Mainsleaze
Yes, spam is actually still a problem
I hear a lot of people claim that spam isn’t really a problem any more. That filters are so good that the average user doesn’t see a lot of spam and if they do get “legitimate” mail that they can just opt out.
These are great sounding arguments, the problem is that those arguments aren’t always true.
There is an address I stopped using for commercial mail around 1997 and all mail around 2002. It still gets hundreds of emails a month.
Those hundreds of emails a month are despite the fact that the address is behind commercial spam filters. It’s been on “flamers lists.” It’s on the “do not mail” list that came with the “Millions CD.”
In addition, I am very open with clients (and their affiliates) that this is a “spam trap” address. I’ve handed it out to dozens and dozens of companies over the years describing it as my spam trap address.
In November 2013, I unsubscribed from every single email received at that account – at least those that had unsubscribe links.
What does the mail volume look like now?
If anything unsubscribing made the volume problems worse. In the best case it lowered the volume briefly to something approaching 10 emails a day.
There are currently over 500 messages I’ve received so far in August. These are messages advertising companies like Laura Ashley, MetLife, Military.com, Quibids, Walk In Tubs, Sainsbury’s, Bloomburg, Fidelity, Oral B, Lasix Vision Institute, Virgin Broadband, ClickNLoan, Timeshares, iMotors, Walmart, oil changes, Experian, Credit monitoring, Life insurance, ADT, CHW Home Warranty, Health Plans of America, Bosley Hair Solutions, Jillian Michaels Online, restaurant coupons, credit cards, SBA loans, and that’s before we get to the Garcinia cambogia, herbal viagra and clearly fraudulent stuff.
This account, that hasn’t been subscribed to anything in more than 10 years is getting hundreds of unasked for emails a month, even with the benefit of commercial filters. It appears to be being sold or traded in multiple countries (Laura Ashley, Virgin Broadband and Sainsbury’s are all in the UK). I don’t want this mail. I have tried to stop getting this mail.
Yes, spam is still a problem.
Papa John's settles texting suit
Last year a class action law suit was filed against Papa John’s for violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) for texts received by Papa John’s customers. Customers allege they never opted in to receive promotional text from the company. Papa John’s claim that they didn’t send the marketing, but instead was sent by third party contractors.
A blog post on lawyers.com says that Papa John’s settled the case for $16.5 million.
Gevalia spamming
A number of people have contacted me over the last week pointing out that Paul Wagner was handed a negative jury verdict in his lawsuit against Gevalia and Connexus. (background Wash Post Article Washington Post verdict article, Ken Magill Article).
I spent some time this afternoon downloading different documents from Pacer trying to understand what was going on in the case and what the implications were. This lawsuit was originally filed in 2008 and has had nearly 600 documents filed with the court. Suffice it to say, I didn’t start at the beginning and work forward, I started at the end and worked backwards.
Beyond Systems, Inc. filed suit against Kraft and Connexus for spamming addresses under the California and Maryland anti-spam laws.
This recent “mini-trial” assessed 3 questions:
What matters for reputation?
There is a contingent of senders and companies that seems to believe that receiver ISPs and filtering companies aren’t measuring reputation correctly. Over and over again the discussion comes up where senders think they can improve on how reputation is measured.
One factor that is continually repeated is the size of the company. I’ve even seen a couple people suggest that corporate net worth should be included in the reputation calculation.
The problem with this suggestion is that just because a company is big or has a high net worth or is on the Fortune500 doesn’t mean that the mail they send isn’t spam. I’ve certainly received spam from large, name brand companies (and organizations). I’ve also consulted with a number of those companies who bought or appended a list and then had to deal with the fallout from a Spamhaus listing or upstream disconnection.
Sure, there is a certain logic to company size and prominence being a part of a reputation calculation. For instance, my experience suggests consumers who recognize a brand are less likely to treat mail as “spam” even if they didn’t sign up for the mail in the first place. Certainly there are large brands (Kraft, FTDDirect, 1-800–Flowers, OfficeDepot) that have been caught sending mail to people who never opted in to their lists.
Many people don’t realize that company size and prominence are already factored into the reputation scores. No ISPs don’t look at a mail and, if it’s authenticated, add in a little positive because it’s part of a giant, name brand company. Rather, the recipients change how they interact with the mail. Even recipients who didn’t sign for mail from Office Depot may click through and purchase from an offer. Some recipients recognizing the brand will hit delete instead of “this is spam.”
All of these things mean that big brands have recognition that takes into account that they are prominent brands. Elaborate processes and extra reputation points given to big brands don’t need to happen, they’re already an innate part of the system.
Avoiding spammers in affiliate programs
How can companies avoid paying spammers and having their brand associated with spammers?
One of the easiest ways to avoid spam is to not pay for acquisition email. Simply don’t set up an affiliate email marketing program. There are a lot of folks who don’t like me saying that, and who have argued vociferously with me over the years. But email is not a good medium for acquiring new customers if you don’t intend to spam. Email is a great medium for talking with current customers who are engaged with a brand and a company, but currently it is a poor way to acquire customers without spamming.
There are ways companies have successfully used email to acquire customers. There are actually newsletters that contain content but also sell advertising in the newsletter. Look at the newsletters you are receiving, that are relevant to your business space. One example of a newsletter that did this successfully is Magilla Marketing published by DirectMag. Every week there were 4 new articles from Ken Magill, supported by advertising in the newsletter and on the website. These kind of ads will let you reach your target market without spamming.
Now, I know that there are a lot of marketing departments out there that are going to insist that there aren’t useful newsletters or advertising venues for their field and the only way they can acquire customers is to use affiliate programs. I’ve had clients tell me the exact same things. Often they came to me as clients because their own email marketing was blocked by a blocklist or a spam filtering company due to their hiring of spammers. They wanted to police and clean up their affiliate program without having to give it up.
Policing affiliate programs can be done, if the company invests the time and energy into screening the program.
For every company that wants to send email advertising your company ask them to provide information about their company and their email program.
Mainstream spam wrap-up
Over the last week Steve and I have posted about the AARP hiring affiliates to send spam on their behalf: starting with the poorly done email message, moving through the process of identifying the responsible entity and then walking through the details of how we tracked the spammer.
Why spend a week writing about the AARP spamming? I initially posted about the AARP spam because it was such a horrible example of email marketing. Not just that it was spam but it was careless spam. Plus, in a lot of my interactions with marketers, clients and delivery experts I hear a lot about how “real” companies don’t spam, don’t support spam and wouldn’t ever let someone spam on their behalf. This isn’t true, not even a little bit.
The post actually came to the attention of the AARP and someone from their national headquarters commented that it was “just spam” and had nothing to do with AARP. I’ll be honest, I was annoyed with their reaction. I did my homework before calling the AARP out and was convinced this mailing was authorized by them.
Over the next 2 days Steve investigated the spam and reported on his findings. He only documented the full investigation on one of the emails I received (yes, there were multiple emails sent to the same address, most of them coming from different domains owned by the spammer). We did this to document that yes, mainstream companies do hire spammers and that trail can sometimes be tracked. We also wanted to show the lengths spammers and their customers will go to in order to get through filters and spam blocks.
A lot of mainstream groups do support spam and hire other people to send it on their behalf. Many of these same companies expect ISPs to hurry up and let mail through because “we’re a legitimate company” when their mail is blocked.
To be fair, some companies may not initially intend to support spam, but when they see the money rolling in they can’t stop. Some may pay lip service to no-spam policies, but deliberately turn a blind eye to spam advertising their company. Some hire spammers, but with enough distance between themselves and the spammer that they can deny they knew about the spam.
Every company using email for acquisition without actively managing the email program is at risk of spammers being hired on their behalf. There are some things that can be done to lower the risk of spammers being used to send spam, but the spammers are clever and if the payouts are high enough they will spam on your behalf.
There are things a company can do to minimize the chances that an affiliate program will attract spammers. Check back tomorrow for some processes that have proven effective for my clients.
What Happens Next…
or Why All Of This Is Meaningless:
Guest post by Huey Callison
The analysis of the AARP spam was nice, but looking at the Mainsleaze Spammer Playbook, I can make a few educated guesses at what happens next: absolutely nothing of consequence.
AARP, if they acknowledge this publicly (I bet not) has plausible deniability and can say “It wasn’t us, it was an unscrupulous lead-gen contractor”. They probably send a strongly-worded letter to SureClick that says “Don’t do that again”.
SureClick, if they acknowledge this publicly (I bet not) has plausible deniability and can say ‘It wasn’t us, it was an unscrupulous affiliate”. They probably send a strongly-worded letter to OfferWeb that says “Don’t do that again”.
OfferWeb, if they acknowledge this publicly (I bet not) has plausible deniability and can say ‘It wasn’t us, it was an unscrupulous affiliate”. And maybe they DO fire ‘Andrew Talbot’, but that’s not any kind of victory, because he probably already has accounts with OTHER lead-gen outfits, which might even include those who also have AARP as
a client, or a client-of-a-client.
So the best-case result of this analysis being made public is that two strongly-worded letters get sent, the URLs in the spam and the trail of redirects change slightly, but the spam continues at the same volume and with the same results, and AARP continues to benefit from the millions of spams sent on their behalf.
I’m not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that CAN-SPAM imposed liability on the organization that was ultimately responsible for the spam being sent, but until the FTC pursues action against someone like this, or Gevalia, corporations and organizations will continue to get away with supporting, and benefiting from, millions and millions of spams.
As JD pointed out in a comment to a previous post: sorry, AARP, but none of us are going to be able to retire any time soon.
AARP, SureClick, Offerweb and Spam
On Tuesday Laura wrote about receiving spam sent on behalf of the AARP. The point she was discussing was mostly just how incompetent the spammer was, and how badly they’d mangled the spam such that it was hardly legible.
One of AARPs interactive advertising managers posted in response denying that it was anything to do with the AARP.
Spam from mainstream companies
Yesterday I wrote about spam I received advertising AARP and used it as an example of a mainstream group supporting spammers by hiring them (or hiring them through proxies) to send mail on their behalf.
My statement appears to have upset someone, though. There is one comment on the post, coming from an IP address allocated to the AARP.