Email Marketing [15]
FTC Sets Adult Content Labeling for Unsolicited Email
Unsolicited e-mail containing sexually oriented material must carry the warning "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" in the subject line after May 19, according to a new rule issued by the Federal Trade Commission. The rule is aimed at helping consumers filter out messages they aren't interested in receiving. It's also meant to shield them from viewing offensive material, should they accidentally open the message. The requirements don't apply if someone has given "prior affirmative consent" to receive such messages. The decision is the first the FTC has unveiled since it began considering how to implement the CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress and signed into law late last year. [Full story: FTC Sets Adult Content Labeling for E-Mail - ClickZ]
Study Found ISPs Blocked 18.7% of Opt-In Email in 2H 2003
The false positive problem is growing, with 18.7 percent of opt-in e-mail now blocked by major ISPs, according to a study by Return Path. The e-mail deliverability company analyzed 30,000 campaigns sent by more than 100 of its clients in the second half of 2003. The 18.7 percent false positive rate represents a 1.7 percent increase over the first half of 2003, and a 3.7 percent increase over the same period in 2002. NetZero was the worst offender, blocking 37.7 percent of permission-based e-mail. SBC Global/Yahoo! came in next with 26.7 percent and Mac blocked 26.2 percent. EarthLink had the best record for deliverability, with only 7 percent of opt-in e-mail being blocked. In the first six months of 2003, AOL blocked around 25 percent of mail, while the last six months saw it block only around 22 percent. The first six months of 2003 saw MSN block 10 percent of permission e-mail, while the second half of the year saw it block around 13 percent. [Full story: Study: 19% of Opt-In E-Mail is Blocked - ClickZ]
Google Developing Email Ad Service
Google is developing a service that could dramatically extend the reach of its keyword-based advertising by linking such ads to email. In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of email newsletters. They have recently made several email-related acquisitions, including an email management software maker. In 2001 Google registered the domain name googlemail.com. There are also rumors that Google could be preparing to launch free email to compete with offerings from Yahoo and MSN's Hotmail. [Full story: Google eyes email-based ad delivery - ZDNet UK]
Will California Kill Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketers are bracing themselves for what could be a profound change to their businesses when California's new spam law take effect on January 1. The new legislation stipulates that to send commercial e-mail, one must either have a prior business relationship with the recipient or have obtained direct consent to mail. What has companies in the affiliate space worried is the definition of "direct consent." If a merchant's affiliate partner sends commercial e-mail on its behalf, even presuming he uses an opt-in list, could that be construed as violating the new rules? The question is, what is the definition of direct consent? It remains to be seen whether a lawsuit could succeed in holding a company responsible for the e-mail practices of its affiliate advertisers. It seems likely that this idea will soon be tested, though, since the new law gives individuals the right to sue, and the brand-name companies, rather than the often-tiny affiliates, are the ones with the money worth suing for. The problem stems from the fact that affiliate programs are arguably the most chaotic form of legitimized marketing on the Web. With so many affiliates out there deputized to market companies' products, it's difficult for the companies, or even affiliate networks, to keep track of all of their activities. It's no wonder that many companies in the pay-for-performance arena are nervous about the potential liability issues of the new spam law. [Full story: Is California Killing Affiliate Marketing? - Internet News]
California Governor Signs Tough Anti-Spam Bill
California Governor Gray Davis signed an anti-spam bill this week that empowers California residents, the state attorney general and Internet providers to seek civil damages against spammers amounting to $1,000 per e-mail and $1 million per incident. The new law, which takes effect January 1, 2004. The legislation, dubbed SB 186 in committee, builds on current California anti-spam laws that requires commercial e-mail to carry "ADV" or "ADV:ADLT" in the subject line. The new law outlaws unwanted e-mails sent from or to someone in California or through a server in the state. It also prohibits the collecting of e-mail addresses on the Internet in California for the purpose of advertising. Customers would have to opt-in to any commercial e-mail. Individuals will be able to receive e-mail from companies they have done business with, but even those companies will be required to give customers the ability to opt-out of future solicitations. Thirty five other states also have anti-spam measures on the books, and Congress is debating a number of spam bills this fall. [Full story: Calif. Enacts Tough Anti-Spam Law - Internet News]
Email Marketing Holds Steady in Q2 2003
DoubleClick have found that open rates averaged 38.8 percent, a 3.2 percent increase from a year earlier and virtually unchanged from the first quarter. Click-through rates were 8.3 percent, a 10.7 percent increase from the year-ago period and 7 percent lower than in the first quarter. Delivery rates remained mostly unchanged at 88.5 percent with bounce rates declining for the third straight quarter. On average, DoubleClick saw orders per email delivered coming in at 0.29 percent versus 0.25 percent a year earlier. The average order size, however, decreased 4.1 percent to $98.48 from $102. DoubleClick collected the data from the more than 2 billion marketing emails it sent out for clients during the quarter.
SpamArrest Accussed of Spamming Its Customers' Lists
A well-known anti-spam service called, "SpamArrest.com" is apparently spamming its users. SpamArrest works by downloading all of the email from your email box. Then, they check it against their database, and make available to you the messages from individuals that you have approved. For the remaining email messages SpamArrest sends an email message to them asking them to verify themselves. If they do (by clicking a link in the email message and entering a password), their email is also made available to you. Unfortunately SpamArrest is able to build, based on which individuals went through that verification process a list of thousands of email addresses that are valid and more importantly read by a person that would click on a link in the email. Unbeknownst to its customers is that while SpamArrest is protecting them from spam, they're apparently secretly harvesting the email addresses of everyone that has validated themselves to be allowed to email their customers. Their privacy policy states that they are allowed to contact "senders", that is, the people who send their customers e-mail. If this isn't spam, I don't know what is! If you're a SpamArrest customer I suggest you re-read their Privacy Policy statement. [Full story: Scumbag of the Week - JimWorld Gazette]
Survey Finds Subscribers Prefer Weekly Newsletters
I'm a subscriber to the excellent Email Universe's (better known as List-Universe.com) Ezine-Tips newsletter. Over the last two weeks, they have polled all daily and weekly subscribers to find out how they liked the frequency of their subscriptions. They got back some interesting results which I thought you might find useful. The survey question was, "How often would you like to receive your Ezine-Tips?" Out of 351 daily Ezine-Tips subscriber responses, 42.2% voted for weekly, 32.8% voted three times per week, 21.9% voted daily, and only 3.1% voted monthly. Out of 44 weekly Ezine-Tips subscriber responses, an overwhelming 86.4% voted for weekly, 11.4% voted monthly, only 2.3% voted for daily, and there were no voted for three times per week. As a result of the findings, the editors have decided to change their publishing schedule to every Tuesday. Why did they choose Tuesday? Because email surveys have shown Tuesday is one of the optimum days for emailing. Isn't it about time you asked your subscribers how often they would like your newsletter? [Full story: Ezine-Tips News Alert: Poll Results and Changes - Ezine-Tips]
Study Reveals Where Spam Comes From
US researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology found that e-mail addresses posted on websites or in newsgroups attract the most spam. To determine the source of spam, the researchers set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses and waiting six months to see what kind of mail the addresses were attracting. Researchers posted e-mail addresses on websites, newsgroups, job sites, auctions, and discussion boards. They also provided e-mail addresses in response to services on popular websites such as eBay and Amazon. Finally researchers posted addresses in the Whois database of information about the owners of domain names. The researchers found that spammers used harvesting programs such as robots and spiders to record e-mail addresses. One way of avoiding this mail-harvesting, said the team, is to replace characters in an e-mail address with human-readable equivalents - for example john@domain.com would become john at domain dot com. Another is to replace the characters in an e-mail address with the HTML equivalent. Email addresses that used either of these two methods did not attract a single piece of spam. In total, the researchers received over 10,000 e-mail messages to the 250 e-mail addresses they had created. Only about 1,600 of these were legitimate e-mails. Over 97% of the spam was sent to addresses that had been posted on public websites. The number of messages received was linked to the popularity of the website. The research also found that in all cases where researchers asked not to receive commercial e-mails, their wishes were respected. The system also received 8,000 spam messages to addresses that had never been used for any purpose or submitted to anyone. Such brute force attacks, in which spammers attempt to send e-mails to every possible combination of letters that could form an e-mail address, are relatively common. These messages were not included in the final data. [Full story: Where spam comes from - BBC News]
FTC Wins Email Spam Case Against Self-Employed Porn Webmaster
On Tuesday, 23-year-old Brian D. Westby, a self-employed porn web master, agreed in federal court in Chicago to stop flooding consumers with e-mails containing innocuous subject lines. The messages tricked thousands of computer users into opening photos of nude women. A civil suit brought by the Federal Trade Commission accuses Westby of operating an Internet fraud scheme to lure people to his Web site with subject lines asking: "Did you hear the news?" or "Wanna hear a joke?" Some 46,000 people complained to the FTC about the spam. They said they had been tricked into opening sexually graphic messages. The FTC agreed that the case was far from over. "We will seek a permanent ban on the (deceptive e-mail) practices," said Steven Wernikoff, an attorney in the FTC's Chicago office. The FTC estimates that Westby has received some $1 million in fees from operation of his site. If the government can show that Westby got that sum through deceptive practices, Wernikoff said, "We will seek to recover that money." [Full story: Web site operator agrees to stop flood of misleading spam - Mercury News]
AOL is After Email Spammers
AOL have announced a round of five lawsuits against notorious email spammers. The suits seek at least $10 million in civil damages and court orders to halt the junk-mail barrage. AOL has also sent out over 100 cease-and-desist letters to alleged spammers. In addition, on April 11, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) reintroduced the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography & Marketing) Act. The bill mandates stiff financial penalties and heavy jail time for anyone who spams using invalid or fake e-mail addresses. According to CEO Enrique Salem of BrightMail, one of the largest anti-spam service providers, in January, 2003, 4 out of every 10 messages traveling over the Internet were probably Spam. Salem says by March, the percentage had hit 45%. Using that math, with spam increasing at 2% per month, by yearend 63% of all messages on the Net will be spam. Add this up, and it's clear that soon spam will represent more than 90% of all traffic on the Net. Plus, the mere cost of processing it will dwarf the cost of moving valid e-mail. These costs will come in extra equipment required to handle the onslaught, extra employee hours to manage it, and extra efforts by lawyers to sue known spammers. According to messaging consultancy Ferris Research, spam will cost U.S. corporations $10 billion in 2003. [Full story: Anti-Spammers Get Serious - Business Week]
DREAM Helps E-mail Marketers Get Their Messages Through
E-mail marketing provider Bigfoot Interactive announced on Wednesday it added features to help marketers avoid having their messages tagged as spam to its Direct Response E-mail Application Manager (DREAM) technology platform. The DREAM platform will now have list hygiene and content scoring components built in, instead of as add-on products. Bigoot will also offer a delivery-monitoring system as a companion service, known as DREAMonitor. E-mail marketers have found themselves swept up in the hysteria of the spam problem. The top ISPs have identified spam as their biggest customer complaint, with each implementing anti-spam measures. AOL, for example, said it blocks a billion unwanted commercial bulk e-mails each day, while customers send 4 million spam reports daily. DREAMonitor allows e-mail marketers to gauge their delivery rates for the major e-mail providers, including AOL, MSN, Hotmail and Yahoo!. Clients are automatically alerted to potential delivery problems. [Full story: Bigfoot Interactive Takes Aim at False Positives - InternetNews]
Mailblocks Program to 'Eliminate' Spam, Period
The Mailblocks service, available today, uses its patented technology to eliminate spam. Phil Goldman, a founder of WebTV and former Microsoft Vice President started Mailblocks to address the underserved consumer email market. Mailblocks’ service was architected around its patented Challenge/Response technology -- an effective blend of automated technology and human involvement that thwarts spam. Emails sent from new people who are not in the user's Addresses list are put in a Pending folder and automatically sent a request to authenticate (called a Challenge). Machine-generated email cannot reply to the Challenge email so the original email is never put into the consumer's Inbox. New users need respond only once to a Challenge and are recognized from then on. The only email users see is from recognized correspondents or new contacts who respond to the Challenge email. Mailblocks is offering its Standard Service for $9.95 per year with 12MB of storage and an Expanded Service with 50MB of storage for $24.95. Both offer attachment allowances of 6MB. As part of its initial debut, all new customers who sign up for the Standard Service will be granted charter member status and receive two bonus years of free service from the company.
Recipients of Unwanted Junk Email Could Receive $500 Per Message
The California Senate inched closer to significantly tightening state laws targeting spammers Monday, when a Senate committee passed a bill that would fine e-mail marketers for each piece of unwanted commercial mail sent to consumers. The bill would prohibit e-mail marketers from sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to state residents. The bill would allow recipients of unwanted e-mail come-ons to received $500 per message. E-mail marketers found in violation under the law would also be required to contribute $250 per violation to California's High Technology Theft Apprehension and Prosecution Program Trust Fund. On Monday, the Business and Professions Committee passed the bill on a 5-1 vote, sending it on now to the Appropriations Committee for action in April. If it passes there, the bill would need to be voted on by the full Senate and Assembly, before going to Gov. Gray Davis for approval. The Senate and Assembly have a year to pass the legislation. In January, a Harris Interactive poll found nearly three quarters of respondents thought spam should be illegal. California is one of 29 states in the country that has at least initiated some kind of anti-spam legislation, according to SpamLaws.com. E-mail marketers have decried these state efforts, fearing the provisions in the state bills are unworkable and will unfairly paint legitimate e-mail marketers with the same brush used for spammers. [Full story: Calif. Spam Bill Passes Committee - InternetNews]
AOL's 35.2 Million Subscribers Represents A Goldmine to Email Marketers
At the end of 2002, AOL counted 35.2 million subscribers, and according to figures from Jupiter Research, 93 percent are likely to be using e-mail. A study conducted by Lucid Marketing found, from a total of 2,926 responses, that 90 percent of the respondents' e-mail activity was contained to the home, and 65 percent indicated their AOL e-mail account was for personal use only. Overall, AOL e-mail users are wary of opening messages from senders they don't know, with nearly 46 percent stating that they always delete e-mail from unknown sources. Slightly more than 51 percent sometimes open the messages, while 1.3 percent always open the messages, and 1.7 percent reported unknown e-mail as spam.