Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket

06 FEATURE DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007
Case Study:
Taxbrain
Following the law does not outlaw acquisition
potential.
Online financial services firm TaxBrain
reports to having increased its new customer
acquisitions by 500 percent, and at the same
time keeping good with the laws required of
financial services companies privacy regulations
and CAN-SPAM, by using e-mail.
TaxBrain had been faced with a quandary:
How to acquire customers through often affiliate
marketing but not violate CAN-SPAM while
doing so.
“As a company that is trying really hard to
build a brand and gain consumer trust, it is critical
that we maintain a spotless reputation,” says
Craig Petz, vice president of marketing and
sales at Petz Enterprises Inc., creator of
TaxBrain.com. “On the other hand, in order to
build my brand and increase my clientele, I have
to look for ways to acquire new customers.”
TaxBrain was initially hesitant to participate
in affiliate marketing via e-mail despite the
potential that e-mail has as an acquisition tool.
“With passage of the Graham-Leach-Bliley
Act, the definition of a financial institution
CS: We’re going to have the authentication and the login process,
that’s a big part of it. We’re also going to, like I said, limit the number
of ports that can be used. But when those messages are coming
in from the Internet, then we have to look at other characteristics
of the message. Primarily, what we are looking at right now is
the source of the message, which allows us to determine whether
this is somebody we would normally be doing business with. Is
this somebody that would normally be sending a million messages
like this? If not, then we try to put them on a slow track and identify
what’s coming in. Is this a legitimate message or not, and if
not, then we just simply issue a block. And we advise the sender
that we have blocked their message. And if they feel that it’s an
error, they need to contact us.
DM News: A few years ago, the industry recommended not using
images in e-mail, being mindful of the subject line, things like that.
Is this obsolete now that we have more sophisticated technologies
that allow you to look at the authentication process and better
understand where mail is coming from? Do these things still matter?
Are subject lines still filtered?
CS: Actually, we don’t do a whole lot of filtering on the subject line.
The most effective filtering goes on right at the consumer inbox, and
typically that does come from the subject line and the “from”
address. Consumers play a huge role in determining what is and
what is not spam on the AOL system. But also for their own inbox,
anything that is delivered, certainly they have that opportunity to say,
was greatly broadened to include not only
banks, broker-dealers, and insurance companies,
but also the real estate industry, financial
advisors, tax businesses and more,” Petz
says. “Many marketers in this sector have
simply dropped, or greatly limited, their use
of e-mail marketing.”
However, the firm was still looking to
increase its business and compete with other
online tax services firms such as H&R Block
and Turbo Tax. These concerns drove
TaxBrain to seek a third party compliance
platform to help guide through the complexities
of compliance, and still participate in
affiliate marketing. Due to restrictions from
the IRS, TaxBrain could not share suppression
lists in plain-text.
TaxBrain began using Datran Media’s
UnsubCentral platform, which manages this
IRS requirement by using a suppression list
distribution software that eliminates plaintext
sharing and is fully scaleable to meet the
tax firm’s largely seasonal business, especially
each mid-April. Before a mailing is sent out
with new names from affiliates, UnsubCentral
scrubs the lists for any unsubscribes.
“The good news is that there are now technologies
in place that enable highly effective
ESSENTIAL GUIDE
e-mail campaigns without compromising
security,” Petz adds.
To do it right, TaxBrain refrained from affiliate
marketing until it integrated compliance
across its online business and partnerships.
Since the integration, the firm has seen
record growth in revenue.
“As online, do-it-yourself income tax
preparation has become the preferred
method of paying taxes for more than half of
the 132,000,000 US taxpayers, acquisition
marketing is critical and has become a core
component of TaxBrain’s revenue model,”
Petz comments. ■ —by Dianna Dilworth
“You know what, I think that this is spam, I am not going to trust it.”
Or they are going to trust it, and that’s why we always err on the
side of caution to make sure that the message does get delivered.
DM News: If a consumer receives a message that he doesn’t want,
but it is something that he’s opted in for, is it bordering on spam?
How can marketers and consumers bridge this gap?
CS: I think that that’s a very dangerous area for us to play in, in
determining what is or is not spam. Whether that example is criminally
spam, I would say no, it is not. However, what our consumers
tell us is spam — whether they have opt-ed in for it or not
— that’s what we’ve got to filter. Because our consumers are essentially
asking us, “Please don’t deliver this message to me.” Even if a
marketer did have express written consent from the consumer saying
he wanted the message, if they had copies of his driver’s
license, knew his address, his telephone number, blood type, if at
the end of the day, the consumer says, “I don’t want it,” then we
want the mailer to stop mailing it to them.
DM News: So what should a marketer do? How does a company
find out that a consumer doesn’t want a message if he’s already
opted in?
CS: One of the ways we do that is with our “report spam” button.
And we provide those reports back to the mailer to let them
know that, for whatever reason, this consumer doesn’t want it.