Social network sends spam

Yesterday we talked about social networks that harvest the address books of registered  users and send mail to all those addresses on behalf of their registered user. In the specific case, the registered user did not know that the network was going to send that mail and subsequently apologized to everyone.
That is not the only way social networks collect addresses. After I posted that, Steve mentioned to me that he had been receiving invitations from a different social network. In that case, the sender was unknown to Steve. It was random mail from a random person claiming that they knew each other and should network on this new website site.  After some investigation, Steve discovered that the person making the invitation was the founder of the website in question and there was no previous connection between them.
The founder of the social networking site was harvesting email addresses and sending out spam inviting people he did not know to join his site.
Social networking is making huge use of email. Many of my new clients are social networking sites having problems delivering mail. Like with most things, there are some good guys who really do respect their users and their privacy and personal information. There are also bad guys who will do anything they can to grow a site, including appropriating their users information and the information of all their users correspondents.
It is relatively early in the social networking product cycle. It remains to be seen how much of an impact the spammers and sloppier end will have. If too much spam gets through, the spam filters and ISPs will adapt and social networks will have to focus more on respecting users and potential users in order for their mail to get delivered.

Related Posts

Permission, Part 1

Before I can talk about permission and how a mailer can collect permission from a recipient to send them email I really need to define what I mean by permission as there are multiple definitions used by various players in the market. Permission marketing was a term coined by Seth Godin in his book entitled Permission Marketing.
The underlying concept beneath permission marketing is that all marketing should be “anticipated, personal and relevant.” Others have defined permission marketing as consumers volunteering or requesting to be marketed to.
When I talk about permission in the email marketing context I mean that the recipient understood *at the time they provided the sender with an email address* that they would receive email from that sender as a result.
Let’s look at some of the relevant parts of that definition.

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Permission, Part 2

Permission Part 1 I talked about the definition of permission as I use it. Before we can talk about how to get permission we need to clarify the type of email that we’re talking about in this post. Specifically, I’m talking about marketing and newsletter email, not transactional email or other kinds of email a company may send to recipients. Also, when I talk about lists I include segments of a database that fit marketing criteria as well as specific list of email addresses.
There are two ways that recipients give permission to receive newsletters or marketing email, explicit permission and implicit permission. Recipients give explicit permission to receive marketing email when they sign up for such email. Implicit permission covers situations where a user provides an email address, either during the course of a purchase, a download or other interaction with a company. There may be some language in the company’s privacy policy explaining that recipients may receive marketing email, but the recipient may not be aware they will receive email.
The easier situation is explicit permission. There are two basic ways a company can gather explicit permission to send marketing email: single opt-in and double (confirmed) opt-in.
Single opt-in: Recipient provides an email address to the sender for the express purpose of receiving marketing email.
Double (or confirmed) opt-in: Recipient provides an email address to the sender for the express purpose of receiving marketing email. The sender then sends an initial email to the recipient that requires a positive action on the part of the recipient (click a link, log into a web page or reply to the email) before the address is added to the sender’s list.
There can be problems with both types of opt-in, but barring fake or typoed email addresses being given to the sender, there is an social contract that the sender will send email to the recipient. I’ll talk about single and double opt-in in later posts.
Implicit permission covers a lot of situations where email is commonly sent in response to a recipient giving the sender and email address. In these cases, though, the recipient may not be aware they are consenting to receive email. This behavior may annoy recipients as well as causing delivery problems for the sender. Common cases of implicit permission include website registration, product purchase and free downloads.
More responsible companies often change implicit opt-in to explicit opt-in. They do this by making it clear to users that they are agreeing to receive email at the point where the user gives the company an email address. Not only is the information about how email addresses will be used in the company’s privacy policy, but there is a clear and conspicuous notice at the point where the user must provide their email address. The recipient knows what the sender will do with the email address and is given the opportunity to express their preferences. If users do agree to receive email, the company will send a message to that recipient with relevant information about how their email address will be used, how often they will receive email and how they can opt-out.
Explicit opt-in is the best practice for building a list, however, there are still companies that successfully use implicit opt-in to build marketing lists. Companies successfully using implicit opt in usually are collecting emails as part of a sales transaction. There is very little incentive for their customers to give them an email address not belonging to the customer.
Outside of purchasers, however, implicit opt-in leaves a company open to getting email addresses that do not actually belong to the person providing the company with the email address. This most often occurs when the sender is providing some service, be it software downloads, music or access to content, in return for a “payment” of a valid email address. In order to protect against users inputting other, valid addresses into the form, the sender must verify that the address actually belongs to their user before sending any sort of marketing email. The easiest way for senders to do this is to send a link to the recipient email. This link can be the download link, or the password to get to restricted content. Because the recipient must be able to receive and act on email, the only addresses the sender has belong to actual users of the site.
In some rare cases, implicit opt-in can be used to build a list that performs well. However, senders must be aware of the risks of annoying their customer base and the recipient ISPs. Mitigating these risks can be done, but it often takes more effort than just using explicit opt-in in the first place.

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FBLs, complaints and unsubscribes

On one of my mailing lists there was a long discussion about the Q Interactive survey. Some of the senders on the list were complaining that unless ISPs provide FBLs they should not use complaints to make filtering decisions. The sender perspective is that it isn’t fair for the ISPs to have data and use it without sharing it back so that the senders could remove complainers.
This deeply, deeply misses the point.
The ISPs are in the business of keeping their users happy. Part of that is measuring how users react to mail. This includes providing “report spam” or similar buttons when they control the interface. Some ISPs have chosen to share that data back with senders. Some ISPs have made the choice not to share that information back.
But even the ISPs that share FBL data with senders do not expect that the only thing a sender will do is remove the email address. ISPs expect senders to actually pay attention, to not send mail that their recipients do not want. They expect that ESPs are going to notice that one customer has consistently high complaint rates and actually force their customer to stop sending mail that recipients think is spam.
Senders should keep track of complaint rates. Measure them per send. Do not waste time whining that this ISP or that ISP will not set you up with a FBL. Take the data from those ISPs that do have FBLs and measure it. It is extremely unlikely that a mailing will have grossly different complaint rates between ISPs. You have all the data you need in order to evaluate how your recipients are perceiving your email.
ESPs and senders who think that their only response to FBL complaints should be to remove that email are the ones most likely to have filtering and blocking problems. The ISPs are giving them valuable data that they can use to evaluate how their emails are being received. Instead of being ungrateful, wagging fingers and blaming the ISPs for not giving them the data they want, senders should spend more time focusing on what they can discover from the data that is shared with them.
A FBL email is more than an unsubscribe request, senders should stop focusing on the unsubscribe portion of the FBL process and focus more on the recipient feedback portion of it. What can you learn about your mail from a FBL?

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