Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

32 INFRASTRUCTURE DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007
Spam finally has a definition
BY JORDAN COHEN
When industry groups first started tackling deliverability best
practices a few years ago, the struggle to define spam raised
some controversial questions. Marketers, ISPs, consumer groups
and government agencies alike wondered: Should all unsolicited
commercial e-mail be considered spam? Or just unsolicited bulk
commercial e-mail? Or perhaps it’s any e-mail sent without permission;
bulk, commercial or otherwise?
Eventually, attempts to define spam were abandoned, as no one
could agree on a meaning that would encompass all unwanted
messages while excluding legitimate e-mail. Besides, a definition
seemed irrelevant when an estimated one-in-five commercial
e-mails were getting caught in filters for failing content checks or
poor bounce management, even when specifically requested by
the consumer.
Fast forward to 2007, and we may finally have a definition for
spam. Yahoo’s top e-mail operations executive, Miles Libbey, senior
product manager at Yahoo Mail, probably put it best at the
Federal Trade Commission’s recent Spam Summit: “Operationally,
we define spam as anything users don’t want in their inbox,”
Libbey said. It’s short, sweet, highly understandable and 100 percent
consumer-centric. But it’s also a definition that may frighten
the many marketers who previously believed that acquiring affirmative
consent meant they would never be considered spammers.
As we move closer to a time when consumer spam complaints
will weigh heaviest on a marketers’ deliverability and ROI, successful
firms will increase their focus on making sure that every
e-mail they send is relevant, valuable, welcomed and wanted by its
recipients. To survive and thrive in the next phase of e-mail marketing,
keep these two core principles in mind:
■ How you give notice trumps how you get permission. Getting
consumers’ permission is meaningless unless you are clear about
what they are agreeing to when they sign up. At a recent industry
conference, AOL’s postmaster, Charles Stiles, told attendees, “I
don’t care if they triple opted-in and gave you their credit card
number.” He drew chuckles, but made his point loud and clear:
Opt-in is meaningless if consumers subsequently click the “Report
Spam” button.
■ Relevancy rules. There are no
“throw away” communications in
the e-mail world, where consumers
provide immediate and
constant feedback about what
they think of your programs to
their ISPs. Before clicking send,
always ask yourself, “Is the individual
recipient I’m sending this
to going to find it valuable?” And
while you’re at it, “Would I be
Jordan Cohen
happy to receive this message.”
Epsilon
Jordan Cohen is director of industry and government relations at Epsilon. He
can be reached at jcohen@epsilon.com.
ESSENTIAL GUIDE
Controlling messaging costs
BY BARRY ABEL
For every message that doesn’t make it to the intended inbox,
the bottom line takes a direct hit. The number one reason why
mail doesn’t get delivered is infrastructure. Infrastructure in the
e-mail world means MTA (Message Transfer Agent) and is the
way your company presents itself to the ISP community. But most
companies’ sending infrastructures are not conducive to handling
large volumes of outbound mail. Common sending architecture
falls into two camps. The first is composed of open source solutions
such as Sendmail, which
requires dozens of servers to meet
volume and speed requirements.
The second includes early-to-market
spam engines intended to
send high volumes of mail, but
without the control features
required to secure delivery and a
positive reputation. Neither
approach is optimal.
There are, however, several
ways companies can optimize
Barry Abel
their infrastructure to reduce
Message Systems
costs and improve deliverability.
■ Improve infrastructure performance There is a tremendous
cost to running servers, so if you can reduce the number you need
to support, you automatically reduce costs. Adopting a solution
that will allow each server to send millions of messages per hour
with ability to maintain 100k concurrent connections, results in a
10:1 hardware reduction.
■ Insist on virtual IP support By adopting an infrastructure that
supports virtual IPs — the ability to segment traffic by unlimited
IP addresses on a server — you can optimize your throughput for
each type of mail you send to each ISP.
■ Cluster servers This will allow you to configure, manage and
support all servers from a single interface.
■ Establish bounce classifications and a list hygiene process This
will decrease mailing costs, because you’ve eliminated bad addresses
by setting up an automated way to handle bounced mail.
■ Obtain workflow and policy management capability Being able
to set mail processing policies in advance saves admin time and
processing power. Setting thresholds to alert admin of deliverability
problems will help catch problems early so they can be corrected.
■ Prepare for authentication To prevent messages from being
blocked by ISPs using authentication technology, establish a policy
to mark e-mail with DKIM and Sender ID.
■ Adopt e-mail monitoring E-mail monitoring lets you know if
your message landed in the inbox, a junk folder or was blocked
by a spam catcher. Knowing this can give you a better chance of
making changes that will get you to more inboxes.
■ Insist on real-time reporting With real-time analytics, adjustments
can be made before sending subsequent campaigns.
Barry Abel is vice president of field operations at Message Systems. He can be
reached at barry.abel@messagesystems.com.