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Profile Email Summit
I was at the Bigfoot Interactive Profile Email Summit this morning. I am an investor in Bigfoot Interactive, which is one of the leading email service providers. They provide email sending and related services to over 100 large enterprises. This summit brought together leading marketers and analysts who focus on email marketing.
Jim Nail, who is the email analyst from Forrester Research, had some very interesting things to say about building email lists. I asked him how large corporations who have huge postal files (postal addresses for their customers) can quickly build their email files.
He said it that those who “forced it” with purchase of lists, append files, etc were getting in trouble with their customers who had no context for why or how they were suddenly getting email from these companies. The customer often views that kind of email as spam even though the mail is coming from their bank, cable company, utlity, etc.
Jim recommends using tools that marketers have at their disposal such as registration, purchase, or renewal processes (whether online or offline via a call center) as the best way to collect email addresses. He said that it takes a lot longer to build the file that way, but the result is that customers get only the mail they want and understand why they are getting it.
Al DiGuido, CEO of Bigfoot Interactive, presented the results of a several consumer surveys that were done in late October.
Some interesting data:
88% of consumers want ISPs and email software providers to provide “unsubscribe” button for certain emails they don’t want to get anymore
36% of consumers would pay money for a “guaranteed” delivery button for certain emails that they absolutely need to get
28% of consumers have had essential email from a trusted source was placed in a junk mail folder
14% of consumers plan to switch email addresses in the next six months
11% of consumers did switch email addresses in the last six months
74% of consumers want porn emails filtered out of their inboxes
40% of consumers who get critical communications from credit card issues (ie - credit card statements) are concerned about these messages being blocked
47% of consumers would consider switching ISPs/email providers if they did not receive a critical communication from their primary credit card issuer
Probably the most interesting discussion was a panel on email delivery. The panelists were:
Margot Koschier, Manager of Anti-Spam Initiatives at AOL
Roy Ben-Yoseph, Product Manager, AOL Mail
David Daniels of Jupiter
Jim Nail of Forrester
Markus Mullarkey, Manager of CNet’s newsletter business
Kevin Noonan, Executive Director of AIM
Michael Della Penna of Bigfoot Interactive
Both Margot and Roy described AOL's anti-spam efforts as being "member centric". That means AOL's primary goal is to protect its members. Helping legitimate marketers get through is important, but takes a back seat to the members concerns.
Margot suggested that marketers put their brand prominently in the "from" and "reply to" addresses and in the subject line. She asked them not to put random numbers or odd looking addresses in the "from" or "reply to" addresses because that is often seen as spam by members.
Margot said that spam volumes are going up exponentially right now because broadband and wifi users have unwittingly opened up their networks to spammers who use them for relaying spam, spoofing, etc.
It came out in the discussion that AOL is working on an "enhanced white list" system. Though the details on this system were pretty cryptic, it sounds like an “EZ Pass” system to allow legitimate marketers go straight through into users mail boxes. In order to get into this enhanced white list, marketers must have the following:
Authenticated themselves to AOL
Have 30 days of good behavior with AOL
Instant unsubscribe for any AOL member who requests an unsubscribe
Strong feedback loop on member complaints
A question was asked about AOL providing an unsubscribe button vs. the current “report spam” button. AOL wants the marketer to do the unsubscribe. Many marketers would like AOL to process unsubscribes for them. At this time, AOL does not want to do this.
Although I didn't stay for the whole summit, I was glad to see that the industry is talking about the important issues facing email marketers and that the large ISPs in particular are beginning to get interested in solving both the spam and deliverability issues facing legitimate marketers.
Comments (6) | Posted November 13, 2003 in Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
Very interesting. of course, we all know that in many cases, the "unsubscribe" option merely validates your address for future spamming.
The tools, even in the paper mail world, are meager at best. How come Amercian Express doesn't have it together enough to know that I'm a platinum cardholder, so they should stop sending me solicitations to become a platinum cardholder? Either business cases have not been made regarding the cost of duplicate solicitations or the tools that would prevent such provide less return on the investment than superfluous mails.
I wonder if the same is true of e-mail. Of course, with e-mail, the cost of spamming the world is somewhat minimal, so investing in tools is a harder case to make.
Additionally, in this ramble, I'd like to not that the bulk of the "spam" I get is not from reputable companies that would adhere to "unsubscribe" policies, but a few pieces are.
Here is somewhat of a quandry I'm in. I used to be a Cingular customer, and used to receive "updates" via e-mail from them. When I switched to the Jamie Lee Curtis phone, I turned off the "updates" for Cingular. I still receive e-mails where the "From:" field is Cingular Wireless. Yet, when you look at the address, it does not come from a Cingular.com domain name (it's something like n0.com). The e-mail contains Cingular trademarked images and the like, but I'm afraid to click on the unsubscribe button because, who knows? This could be some spammer, or it could be a third-party e-mail marketing firm authorized by cingular. Either way, I don't want to chance it, so I set up a *delete* filter.
This is the world we're in, and I like that some of the stuff you're investigating seems to be radical changes from "the way things are."
Posted by: scotty the body | Nov 14, 2003 10:28:39 AM
First, if I get more SPAM because I responded here, woe-be-it.
I find it most interesting that marketers feel they have to invade the privacy of internet users because they are "legitimate". Come on, if I can block telemarketers from calling me at 8:30 PM, when most of us have left the worrisome world of business calls, why do I want to have to block emails at 12:30 A.M. if I happen to be up surfing the net. I don't care if you are Bigofoort or Aetna or the "big orange" - I don't feel I should have to delete and report unwanted mail.
Now I do choose to receive remail from very selected companies. That should be my perogative, not the perogative of someone who either buys a list, comes up with alpha-numeric combinations, or surfs portals like AOL and Hotmail for addresses. I resent having to delete up to or more than 100 emails a day from unwanted spammers, regardless of their legitimacy.
I deserve my rights to privacy. And now even my work email has between 40 and 50 spams a day. I get closer and closer to asking my congressmen to shut the f***king system down and let's go back to phones and paper.
Now maybe I am one of the weird ones out here (and then again, I have no children at home) but porn bothers me less than adds for insurance, mortgages, viagara, prescription drugs and penis and breast enlargements.
Let's get real, please.
Frazer Jones
Posted by: Frazer Jones | Nov 14, 2003 1:32:52 PM
As a further note, I sent a copy of my post to the people from AOL you indicated above. Since I am not allowed access to AIM or AOL at the office, I shall see what kind of response I get when I am finally home this evening.
Frazer
Posted by: Frazer Jones | Nov 14, 2003 1:45:22 PM
Frazer
I share your pain and anger. I get 500 unwanted emails a day. See my posts on spam filters if you want to get a sense of the pain I feel every day over spam.
But there is No Way i'd ever advocate shutting down the email system and going back to phones and paper. I can check email when i want, not during dinner when the telemarketers call. And its a hell of a lot easier to delete an email than open and then throw out junk mail (and you kill a lot less trees too).
And finally, i get really great stuff on email like weekly emails from Clear Channel telling me what concerts are coming to my city, daily emails from Jim Cramer at TheStreet.com telling me what stocks he's buying and what i might want to buy, and my phone bill from verizon.
I can't ever seeing living without all this stuff. Email has changed my life. I hate spam as much or more than you, but i value the email i get from legitimate marketers more than i despise the spam i get from the jerks that send it.
I expect that most of the people who use AOL feel the same way i do and i hope and expect that the people at AOL you spam with your hate mail tell you the same thing.
Posted by: Fred Wilson | Nov 14, 2003 6:26:39 PM
Fred wrote:
"I can't ever seeing living without all this stuff. Email has changed my life. I hate spam as much or more than you, but i value the email i get from legitimate marketers more than i despise the spam i get from the jerks that send it."
The problem would appear to be that too many .coms offer email with no validation of their "realness". I recently read that Yahoo is now offering up to 500 different names per account. I have no problem with legiitmate business offering useful services. But I think we should have the capability to tell each og them one time to take us off their list, just as we now can with telemarketers.
Certainly, I have signed up from certain email notices. I want to hear from my broker. However, when it is someone going onto a makjor server, picking their lists at random. Or, as has happened to me, someone hacked one of my addresses and sent out more than 700 porn notices before I questioned what the clicking was that I was hearing - mail being added to my sent box.
Legiotiamte notifications msut be allowed - I agree with you, Fred. But why do I have to sit at work and delete messages daily from Rober or Shannon or Jane. Or at home with obviously fictious headers and even sometimes with my address as part of their .com signature.
Enough is enough.
Frazer
Posted by: Frazer Jones | Nov 21, 2003 2:16:01 PM
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