« Weekly Whitepaper Room Refresh | Main | Obama Spending Money on Search, But Making Money on Email »

Two-Click Survey Results: Should the eec reassert the true definition of spam?

The answer…
95% --> Yes, the eec should start a campaign to differentiate between spam and permission-based emails that are no longer wanted.
5% --> No, the eec shouldn’t get involved and focus its efforts elsewhere.

Now that that’s settled, we need your ideas on how we can build an awareness campaign to differentiate between spam and email that’s no longer wanted, and can lobby the ISPs for the adoption of unsubscribe buttons. Clearly we already have some ideas, but we need more, much more. Since we’re all marketers, I suspect that you have some killer ideas. So please share them, either here or you can contact me directly at chad@emailexperience.org.

Also, visit the eec homepage to answer the latest Two-Click Survey question:
How much do you segment your emails?

-->See more Two-Click Survey Results

Posted on April 8, 2008 1:10 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.emailexperience.org/bins/mt/mt-tb.cgi/196

Comments (1)

John Arnold:

I agree that the industry needs to assist consumers in differentiating between spam and unwanted email, and ISPs clearly could play a role in promoting awareness. Lobbying the ISPs to include an unsubscribe link may prove frustrating, however, because of the technical, practical, and motivational complexities inherent in providing such an option to consumers. The task of consumer education more likely depends on a collaborative effort, by marketers and ESPs, that encourages all email senders to adhere to professional standards that both influence consumer behavior, and easily align with known consumer preferences.

Hotmail is already providing an unsubscribe button to their users in certain situations, but ISPs do not generally have an incentive to do this unless they have a fairly good idea that their customer opted in to receive the communication in the first place (Hotmail requires the sender's email address to be in the recipient's address book in order for the link to display.)

In addition, any unsubscribe button provided by an ISP must either block future emails from a specific sender (which complicates re-subscribing should the customer inadvertently unsubscribe) or take advantage of unsubscribe information in the email header, which effectively clicks the unsubscribe link that's already in the body of the email (this limits the use of the ISP's link to emails sent from ESPs who provide such header information for their customers, and provides no protection from dubious opt-out links in spam emails).

Consumers are practically faced with the same question no matter which unsubscribe link is presented: Do I know and trust this email? Working with ISPs to help consumers identify trustworthy emails through education and better authentication technology might be a preferable approach that will encourage consumers to trust unsubscribe links associated with legitimate email, while preserving a straightforward ability to report unsolicited commercial email as spam.

Posted by John Arnold | April 9, 2008 4:46 PM

Posted on April 9, 2008 16:46

feed sign-up

Subscribe via RSS or email.

newsletter sign-up

After subscribing to this blog feed, also sign up for the Email Experience Council's weekly newsletter, which contains information on the latest email marketing initiatives, research, news and events.

Become a Sponsor of the Email Experience Council

search this blog

May 2008

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

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.

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.

Jeanniey Mullen is the eec’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.

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. Read more.

Chad White is the EEC’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, 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.