Opt-in Reconfirmation in the Wild

What’s an opt-in reconfirmation email? Also called, as fellow blogger Al
Iverson mentioned lately, a re-engagement email, or a permission pass email.
Al links to DJ Waldow’s write up on Shop.org’s recent re-engagement
strategy, and today I see that Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse,
talking about Coach’s turn at culling their list through this process. What’s interesting here is that, according to Janine, Coach didn’t target this reconfirmation email only at recipients who never open or click. She says she does both, regularly, and received this email message anyway. Another friend of mine, who is also a Coach subscriber, reports to me that she receives regular emails from them (most recently as just about
ten days ago), but that she did not receive this reconfirmation email message.

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Yet more data verification

Friday Al posted about data verification, building on discussions last week about Mr. Poopyhead’s article on open signup forms. He has a very insightful analogy, that I like and I am going to steal (emphasis from the original).

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Garbage in… garbage out

Ken Magill (hereafter known as Mr. Stupid Poopypants) has a follow up article today on his article from last week about the Obama campaign’s mailing practices. While poking Dylan a bit, his message is that marketers really need to look harder at double opt-in.

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SpamZa: corrupting opt-in lists, one list at a time

A number of ESPs have been tracking problematic signups over the last few days. These signups appear to be coming from an abusive service called SpamZa.
SpamZa allows anyone to sign up any address on their website, or they did before they were unceremoniously shut down by their webhost earlier this week, and then submits that address to hundreds of opt-in lists. This is a website designed to harass innocent recipients using open mailing lists as the harassment vehicle.
Geektech tested the signup and received almost a hundred emails 10 minutes after signing up.
SpamZa was hosted on GoDaddy, but were shut down early this week. SpamZa appears to be looking for new webhosting, based on the information they have posted on their website. 
What does this mean for senders?
It means that senders are at greater risk for bad signups than ever before. If you are targeted by SpamZa, you will have addresses on your list that do not want your mail. Some of those addresses could be turned into spam traps.

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