In his recent article in the New Yorker , Michael Specter discusses the history of spam and some of the technologies that have sprung up to guard against it, as well as new tactics spammers are using to get around it. One uber-mathematic spammer determined there were “600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagra…” That is a great example of the tenacity of the spam community. They won’t give up, even if they have to increase their spam from billions to trillions a day to get just a few responses. The word that comes to mind for me is sustainability. How does a legitimate email marketer survive and sustain response rates when other forces are conspiring to de-legitimize email?

The truth is there are several ways to define your email campaign such that it is viewed differently than the filth.

Sustainability in an environmental sense hits me every day as I get my coffee at a local coffee shop. I try to bring my own cup rather than rely on another tree-diminishing, chlorine-whitened paper cup. Java Jacks, the local shop just around the corner from my house, posted a sign that says something like “Thanks for using your own cup – just our tiny shop used over 100,000 paper cups last year…help us reverse that trend.” That shop has to be just a tiny fraction of the paper cups used by Starbucks in a year. My point is that it took that sign at Java Jacks for me to really think about the impact even my few cups a week could have over a lifetime. Even my tree-hugging tendencies had been numbed by the simple ease and anonymity of choosing a paper cup.

Spammers have created that same numbness with much of the populace with email. Legitimate marketers have the opportunity (and I argue responsibility) to reverse rather than add to the trend and impression that all email is spam. Marketers that continue to slam away at inboxes with little analysis of what is happening at the other end risk looking more like a spammer than a sustainable business.

Here are a few ways to do so:

• Spammers rely on volume to get their sale. Legitimate marketers need to rely on permission and relevance. Via customer-selected opt-in preferences, behavioral observance and data analysis, marketers can achieve a solid ROI independent of volume of email sent.

• Purge old and inactive names. Spammers mail everyone. A marketer mails only those that are likely to respond. Mailing deeper cheapens your brand and sullies your reputation.

• Authenticate your email. Where spam = fraud, legitimate mail builds on the brand your company has built offline. Don’t let fraudulent phishing scams destroy customer perception of your email. By authenticating with SPF, Sender ID and DKIM, you’ll decrease the chance your customers will get ripped off by the latest scam pretending to be you.

—Chip House

the voice of email

Welcome to the Email Experience Council's blog, a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices. On these pages, you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that's driving the next evolution of email.

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Spencer Kollas is the director of delivery services at StrongMail, helping maximize customers’ email deliverability rates. He was previously director of deliverability services for Premiere Global Services. Spencer is an active member in the Email Sender & Provider Coalition, Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group, the Anti-Phishing Work Group and, of course, the eec. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is the director of marketing and corporate communications for Habeas, the leader in email reputation management services. He has a rich background in marketing and communications strategy and execution for such companies as Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco Systems, Creator Connection, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS Television. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experiene Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire.

Chad White is the Email Experience Council’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.

recommended blogs

The Retail Email Blog

Epsilon Insights

Listrak's Email Marketing Blog

The Agitator

Datran Media's Outperformance Marketing

Gold Lasso's The From Line

eROI's The Email Wars

Email Marketing Strategy from Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey

eROI's Email Days

Return Path

Bill's Blog

eROI's Return on Subscriber

Goodmail's blog

Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Blue Sky Factory's The Thinking Inbox

MindComet's Email Marketing Voodoo

SubscriberMail's Best Practices

Tamara's Email Marketing Best Practices Blog

The BrightWave Blog

Smith-Harmon EDM Review

MailerMailer's The Touch

MediaPost Email Insider blog

Comments (1)

Avoid Spam Filters:

The best way to get to your subscribers inboxes is to check the content of your emails against spam assassin first. Content filters are still your number one enemy.

By giving detailed whitelist instructions to your subscribers upon first contact you can be assured that you will not end up in the junk folder.

SPF, Domain Keys and Sender ID are in place to keep your email from being spoofed by spammers. It has nothing to do with getting YOUR emails to the INBOX.

Of course anything that lessens the flood of spam is of value to us all but if your emails are misidentified as spam by automated filters what does it matter?

Posted by Avoid Spam Filters | August 12, 2007 10:00 AM

Posted on August 12, 2007 10:00

Making Email Marketing Sustainable

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