Data Cleansing part 2

In an effort to get a blog post out yesterday before yet another doctor’s appointment I did not do nearly enough research on the company I mentioned selling list cleansing data. As Al correctly pointed out in the comments they are currently listed on the SBL. And when I actually did the research I should have done it was clear this company has a long term history of sending unsolicited email.
Poor research and a quickly written blog post led to me endorsing a company that I absolutely shouldn’t have. And I do apologize for that.
With all that being said, Justin had a great question in the comments of yesterday’s post about data cleansing.

Isn’t this contrary to the good habits we are always preaching? If we send *email people want* to an engaged, opted-in group of people who want our mail, why would there ever be a need to clean our lists?

Yes, a lot of list cleaning services are used to take non-permissioned lists and turn them into lists that don’t cause delivery problems.  But there are other reasons to clean lists and even clean permission lists.
I fully believe that mail should be sent to people who ask for the mail. I strongly believe the recipient should have some measure of control over what advertising and commercial email they receive. I also believe the recipient is the final arbiter of whether a mail is wanted or unwanted. I believe a legitimate sender must to respect the recipient’s time and attention.
With those principles clearly stated, when might list cleaning be an appropriate process? List remediation is the big one.
We’re hitting the point where some email lists or customer databases with email addresses have been around for almost a decade. There’s a lot of cruft that can accumulate in a database in 10 years. There are going to be addresses with no audit trail. Even newer databases can have a lot of entries without full audit trails.
Some databases have addresses that aren’t mailed regularly. I’ve certainly had clients that would segment enough that some addresses wouldn’t be mailed more than once or twice a year. These types of databases aren’t always kept up as well as we might hope or like.
For these databases, a list cleaning process is good and even necessary. Bad addresses accumulate on lists. One of the things I do with clients is help them separate out good addresses from bad addresses. But each case is unique and requires individualized treatment. Sure, you can run a list against a database of 300 million addresses and remove some bad ones, the ones that might get you into delivery trouble. But not all bad marketing creates delivery problems. Sometimes bad marketing is just bad. Mail gets into the inbox, sure. The source or the content isn’t blocked. But I think marketers can do more than just get mail into the inbox.
Data cleansing is not just about removing spam traps and bouncing addresses. Data cleansing should be about identifying those people who are going to buy from you. And not everyone who was interested in your product a few years ago is going to be interested in your product now. People change, their wants and needs change. They are not static, but rather fluid. Just removing problem addresses isn’t going to find those customers as effectively as searching for the good addresses in your list.

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Court rules blogger is not a journalist

Last week a federal judge ruled a blogger, Crystal Cox, was not a journalist and not subject to first amendment protections. I haven’t been following the case very closely, but was a little concerned about the precedent and the liability for people like me who blog.
Reading some of the articles on the case, though, I’m less worried. This isn’t a blogger making some statements. Instead, Ms. Cox acted more like a stalker and harasser than a reporter. The judge even concluded that had she been granted protection as a journalist it was unlikely she could prevail as there was little factual basis for her statements.
Others have done better summaries of the case and the effect and I encourage everyone to read them.
Seattle Weekly
New York Times
Ars Technica
Forbes

I also discourage folks from applying this ruling to all bloggers. It’s not clear she was doing anything journalistic. I did find it interesting that some of her techniques to ruin the lawyer’s search results were defined as Search Engine Optimization. I’ve long thought SEO was akin to spam: say something often enough in enough places and you start to dominate the conversation. Not because you have anything useful to say, but because no one can get an idea in otherwise.

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Would you buy a used car from that guy?

There are dozens of people and companies standing up and offering suggestions on best practices in email marketing. Unfortunately, many of those companies don’t actually practice what they preach in managing their own email accounts.
I got email today to an old work email address of mine from Strongmail. To be fair it was a technically correct email. Everything one would expect from a company handling large volumes of emails.  It’s clear that time and energy was put into the technical setup of the send. If only they had put even half that effort into deciding who to send the email to. Sadly, they didn’t.
My first thought, upon receiving the mail, was that some new, eager employee bought a very old and crufty list somewhere. Because Strongmail has a reputation for being responsible mailers, I sent them a copy of the email to abuse@. I figured they’d want to know that they had a new sales / marketing person who was doing some bad stuff.
I know how frustrating handling abuse@ can be, so I try to be short and sweet in my complaints. For this one, I simply said, “Someone at Strongmail has appended, harvested or otherwise acquired an old email address of mine. This has been added to your mailing list and I’m now receiving spam from you. ”
They respond with an email that starts with:
“Thank you for your thoughtful response to our opt-in request. On occasion, we provide members of our database with the opportunity to opt-in to receive email marketing communications from us.”
Wait. What? Members of our database? How did this address get into your database?
“I can’t be sure from our records but it looks like someone from StrongMail reached out to you several years ago.  It’s helpful that you let us know to unsubscribe you.  Thank you again.”
There you have it. According to the person answering email at abuse@ Strongmail they sent me a message because they had sent mail to me in the past. Is that really what you did? Send mail to very old email addresses because someone, at some point in the past, sent mail to that address? And you don’t know when, don’t know where the address came from, don’t know how it was acquired, but decided to reach out to me?
How many bad practices can you mix into a single send, Strongmail? Sending mail to addresses where you don’t know how you got them? Sending mail to addresses that you got at least 6 years ago? Sending mail to addresses that were never opted-in to any of your mail? And when people point out, gently and subtly, that maybe this is a bad idea, you just add them to your global suppression list?
Oh. Wait. I know what you’re going to tell me. All of your bad practices don’t count because this was an ‘opt-in’ request. People who didn’t want the mail didn’t have to do anything, therefore there is no reason not to spam them! They ignore it and they are dropped from your list. Except it doesn’t work that way. Double opt-in requests to someone has asked to be subscribed or is an active customer or prospect is one thing. Requests sent to addresses of unknown provenance are still spam.
Just for the record, I have a good idea of where they got my address. Many years ago Strongmail approached Word to the Wise to explore a potential partnership. We would work with and through Strongmail to provide delivery consulting and best practices advice for their customers. As part of this process we did exchange business cards with a number of Strongmail employees. I suspect those cards were left in a desk when the employees moved on. Whoever got that desk, or cleaned it out, found  those cards and added them to the ‘member database.’
But wait! It gets even better. Strongmail was sending me this mail, so that they could get permission to send me email about Email and Social Media Marketing Best Practices. I’m almost tempted to sign up to provide me unending blog fodder for my new series entitled “Don’t do this!”

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FBox: The sky isn't falling

Having listened to the Facebook announcement this morning, I am even more convinced that emailpocalypse isn’t happening.
Look, despite the fact that companies like Blue Sky Factory think that this means marketers are NEVER EVER going see the inside of an inbox again this isn’t the end of email marketing.
Yes, Facebook email is a messaging platform that marketers are not going to have direct, unlimited and unfettered access to. I have no problem with this. Unfettered access to a messaging platform has been abused by marketers long enough, that I heartily approve of a platform that gives real control back to the recipient.
With that being said, there are a couple blindingly obvious ways to avoid having to give users control of their own inbox.

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