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October 30, 2006

VOTE Today for The EmailWars Blog

Welll what do you know. We were honored this AM to find that we are one of the email marketing blogs up for the ClickZ awards 2006. Please give us your love with a VOTE. (Not fair that 2 out of the 3 blogs are ours!!)

Finalists were selected from reader nominations for the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards 2006 that met eligibility requirements. Voting is open now through the close of business, 5 pm EST, on Wednesday, November 8, 2006. One vote in each subcategory per person (we have our ways of knowing). Winners will be announced on Monday, November 13, 2006.

VOTE for Us

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:53 AM | Permalink

October 24, 2006

Spam - The Energy Drink

So when I first saw this new energy drink, I thought that it was a total hoax. I was sure that is was a viral campaign for some new anti-spam service out there. There was just no way that some brand marketer could honestly be using this term for a new retail drink.

Well, I was totally wrong, unless you can tell me different. This is a new drink started out of Belgium that is like Red Bull or Monster Enegry aimed at the club generation. If you need a laugh today, turn on your speakers and listen to the theme song, "Feel the Energy..... Spam." I know that the Europeans are a little different in tastes and many times English words do not translate exactly, but how in the hell can this really be a good feeling.

I did a little more digging online and found that people in the US have already placed Craigslist postings trying to get people in Europe to sell them some. If you are in a country that sells this, I would just like a four pack to throw up on my shelf in my office. Contact me and let me know as this is too amusing.

One post said, "I think I know how this works, when you order it, it just keeps knocking on your front door and charging your credit card until you file a lawsuit."

Feel.. The Engery.

Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 6:00 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Live Mail Adds Symbol Education

I found this new educational area in the new MSN Live Mail this past week. It was actually something that as a user I appreciate. By helping me to understand what all the icons in my inbox mean, I know what to do, and how to take action. I would hope to see more email clients (ISPs) adding these types of ongoing elements to help users know who to trust and who to be wary of in the inbox. It can only help the legitimate email marketers get more trust in the inbox.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:00 AM | Permalink

October 20, 2006

The Future of Email Growth

I came across this chart the other week and have meant to share it with you. It shows the past and future of email use through 2010. I think it is worth understanding as email is here to stay and will only grow as a outreach/rentention channel online. Even though the growth is not as staggering as some new media projections like Blogging, it is growing in a steady upward climb none the less.

Once again and great study from eMarketer.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:20 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Email Actually Works?

E-Mail Marketing Getting High Click, Open, and Conversion Relative to Cost
Source MediaPost Communications

WebSurveyor Corp., partnering with Internet Retailer released an August survey of IR e-newsletter readers revealing that web merchants have very ambitious plans to increase both the size and scope of their e-mail marketing efforts. 18.4% expect to grow their opt-in lists by more than 50% within the next year, while another 25.1% will increase their lists by 16% to 50%.

Reported by Mark Brohan in a recent article, he says that 73% of chain retailers, catalogers, virtual merchants and consumer brand manufacturers taking part in the monthly survey on e-mail marketing, spend 5% of their marketing budget or less on e-mail marketing, yet just over half of respondents, 50.6%, report that 6% or more of their sales come from e-mail marketing, with 25% saying the proportion is over 11%.

The report found that
57% of the respondents have opt-in lists of fewer than 50,000 names
24.3% have 51,000 to 400,000 names
9.1% have 401,000 to 1 million names
10% have more than 1 million
63.8% of retailers conduct up to three e-mail campaigns each month and another 25.2% conduct between four and eight campaigns, says the report. 62.8% also indicate that they've increased the frequency of e-mail campaigns in the past year.

E-mail marketing consultants consider an open rate of about 20% and a click-through rate of 4% to 5% to be a highly effective e-mail campaign.

26.5% of participants in the survey report open rates of 20% or more (11.2% reported 20% to 25% while 15.3% said more than 25%)
11.8% report open rates of 16% to 19%
14.6% report e-mail open rates of less than 5%
6.2% say open rates of 1% or less.
Click-through and Conversion averages are growing:

17% report e-mail click-through rates of 16% or more
28.9% report click-through rates of 6% to 15%.
20.2% of respondents report e-mail sales conversion rates of 1% to 2%
26.5% with conversion averages of between 2.1% and 4%
14% with conversion rates of between 4.1%
10%, and 3.2% with sales conversion averages greater than 10%
Brohan concludes that by working smarter with existing resources while controlling costs, web retailers expect a sizeable return on their investment in e-mail marketing. Compared to the rising cost of paid search, he says, which can absorb up to 50% of a big retailer's total annual online marketing budget, e-mail marketing remains relatively inexpensive.

41.6% of all retailers taking part in the research spend less than 1% of their total annual marketing budgets on e-mail. That compares with
31.3 % spend between 1% and 5%
13.8% commit 6% to 10%
5.6% spend from 11% to 15%
3.8% from 16% to 25%
4.1% with e-mail budgets that account for 25% of their overall marketing budgets

You can read the complete article at Internet Retailer.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:13 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2006

Remembering What Opt in and Targeting Means?

I don't know where to lay fault at times to emails that arrive in my personal imbox. As I sit on both sides of the battle (am I a double agent?) I am amazed when I see emails like this just tumble into my inbox. I am often not sure if they are a one time thing, or will I see more? I do watch with a special folder I have set up to see if they keep coming.

My point about this is, remember to practice what you preach and follow the laws. I am sure that Evan does not want me emailing him all the time just to tell him about something he has never heard of. Right?

In sales and marketing, tread the fine line of doing the right thing and remember that it all comes around. And remember the golden rule of knowing your audience before you send them something. Did this guy even know that we are an email marketing agency and ESP? His whole email is insulting what we do and how well it works.

From: "Evan Richmond"
Subject: AdDiem vs. E-mail

LIKE E-MAIL, AdDiem is used to reach consumers on a regular basis.

UNLIKE E-MAIL, AdDiem:
1) Guarantees that the images and design will get through.
2) Cannot be filtered, blocked or altered by consumer or ISP.
3) Is unaffected by a change in e-mail address.
4) Does not get lost in the inbox.
5) Respects consumer privacy.
6) Easier to design and implement than HTML e-mail.
7) Pre-downloads rich media for instant access.
8) Has higher usage rates than e-mail.

Admittedly AdDiem is not universally applicable. But if you can tailor the daily content for an audience then you will achieve a highly engaged, targeted community. We recently concluded a successful test with Nascar in which the recipients enjoyed daily auto racing trivia and history.

The consumer download rate was 56.8% with a pass-along rate of 38.2% and an average of 3.12 billboard views per day per consumer and a billboard click-through rate of 21.46%. AdDiem creates a highly engaged, targeted community to which you can advertise or generate ad revenue without the drawbacks of e-mail. The details are in the attached spreadsheet.

You can view a breakdown of the results at: --> --> http://www.addiem.com/NascarNumbers.xls

Please review the white paper and contact me if you would like to discuss our patented advertising technology further.

Thanks,
Evan Richmond
CEO

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:50 AM | Permalink

Leaving the Grid for a Week

This is going to be a test in itself. I am actually attempting to take a vacation and really not use the internet or email for about a week. I have been prepping the staff and customers that I am not going to be able to punch my fat thumbs on my crackberry for a while, so please understand if you are trying to reach me. People tell me that it is possible, and even healthy to let go for a short time. They say it "Recharges the Batteries".

When, like many others in this new media age, we run on Energizers it is hard to sit idle. I will try. But will need to leave the country to actually make this happen. Odds have it in today's world there will be wifi and a data signal for the crackberry, but, "they" tell me to just leave it behind.

I have written a series of posts already for the hiatus and hope that you enjoy them. Look in the coming weeks for another new study from eROI. And if you want (save your calls and emails for a week) let me know if there is a topic you would like us to cover that would be beneficial for everyone out there.

Asta La Vista - Dylan

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink

October 17, 2006

New Study from Email Data Source

I wanted to share with you the latest report from Email Data Source (Bill McCloskey's company) if you have not seen it yet. Worth the read and your time.

Email Data Source’s 2006 Retail White Paper, our annual review of the email marketing practices of top online retail sites.

Download the white paper (PDF)

Over 355 retail web sites were monitored to determine which had email programs in place, how difficult they were to join, and the frequency and type of follow-up communications. This year’s white paper also includes a Welcome Message Best Practices review.

All of the information included within this white paper was gleaned from our core product, Email Analyst™, which is the only source of competitive intelligence and analytics for email marketers. More information about Email Analyst can be found at www.emaildatasource.com.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:40 AM | Permalink

Image Spam Wanring from Ironport

We get these alerts and this one was worth sharing as we have personally been hammered by Image Spam emails the past few days. Almost to a ridiculous level. I am not sure how it is impacting delivery overall for everyone out there on the internet cloud, but I am sure that it is clogging many systems and creating campaigns from all ESPs to move a little slower this past week.

My only real question is will it impact the false positive rates? Anyone know or have an idea?

Really is a good reason to code your emails correctly in HTML and not send (as we see so many times) just a jpg out as your email campaign with ONE full image link.

IronPort has observed a measurable increase in email traffic over the past 3 days. In particular, there has been a 75% increase in image-based spam that will negatively impact scanning performance and can cause workqueue backups on heavily loaded systems. Image-based spam is a class of spam where the advertisement in the message is embedded in common attachments like a .gif or .jpeg file. IronPort has provided customers with recommendations to mitigate the effect of this increase in traffic volume/type.

Overview
Starting on Wednesday the 11th of October, IronPort noticed a 10-15% increase in worldwide email traffic. The cause of this increase appears to be an increase in spam, primarily comprised of image Spam. The average message size of image spam is several times larger than other spam and therefore
more costly to process than other spam messages. Customers have seen their anti-spam scanning performance drop as a result of this additional traffic and depending on capacity availability have suffered workqueue backups.

The significant increase in image spam appears to have subsided as of 10/13
at 5am PST , however IronPort will continue to monitor the situation and
provide updates as they occur.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:43 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2006

eROI Launching "The Click Through"

If you are already a subscriber to the eROI Edge Monthly Newsletter, you might want to look out this month for the first version of the mid month "The Click Through". It is being written by various members of the team from sales, accounts, production, creative, strategy, and development to give some perspectives on campaigns we have launched.

I have seed the first edition and I think many of you will enjoy it. And... get this... it will have an RSS feed. Magic right? (Actually all of our emails have been RSS enabled since Dec 2004) So subscribe as you wish and enjoy. Love to hear any thoughts, feedback OR ideas you would like covered.

Cheers and enjoy it.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:00 PM | Permalink

New BestBuy.com Scam

I got this email today. It slid right past our systems and into my inbox. I was a little confused as I have not bought anything from BestBuy.com recently. If I was a neo in this world of email, I would have actually called or clicked on the "PDF" which was actually an EXE file. Not a fun thought if I had checked it out more of what it would have done. I immediately looked at the header files in the email and saw that it was not from BestBuy.com at all but some server farm in Asia with a little reverse DNS/IP look up.

These type of emails drive me nuts. They are killing trust. What are your thoughts?

Dear Customer,

Thank you for ordering from our internet shop. If you paid with a credit card, the charge on your statement will be from name of our shop.

This email is to confirm the receipt of your order. Please do not reply as this email was sent from our automated confirmation system.

Date : 08 Oct 2006 - 12:40
Order ID : 37679041

Payment by Credit card
Product : Quantity : Price
WJM-PSP - Sony VAIO SZ370 C2D T7200 : 1 : 2,449.99
Subtotal : 2,449.99
Shipping : 32.88
TOTAL : 2,482.87

Your Order Summary located in the attachment file ( self-extracting archive with "37679041.pdf" file ).

PDF (Portable Document Format) files are created by Adobe Acrobat software and can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
If you do not already have this viewer configured on a local drive, you may download it for free from Adobe's Web site.

We will ship your order from the warehouse nearest to you that has your items in stock (NY, TN, UT & CA). We strive to ship all orders the same day, but please allow 24hrs for processing.

You will receive another email with tracking information soon.

We hope you enjoy your order! Thank you for shopping with us!

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:35 AM | Permalink

October 13, 2006

How to Justify your Lead Generation Budget

2007 Marketing Budget: How to Justify your Lead Generation Budget (In association with Rubicon Marketing Group)

Companies over the next month and a half will be developing and finalizing their 2007 budgets. This webinar is on how and why they can justify spending higher percentages of their marketing budgets on lead generation.

Link to sign up: https://eroi.webex.com/ec0502l/eventcenter/frame/g.do?siteurl=eroi&t=a&d=717635612

Key learning for attendees:
Link your marketing forecast for qualified leads produced to Sales forecasted revenues
Balance your mix of offline and online lead generation tactics for optimum results delivered
Balance your budget for Sales tools and lead generation
Find the right balance between awareness (brand) building and direct lead generation
Drive alignment between Sales and Marketing to improve R.O.I
Learn how to utilize your e-marketing efforts (search, webinars, podcasts, landing pages, etc) to better qualify and "nurture" your leads

Link to sign up: https://eroi.webex.com/ec0502l/eventcenter/frame/g.do?siteurl=eroi&t=a&d=717635612

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:10 PM | Permalink

Anatomy of a spam e-mail

There was an interesting article on BBC UK explaing just what makes up an email and how to recognize one that is spam.

A daily chore of modern life for many is the morning trawl through a full inbox deleting spam email. But just where does it all come from and why do spammers use bizarre text, names and images in their emails?

To the expert eye a typical spam is laden with clues to its origin.

Find out more.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 2:23 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

ESPs Adding Services ... Late to the Dance

I really enjoy when I read that another ESP has "added" actual services to their company. We started out company as an ESP and services agency right off the bat. Many others in this space have stated that this model would never work. Well... it has an it is growing. Why would you not want a company that understands both the ESP aspect of the business AND the actual strategy and services that go behind making campaigns and systems successful? If you can work with an ESP (like eROI) that handles hundreds of client campaigns a month wouldn't you benefit from the knowledge they have on a day to day, multi-discipline business?

Time to evaluate for 2007 who you are working with and what benefits you can gleam from working with a group that knows this space intimately. And I love that they have staggered communication by phone or email, depending on what you pay. So 1999. Come work with us in 2007. We are ready and have been in the game longer than most on both sides of the equation.

ESP Launches Consultancy E-MAIL MARKETING SERVICES COMPANY E... Labs has started an e-mail consulting practice online. The on-demand service will cover 12 areas including launching a campaign, HTML template design, best practices training and subscription process review and recommendations. The services are delivered electronically, by phone or in person, depending on the offering.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:02 AM | Permalink

October 11, 2006

Email Addictions Continue To Grow - Will We Ever Recover?

We asked, and you let us know. In case you thought this addiction was under control and healing in progress, think again. More than 260 respondents prove that the addiction is growing and it appears we are doomed to be addicted to email from here on out. Apparently, we can’t even go on vacation without it - according to the eROI Email Addiction Survey, 61 percent continue to check email even while trying to get some rest and relaxation on that beautiful sandy beach. Additionally, 56 percent reported a high level of anxiety if they can’t access email. Somebody pass the morphine - stat!

Some other interesting findings indicate that themajority of people feel a direct attachment to email and see it as the main communication vehicle in their business lives. On the other hand, it’s starting to creep into our personal lives. People are starting to use email more and more to communicate with family and friends – will we ever talk again?

Other points that demonstrate this continued addiction are that two-thirds of people surveyed read email every day of the week, 90 percent read email 6 days a week and 75 percent respond to emails 6 days a week - I guess everybody really is working for the weekend. Also, two-thirds of respondents expect that they will get a response from their email the same day. Lastly, over half of us can’t wake up or go to bed without checking that inbox one more time .

Even though we understand and acknowledge this email addiction – 55 percent admit email owns more time in their life than it should – we continue to allow the inbox to control our lives and most of us think that other emailers should follow the same philosophy and be equally responsive. So, will we recover ever? Is there Emailaholics Anonymous yet? Go to www.eroi.com/guides to see all of eROI’s surveys and guides.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:02 AM | Permalink

A Social Media Tool for Email Launched

We have all seen the spread of Web 2.0 tools on the internet and in the news, but none of them have really impacted email. Until now. We found a recently launched site that allows people to share emails that they might normally forward on to a friend or collegue. How does this impact you? Well if this site grows as we think it will, it will change the way that email campaigns can grow virally through a social network of people that rank emails in their inbox.

FWDitOn is a site that allows users to submit and rate emails that they find interesting, and higher rated emails go to the top of the popular area. The idea is to allow people to see the most popular fowarded jokes and other emails, and there are some good ones on the site. An email can be added to FWDitOn by simply forwarding it to the domain AND you do not need to be a registered user to do so.

Think about how you might use this media site to grow your reach. I would assume that the content is not going to be newsletter-ish content, but more shock, awe and humor. I know we are going to try it out on some upcoming client campaigns. We'll report back to you on how it works.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:00 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2006

Espion Discovers First Email-Based MySpace Spam Scam

From IT News Online Staff

Espion International Inc., a provider of Artificial Intelligence (AI) -based solutions for email gateway and network security, announced that its scientists have discovered the first email-based MySpace Spam Scam.

The company said on Friday evening an email was trapped in its unprotected honey pot and at the same time an identical email was stopped by its Interceptor anti-spam and security appliance.

The trapped email looked like a legitimate message from MySpace with the subject reading - "New message from Richard on MySpace sent on Oct 05 15:40:00 -4 2006". The spoofed message even contained real MySpace addressing, copyright and privacy information taken from legitimate MySpace "New message" notifications.

Read More

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:00 PM | Permalink

October 9, 2006

What is ARF?

What is ARF? - ARF- Abuse Reporting Format.
In this format, ARF is intended to standardize Feedback Loop emails. This effort will help prevent feedback loop recipients from requiring multiple parsers for various mailers' FBL reports.

What are the difference between the traditional AOL Feedback Loop format and ARF?

The traditional format is a MIME multipart message with one empty text part and one message/rfc822 part with the original message being complained about. Parts of the header of the message being complained about are redacted out, where normally the AOL ScreenName recipient would be present.

The ARF format is defined in a internet draft located at http://www.mipassoc.org/arf/ . The ARF format has three mime parts, one part for general information, one machine parsable and meta data part, and the last part as the original message being complained about. The original message is redacted to protect clear text occurrences of AOL screen names and email addresses.

What is there to note about the AOL implementation of the Abuse Report Format?

AOL will not fill the Reported-URI field in the second mime part. ARF messages from AOL will have the Subject as defined in the original draft, with the connecting IP shown, and not the original subject of the email being complained about.

What is AOL's future plans regarding ARF?

In the distant future AOL hopes to adopt ARF as its only format for sending Feedback Loops. The timeline is to be determined, but will be announced promptly when decided upon.

Read More

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:18 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

Anti-Spam Laws from Around the World

From across the pond comes a good catch by Tamara from Belguim at her blog b2bemailmarketing.com.

If you are someone that is emailing across borders, you should get up to speed on this laws. It is hard to control where your opt ins are coming from actually, as the internet levels the playing field for people to subscribe globally.

Read on and thanks Tamara.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:49 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

McAfee SiteAdvisor Spam Quiz

I took the quiz. I read all the privacy policies, which many of them were obvious that they were going to rent, use or sell data to others. I frown upon this policy and I love this little campaign site that McAfee did. Great idea.

Reading through the privacy policies and taking the quiz is insightful and I rec that you all take 5 minutes, or so, to try the challenge.

Are you spam savvy? Can you tell which sites will respect your personal information? Can you tell which ones might sell or rent your e-mail address to spammy third parties? Take our Spam Quiz and find out. Can you spot the spammy Web sites?

Take the Quiz

See how others did
http://blog.siteadvisor.com/2006/09/intuition_not_enough_to_spot_s.shtml

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:00 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2006

AOL Deliverability Issues Reported this AM

AOL Deliverability Issues: Report from DeliveryMonitor:

In the past 24-72 hours AOL has been erroneously bouncing a small percentage of email messages with the error:

(HVU:IP) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvuip.html

Please be aware that this may have resulted in subscribers being inadvertently unsubscribed from your opt-in lists. Attention should be given to any lists mailed to in the past 2-3 days to
make sure those subscribers are not mistakenly removed.

This could have affected any AOL managed domain including:
aol.com
netscape.net
aim.com
and other less popular domains.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:48 AM | Permalink

Branding Lexus Luxury Through Email

Alex Williams on our team had a recent case study on a Lexus Auto email campaign featured on iMediaConnection. I actually presented it at OMMA this past week on the Email Experience Council Panel, The Liars Club. Funny thing was I was selected as the LIAR on the panel as the results were just too good to be true, but alas, they are true. I mean who would expect a 3417% ROI on an email campaign right? Especially when the metrics were not online sales, but driving offline sales at ONE location?

eROI provides a case study on an email campaign that helped a Lexus dealer group present a sophisticated brand presence while generating new revenue streams.

Read The Article

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:01 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Do's and Don't for Email Delivery

Spencer Kollas wrote a good article at iMediaConnection titled How Domains Affect Deliverability

It has some good data that helps to explain how important deliverability is to email marketing. He includes a good chart explaining the share of domains in respect to email as well as a quick Do's and Don'ts for deliverability.

As the ultimate gatekeepers of email, domains (the breakdown of the ISPs you deliver email to) have the power to make or break email marketing campaigns by supporting or hindering deliverability. Deliverability issues, primarily in the form of filtering by ISPs and corporations, are among marketers' biggest challenges-- costing untold millions in potential sales annually. Estimates indicate a 5 percent drop in email delivery rates can cost even a moderate-sized e-tailer $1 million per year.

Read more

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:54 AM | Permalink

October 1, 2006

7 Steps to Can Spam Compliance - A Refresher

What best practices make for a responsible e-mail campaign that also complies with CAN-SPAM? Seven simple actions you can take can help ensure that your commercial e-mail campaign is legitimate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the CAN-SPAM Act, which has been heavily criticized for its leniency, mandates only some of these.

1. Include an Unsubscribe Link That Works

This requirement, part of the CAN-SPAM act, sounds basic but isn’t always. For example, a study conducted by Arial Software found that only half of companies surveyed included a working unsubscribe link—despite the law’s requirement. Of course, such a link is something of a Catch-22, since most users have by now been trained not to click on unsubscribe links, since they can be used by spammers to indicate a “live” recipient. Still, any reputable firm should include a clear method to unsubscribe that clearly links back to your site. By the way, if you use a software package designed for sending permission-based commercial e-mail, this is probably a standard feature.

2. Don’t Share Customer Addresses

Most users suspect that companies routinely misuse their e-mail addresses. However, in a rare positive note on this issue, Arial’s study found just the opposite was true. “When people sign up for email newsletters with reputable companies,” Adams says his company’s survey found that “there’s no risk of having that e-mail address shared with other companies or sold out to a third-party company.” Out of 1057 companies in Arial's study, only three sites shared e-mail addresses improperly—and the exceptions were “sweepstake offer”-type sites that any user concerned about e-mail privacy would probably shy away from.

This is part of the CAN-SPAM law—if you’ve obtained the address through an opt-out process, the law prohibits sharing it. In other words, you need specific permission from a customer to share an address.

3. Confirm the Subscription

Double confirmation is the strongest method to use here. In this scenario, a company sends an e-mail to a new subscriber that requires a click-through on a confirmation link, at which point the new name is added. This technique prevents anyone but the intended recipient from being signed up to your list.

Single-confirmation isn’t as sound, but still better than nothing—you simply send the new subscriber an e-mail informing them they’ve been subscribed.

Double confirmation sounds simple, but almost no company in Arial’s study offered double- or single-confirmation, and 71 percent had no confirmation process at all. That’s not a CAN-SPAM violation, just a good business practice.

4. Offer an Unsubscribe Link

This is another CAN-SPAM requirement, but Arial found that only half of companies complied. If you’re not offering an unsubscribe link, and an easy one to get to (don’t bury the link on your site so that a visitor has to register, for example, in order to unsubscribe), you’re in violation of the law, and you risk angering potential customers. And once you have the link, use it. Don’t ignore unsubscribe requests—CAN-SPAM gives you just 10 days to fulfill a request for removal from a list, regardless of how you receive that request.

5: Avoid “Negative Opt-In”

The CAN-SPAM law is hazy on this point, but appears to frown on the practice of pre-checking a box somewhere on the page that says the e-mail address owner agrees to receive messages in the future. Your opt-in box should be clearly positioned and unchecked—that makes subscribing an intentional act, and allows you to call your e-mail list a “positive opt-in list”—the most valuable kind to have. The CAN-SPAM act calls for “affirmative consent,” but leaves some wiggle room in what that means, so this is a case where best marketing practices trump the law.

6. Identify Yourself Clearly In Every Message

You may think your e-mail heading is clear, but a beleagured and inundated user may not. (Imagine how your in-box looks first thing every morning.) CAN-SPAM compliance requires that the sender be identified in the e-mail, but best practices require that you include your company in the subject line of every e-mail you send. Amazon.com and Expedia.com do it; so should you.

7. Follow Through
It’s not spam, but failing to send a promised e-mail after collecting an address (and permission) is just poor marketing practice. Arial’s study found that many companies collected an e-mail address on the premise of sending e-mail, then never did so. If you promise e-mail, follow through.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:14 PM | Permalink