Sunday, May 27, 2007
If you're tagged as a spammer, it's hard to get off the blacklist
As seen on the International Herald Tribune.
By Karen J. Bannan
Thursday, May 24, 2007
NEW YORK: About a year ago, Scott Madlener, a marketing executive, e-mailed a client several times but his messages were not getting through.
"It raised a red flag immediately," said Madlener, executive vice president for interactive strategies at the Performance Communications Group of Chicago. "We asked our system administrator to look at what was happening, and he came back to me with some bad news: We had been blacklisted."
Blacklisting is an annoyance for big companies, but one that a dedicated technology staff can eventually remedy. For many smaller businesses, having messages blocked or shuttled into a spam folder by an Internet service provider or e-mail administrator can mean lost revenue.
E-mail blacklisting was created as a way to help reduce spam. The Internet protocol addresses of suspected or known spammers are compiled into a list, which is often shared and eventually posted on industry sites like Spamhaus.org and SpamCop.net.
But innocent companies like Madlener's are finding that even people who follow the rules and do not send unwanted e-mail can find themselves in a jam. In Madlener's case, the company shared its server with some of its clients, and one of them sent out e-mail that was flagged as spam. Madlener's company was guilty by association, as are many companies that use outside e-mail service providers that offer shared servers.
"It happens a lot," said Shar VanBoskirk, senior analyst with Forrester Research. "There's so much spam out there and it's so expensive to manage that even big ISPs simply can't handle the volume."
Several years ago, Gary Bevers, the current group publisher for National Petroleum News Magazine, created an e-mail newsletter for his previous employer and sent it out to a list of names he had bought from a reputable marketing company. Unfortunately, the list was old, and only 600 messages out of 10,000 made it through to the intended recipients.
The rest were returned as invalid. Because so many e-mails bounced back as addressee unknown, his company's IP address was branded a spammer. It looked as though he had sent messages to random names and addresses even though he had bought what he thought was a solid permission-based list.
"It was a simple weekly newsletter with advertising, and we had advertisers complaining that they weren't even getting the newsletter," Bevers said.
As Bevers and Madlener can attest, getting on a blacklist was easy but getting off was another matter. It can take time and perseverance to be unblocked, said Stefan Pollard, director for consulting services at the e-mail service provider EmailLabs, based in Menlo Park, California.
"You have to be constantly reviewing and monitoring your bounce logs and looking for the messages that say you've been blocked," Pollard said. "The messages will provide the name of the list that's blocked you and why. Then you have to go to that list that's blocking you and follow their directions about how to get off. It's going to take diligence and hard work."
For example, if a company is using a purchased list or an affiliate list - an e-mail list provided by a marketer - it will have to, at minimum, sever ties with the affiliate or provide the name and contact information for the list owner. If a company is working with its own list, it will have to provide proof of what is known as legitimate opt-ins, a record of how, when and where each person on the list signed up to receive e-mail messages from you.
Sometimes, a company is blocked because its e-mail server is set up incorrectly, leaving it vulnerable to hackers. In that case, the company will have to fix the problem before the Internet service provider or blacklist administrator will even listen to an appeal.
If a company is hacked and a spammer uses the company's e-mail server to send spam, the company will have to prove that its server was hacked and show how the problem was repaired. All in all, technology specialists said, it can take several days to two or three weeks to get off a blacklist.
What can small businesses do to avoid blacklists altogether? That answer is not a simple one, either, VanBoskirk said.
"There's no quick panacea, no check list of, 'Do these three things and you'll be set.' Even if there was, those three things would change as spammers get more aggressive," she said.
But she said a few precautions can reduce the chances of having a problem. First, when hiring an e-mail service provider or ISP, make sure it is a reputable one that is committed to eliminating spam. The company should use outbound spam filters, have stringent anti-spam policies in place and be willing to enforce them.
The company should also have some sort of deliverability reporting in place so it can tell you how many of your messages get through and are opened by end users. Finally, if you can afford it, try to send e-mail from your own server. Using a shared e-mail server, as Madlener found out, can be risky.
You can also avoid problems by including a prominent opt-out link in every message you send so recipients do not feel that they must report your messages as spam to get off your list.
For a more active approach, you can try signing up with reputation services providers like LashBack (www.lashback.com ) and Habeas (www.habeas.com). These services assign a reputation score to e-mail senders, so that ISP's feel comfortable letting in e-mail messages from those with high scores. E-mail certification and accreditation services like Goodmail Systems (www.goodmailsystems.com) and Return Path's Sender Score Certified product (www.senderscorecertified.com) provide similar services.
But all of these strategies may just be stop-gap measures for many companies, VanBoskirk said. Madlener agreed.
"There's not a lot anyone can do because people have the right to complain about e-mail at any time. It's sort of like getting a ticket in the city," he said. "It's a nuisance and a problem, but it's very difficult to avoid."
By Karen J. Bannan
Thursday, May 24, 2007
NEW YORK: About a year ago, Scott Madlener, a marketing executive, e-mailed a client several times but his messages were not getting through.
"It raised a red flag immediately," said Madlener, executive vice president for interactive strategies at the Performance Communications Group of Chicago. "We asked our system administrator to look at what was happening, and he came back to me with some bad news: We had been blacklisted."
Blacklisting is an annoyance for big companies, but one that a dedicated technology staff can eventually remedy. For many smaller businesses, having messages blocked or shuttled into a spam folder by an Internet service provider or e-mail administrator can mean lost revenue.
E-mail blacklisting was created as a way to help reduce spam. The Internet protocol addresses of suspected or known spammers are compiled into a list, which is often shared and eventually posted on industry sites like Spamhaus.org and SpamCop.net.
But innocent companies like Madlener's are finding that even people who follow the rules and do not send unwanted e-mail can find themselves in a jam. In Madlener's case, the company shared its server with some of its clients, and one of them sent out e-mail that was flagged as spam. Madlener's company was guilty by association, as are many companies that use outside e-mail service providers that offer shared servers.
"It happens a lot," said Shar VanBoskirk, senior analyst with Forrester Research. "There's so much spam out there and it's so expensive to manage that even big ISPs simply can't handle the volume."
Several years ago, Gary Bevers, the current group publisher for National Petroleum News Magazine, created an e-mail newsletter for his previous employer and sent it out to a list of names he had bought from a reputable marketing company. Unfortunately, the list was old, and only 600 messages out of 10,000 made it through to the intended recipients.
The rest were returned as invalid. Because so many e-mails bounced back as addressee unknown, his company's IP address was branded a spammer. It looked as though he had sent messages to random names and addresses even though he had bought what he thought was a solid permission-based list.
"It was a simple weekly newsletter with advertising, and we had advertisers complaining that they weren't even getting the newsletter," Bevers said.
As Bevers and Madlener can attest, getting on a blacklist was easy but getting off was another matter. It can take time and perseverance to be unblocked, said Stefan Pollard, director for consulting services at the e-mail service provider EmailLabs, based in Menlo Park, California.
"You have to be constantly reviewing and monitoring your bounce logs and looking for the messages that say you've been blocked," Pollard said. "The messages will provide the name of the list that's blocked you and why. Then you have to go to that list that's blocking you and follow their directions about how to get off. It's going to take diligence and hard work."
For example, if a company is using a purchased list or an affiliate list - an e-mail list provided by a marketer - it will have to, at minimum, sever ties with the affiliate or provide the name and contact information for the list owner. If a company is working with its own list, it will have to provide proof of what is known as legitimate opt-ins, a record of how, when and where each person on the list signed up to receive e-mail messages from you.
Sometimes, a company is blocked because its e-mail server is set up incorrectly, leaving it vulnerable to hackers. In that case, the company will have to fix the problem before the Internet service provider or blacklist administrator will even listen to an appeal.
If a company is hacked and a spammer uses the company's e-mail server to send spam, the company will have to prove that its server was hacked and show how the problem was repaired. All in all, technology specialists said, it can take several days to two or three weeks to get off a blacklist.
What can small businesses do to avoid blacklists altogether? That answer is not a simple one, either, VanBoskirk said.
"There's no quick panacea, no check list of, 'Do these three things and you'll be set.' Even if there was, those three things would change as spammers get more aggressive," she said.
But she said a few precautions can reduce the chances of having a problem. First, when hiring an e-mail service provider or ISP, make sure it is a reputable one that is committed to eliminating spam. The company should use outbound spam filters, have stringent anti-spam policies in place and be willing to enforce them.
The company should also have some sort of deliverability reporting in place so it can tell you how many of your messages get through and are opened by end users. Finally, if you can afford it, try to send e-mail from your own server. Using a shared e-mail server, as Madlener found out, can be risky.
You can also avoid problems by including a prominent opt-out link in every message you send so recipients do not feel that they must report your messages as spam to get off your list.
For a more active approach, you can try signing up with reputation services providers like LashBack (www.lashback.com ) and Habeas (www.habeas.com). These services assign a reputation score to e-mail senders, so that ISP's feel comfortable letting in e-mail messages from those with high scores. E-mail certification and accreditation services like Goodmail Systems (www.goodmailsystems.com) and Return Path's Sender Score Certified product (www.senderscorecertified.com) provide similar services.
But all of these strategies may just be stop-gap measures for many companies, VanBoskirk said. Madlener agreed.
"There's not a lot anyone can do because people have the right to complain about e-mail at any time. It's sort of like getting a ticket in the city," he said. "It's a nuisance and a problem, but it's very difficult to avoid."
Labels: advertising 2.0, email, ISAT
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
E-mail Overload: A Solution › › › B2B E-Mail Marketing
E-mail Overload: A Solution
› › › B2B E-Mail Marketing
As seen in Click-Z www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625718
By Karen Gedney | May 2, 2007
Are the e-mail messages you send to internal staff still marked as "unread"? Are new product announcements, policy memos, and other critical corporate information ignored by your employees?
If so, your company may be at the tipping point where even the most diligent employees can no longer keep up with their e-mail inboxes.
What then? Sysco, the giant food-service corporation, found a solution for communicating with its 10,000 marketing associates in a more targeted way.
The company has over 80 business units. As a result, marketing associates' inboxes were jammed with innumerable messages from corporate, unit managers, and vendors -- sometimes with contradictory information. No one had time to plow through all these messages, so many were unopened.
To solve the problem, Sysco used Performance Communications Group's (PCG's) Internet Secured Application Technology (ISAT) to create a secure, multimedia microsite.
The site, called Sysco Blue Cube to reflect the company's branding, has 10 tabs that correlate to Sysco's main business lines, such as frozen food, beverage, and dairy. The content is password protected, but you can look at the first page.
Marketing associates need only check the tab for their product lines -- and, in fact, are required to as part of their regular job responsibilities -- to find new information relevant to their work.
The site's more than 100 screens are updated weekly with reports, spreadsheets, sales collateral, and multimedia material. Because ISAT technology uses up to 80 percent less bandwidth than regular HTML, Sysco can offer employees higher-value content, such as vendor demos, said Scott Madlener, PCG's EVP of interactive strategy. Vendors are happy to supply this video content because they know Sysco Blue Cube's high employee compliance rates guarantee viewership, he said.
The Blue Cube site has a high internal viewership and is secure from outside eyes. Employees must use a password to access the site and are prevented from forwarding information outside the organization. And because ISAT technology is portable, it can be used not only on Sysco's corporate site but also on each operating unit's site.
What does it take to publish 100 pages for 10 tabs on a weekly basis plus administrative duties such as new-user authentication? While four Sysco employees share responsibility for the site, the total workload only amounts to one full-time person.
Since the information is controlled internally, there are no worries about contradictory e-mail coming from different internal sources. All the information is catalogued for reference and updated regularly.
Though Sysco Blue Cube is still in its pilot stage, 3,300 marketing associates have signed up, the site has just published its 27th issue, and over 1,000 marketing associates log in weekly. That's pretty good compliance compared to the company's previous e-mail performance.
But how do you remind the marketing associates to log on to the site? By e-mail, of course! There just doesn't seem to be any way to totally get around it yet. However, ISAT e-mail messages have the Blue Cube site embedded in it, so at least one step is eliminated.
› › › B2B E-Mail Marketing
As seen in Click-Z www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625718
By Karen Gedney | May 2, 2007
Are the e-mail messages you send to internal staff still marked as "unread"? Are new product announcements, policy memos, and other critical corporate information ignored by your employees?
If so, your company may be at the tipping point where even the most diligent employees can no longer keep up with their e-mail inboxes.
What then? Sysco, the giant food-service corporation, found a solution for communicating with its 10,000 marketing associates in a more targeted way.
The company has over 80 business units. As a result, marketing associates' inboxes were jammed with innumerable messages from corporate, unit managers, and vendors -- sometimes with contradictory information. No one had time to plow through all these messages, so many were unopened.
To solve the problem, Sysco used Performance Communications Group's (PCG's) Internet Secured Application Technology (ISAT) to create a secure, multimedia microsite.
The site, called Sysco Blue Cube to reflect the company's branding, has 10 tabs that correlate to Sysco's main business lines, such as frozen food, beverage, and dairy. The content is password protected, but you can look at the first page.
Marketing associates need only check the tab for their product lines -- and, in fact, are required to as part of their regular job responsibilities -- to find new information relevant to their work.
The site's more than 100 screens are updated weekly with reports, spreadsheets, sales collateral, and multimedia material. Because ISAT technology uses up to 80 percent less bandwidth than regular HTML, Sysco can offer employees higher-value content, such as vendor demos, said Scott Madlener, PCG's EVP of interactive strategy. Vendors are happy to supply this video content because they know Sysco Blue Cube's high employee compliance rates guarantee viewership, he said.
The Blue Cube site has a high internal viewership and is secure from outside eyes. Employees must use a password to access the site and are prevented from forwarding information outside the organization. And because ISAT technology is portable, it can be used not only on Sysco's corporate site but also on each operating unit's site.
What does it take to publish 100 pages for 10 tabs on a weekly basis plus administrative duties such as new-user authentication? While four Sysco employees share responsibility for the site, the total workload only amounts to one full-time person.
Since the information is controlled internally, there are no worries about contradictory e-mail coming from different internal sources. All the information is catalogued for reference and updated regularly.
Though Sysco Blue Cube is still in its pilot stage, 3,300 marketing associates have signed up, the site has just published its 27th issue, and over 1,000 marketing associates log in weekly. That's pretty good compliance compared to the company's previous e-mail performance.
But how do you remind the marketing associates to log on to the site? By e-mail, of course! There just doesn't seem to be any way to totally get around it yet. However, ISAT e-mail messages have the Blue Cube site embedded in it, so at least one step is eliminated.
Labels: Chicago, email, Internet Secured Application Technology, ISAT, multimedia, PCG, Performance Communications Group, video
