decline in reported spam relative to last year. This, coupled with a 60 percent reduction in the amount of mail routed to the 'junk' folders is much greater than the reduction in the number of subscribers AOL has seen over the same period of time. AOL reports that only 1.6 billion spam emails got through to users in 2004 and give credit to its improved filtering systems and its use of legal deterrents.

AOL Reports Much Less Spam · MarketingVOX Posted by: DTB at 8:24 AM  |  Permalink

Have you experienced it yet? If not, it's only a matter of time. One ClickZ columnist touched on it in not just one but two columns back in September. I thought it was a tempest in a teapot until I met an interactive agency professional at a conference who referenced it. And just when I thought it was over, an e-mail list I'm active in had its liveliest debate of the year about it.

Let me lay out the issues, the counterpoints, and my thoughts. Then, I'm curious to hear what you think. Give me your perspective; I'll include your responses in a future column.

Seven Reasons to Get Rid of HTML E-Mail Posted by: DTB at 10:36 PM  |  Permalink

With online holiday shopping reaching new heights, here's a simple idea to implement now. It could help you generate a lot of business next year.
First, some eye-opening holiday shopping stats from a study Nielsen conducted for eBay:

Five of six Americans will buy a holiday gift online.
About two of five Americans will buy at least 20 percent of their gifts online.
70 percent will spend the same or more than they did last year online.

People shop online to:
Save time (78 percent)
Get better pricing (51 percent)
Have a greater selection (43 percent)
Get easier shipping (40 percent)
Find more personalized gifts (28 percent)

E-Mail Holiday Shopping Reminder Service Posted by: DTB at 10:34 PM  |  Permalink

One year to the day after the original CAN-SPAM bill was signed into law, the Federal Trade Commission issued final regulations specifying what constitutes an e-mail with 'commercial primary purpose'.

The ruling closely follows the text of the proposal released on August 13, with important new specifics that seek to dispel the ambiguity around determining the primary purpose of dual-use messages, said Catherine Harrington-McBride, staff attorney for the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

For single-use messages, either commercial or transactional relationship, the primary purpose is simple enough to determine. However, it is the criteria addressing dual-use messages that will most affect e-mail marketers and advertisers.
FTC Issues Final Rules Defining CAN-SPAM Posted by: DTB at 10:32 PM  |  Permalink

No analysis of permission-based email marketing can avoid acknowledging the challenges spam represents for the industry, but that said, 2004 continued to demonstrate that spam is a manageable challenge for legitimate marketers, not a crisis.

In a few short years, email has proven itself to be a vital communication tool in the lives of most Americans and life without it is unthinkable for most. And despite the scourge of unscrupulous scammers, spam is an annoyance but not a deal-breaker for most users. Moreover, email users remain readily able to distinguish between spam and permission-based email, and they continue to find value in email subscriptions from responsible marketers. If anything, there is every reason to believe that the spam problem may start to get better, not worse in 2005. To wit, my predictions for next year:

Permission-Based Email Marketing and Spam: Reflections 2004, Predictions 2005 Posted by: DTB at 8:08 AM  |  Permalink

Big news: chances are more recipients will open your list's welcome message than any other email you ever send them in the future.

We've long suspected that welcomes are more important than most marketers believe. Our theory is that response is driven by recency of opt-in. If someone just joined your list a few minutes ago, they're darn likely to open the first few messages they get from you.

Today we learned our recency theory matches reality.

We asked Morgan Stewart, Director Strategic Services at ExactTarget (who sends campaigns on behalf of hundreds of marketers including Home Depot, Minolta, Embassy Suites, and Honeywell), to run a report across all their aggregated client campaign response data.

Which types of campaigns performed the best for 2004?

It wasn't sales alerts or newsletters. 'The vast majority were introductory or 'welcome to the program' messages,' Stewart told us."
Welcome Messages Get Highest Open Rates of All Email Campaigns: How to Improve Yours Posted by: DTB at 9:15 PM  |  Permalink

Forrester reports that Syndicate IQ launched an RSS advertising measurement service akin to Feedburner and Pheedo. The new twist: it assigns a unique address to each story for each reader, so that it gets what it says is a more accurate picture of circulation. The user-level tracking allows Syndicate IQ to offer publishers the ability to send different content to different classes of users; for instance, subscribers versus new visitors. The firm plans a multi-site RSS ad network.

Syndicate IQ Launches RSS Measurement Tool, Network to Follow · MarketingVOXSyndicate IQ Launches RSS Measurement Tool, Network to Follow Posted by: DTB at 9:30 AM  |  Permalink

Promotional incentives can improve e-mail open rates and click-through rates, according to a report by Advertising.com released yesterday. The findings reveal that promotional incentives can more than double open rates, and improve click-through rates by up to 1,000 percent, and that the type of promotional incentive offered plays a significant role in an e-mail campaign's success.

Report: Consumers Click For Coupons Posted by: DTB at 2:32 PM  |  Permalink

Back-to-school sales and fall promotions drove the volume of retail marketing e-mails up by 81 percent from the second quarter to the third quarter of this year, according to a report released Tuesday by e-mail marketing giant Bigfoot Interactive.

Retail E-Mails Doubled In Third Quarter Posted by: DTB at 1:36 PM  |  Permalink

Advertising.com, Inc., a leading provider of results-based interactive marketing services, today released new findings from its Optigence(SM) research platform that demonstrate the impact of promotional offers and mailing frequency on email campaign performance. The findings reveal that promotional incentives can improve email open rates by more than 100 percent and click-through rates by up to 1,000 percent. The type of promotional incentive offered played a significant role in campaign success, whereas frequency was not found to be a major performance factor.
Promotional Incentives Significantly Increase Email Marketing Performance Posted by: DTB at 12:29 PM  |  Permalink

DoubleClick reports that online retailers are seeing conversion rates go up in their email marketing campaigns, although declines in click rates and order sizes caused revenue per delivered email to decline to $0.21, a 19 percent fall. The click-to-purchase rate grew 23.5 percent over the last year as the open rate fell (to 34.3 percent, a 7.5 percent fall) and click rate chilled a bit (8.2 percent, a fall of 10.9 percent). The combination of statistics seems to suggest email recipients are opening and clicking on fewer promotional emails, but that when they do they have more of a purchase intent.

Email Opens and Clicks Fall, Conversions Increase Posted by: DTB at 9:30 AM  |  Permalink

Lycos Europe launched a free screensaver that deliberately clogs spam servers. The 'Make Love Not Spam' screensaver, available in both Mac and PC formats, sends HTTP requests to a list of servers that Lycos Europe said has been hand checked to ensure that no innocent owners are affected. The program was inspired by scientific efforts to harvest spare computing capacity available on the internet. This version of 'distributed computing' presents a map of the world with what looks like tiny missiles launching toward spam server locations. A Lycos Europe spokesperson said that they 'cannot use this software to bring the spammers' sites down entirely as that would be illegal, but we can send a strong signal that spam is unacceptable.' That launching a denial-of-service attack may be construed as legal, if true, is very likely a difference between U.S. and European laws. Swedish agency Starring invented the program.

Screensaver Lets Users Exact Revenge on Spammers

ZDNet UK reports that the Lycos Europe 'Make Love Not Spam' distributed computing screensaver effort may have proved a victim of its own rather aggressive tactics. It seems one of the alleged spammers targeted by the denial of service application redirected its homepage to Lycos's own 'Make Love Not Spam' site, diverting Lycos's own zombie army of web traffic generators to attack itself. An executive at F-Secure said, ''I think Lycos is not going to keep this up for long... it's not the grown-up way."

Lycos's Anti-Spam Screensaver Diverted to Attack Lycos Posted by: DTB at 9:22 AM  |  Permalink