I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never “The Mailman”. When I hear that term I think of two things, first the guy that drives the little white truck and delivers the vast numbers of print catalogs to my house and second, I think of NBA great Karl Malone, known as “The Mailman” as he always delivered. In this case, however, the term “The Mailman” is being applied to me in a different context.

 

I am fortunate to have been selected by CRM magazine as one of their Influential Leaders of 2008, for the work that I and the team at Habeas have been doing to help save email. The title of their piece on me is “The Mailman”, thus the title of this post. I am truly honored to accept this prestigious award on behalf of the entire team (past and present) at Habeas.  The article praises Habeas for being thought leaders in the drive to educate marketers and email senders about best practices in email through such initiatives as ReputationWiki.org and our participation in industry forums likes AOTA as well as our work with our valued partners such as Lashback, BoxSentry, Campaigner, Summit Projects and many others. We’ve made it part of our mission statement to “save email” and a huge part of that is market education to email senders about differentiating themselves from spammers by adopting best practices in email (e.g., obtain recipient consent, relevant email, prompt unsubscribe, etc.).

 

This award comes at a very interesting time in my life and the company’s history. As I write this post I’m also multi-tasking by completing the very last byzantine details on the Habeas-Return Path merger. So, yes, Habeas and I are being recognized as industry leaders in email reputation management and delivery simultaneously with the company merging into Return Path. 

 

I admit the timing has a bit of irony, but in the big picture I think this award from CRM magazine is further validation of a few key things that drove the merger:

 

First, over the last several years email has made a strong resurgence as a marketing communications medium.  Both consumers and businesses love and prefer the medium above any other for their interactions.  I’ve written about our consumer research with Ipsos and Erick Mott has written about our business research with the EIU's "Digital Company 2013" initiative which supports this assertion.

Second, evangelism of best practices among email marketers is a huge part of what today’s email ecosystem needs. Organizations like eec, AOTA, MAAWG, and others are playing a big role in sender education. But many email sending organizations need more than a list of best practices – they need the rigor, analysis, process evaluation, consulting and performance monitoring provided by email deliverability and reputation service providers like Habeas and Return Path.

Third, email has become critical as a business to consumer communications medium across most verticals in the U.S. (retail, travel, automotive, etc.) and Europe and increasingly in the huge market of Asia as well.

 

We at Habeas are very proud of this award and I am very proud to be associated with the merged Habeas and Return Path. As of August 22, 2008, Return Path has the team to take the mission, saving email, and the company to the next level – evangelizing best practices to senders across industries globally, enabling consumers to have a better inbox experience and supporting the continued healthy growth of the email industry directly and through an extended network of receiver partners.  It’s going to be great to see email’s continued growth in the next couple of years – the Return Path team will continue to work hard to make sure the (legitimate) mail is delivered!


A special thanks to every Habeas employee since Day 1 (alphabetical order):

Tracy Amador, Bradley Anderson, Jeffrey Anderson, Joshua Barrack, Kristine Beebe, David Bernard, Robert Biala, Michael Bierman, Srinivas Bolisetty, Jessica Bowe, Keith Brown, Chris Brubaker, Jennifer Bumb, Michael Cabbell, Des Cahill, Eloise Carlton, Richard Castello, Carlo Catajan, Denise Cattan, Faith Combs, Joe Cordoni, Monica Coriz, Nicole Curutchet, Rajat Dutta, Larry Ellis, Ray Everett-Church, Kristin Fawns, Jennifer Fery, Mandy Fu, Michael Garcia, Liz Gegenwarth, Carl Gutenkunst, Sharon Haahr, Virginia Hammrich, Cynthia Herrera, Matt Herrera, Shawn Higginbotham, Tifaine Highly, Bill Hunt, Franz Hurtado, Anthony Igwe, Parul Ihde, Courtney Kerns, Carolyn Keyes, Charlie Kim, Jon Kingsting, Bryan Klech, Mike Klein, Sudhir Krishnan, Aleisha Lang, Brett Lemoine, Deborah Leyvas, Ky Lim, Quintin Litten, Steve Lozoya, Nigel Marrion, Michelle Marsh, Art Martinez, Alisa Matsuzaki, Sarah Matthews, Mike Mills, Anne Mitchell, James Moore, Erick Mott, Dharmendra Naik, Tara Natanson, Satish Natarajan, James Navin, William Nicholas, Donald Nordloff, Elaine Orgain, Scott Orgish, Farzana Patel, Manisha Phadke, Stefan Pollard, Beatrice Poulsen, Erin Raby, Venkatraman Ramamurthy, Catherine Ramos, Lianne Reynolds, Goody Riley, Michael Rosenberg, Ramie Salameh, Carol Sarracino, Theodor Schricker, Aparna Seetharaman, Nicholas Shackelford, Roshan Sharma, Charles Skinner, Philip Smith, Josh Stivers, JF Sullivan, Chuck Swenberg, Alfiya Tamayeva, Tom Taylor, Jaysree Thakore,  Mark Tognoli, Qarin Van Brink, Xuyen Vuong, Douglas Warren, Brady Wilkes, Huiwen Wu, Kalyan Wunnava and Chris Zutler

In many cases in life, more is better. The title of this blog refers to the classic Saturday Night Live skit “More Cowbell” starring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken.  This classic skit  is a hilarious illustration of the concept that more is better.  In the skit, Blue Oyster Cult is in the recording studio laying down tracks for their soon to be mega-hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper” under the supervision of gold record winning producer Bruce Dickinson (yes, “the” Bruce Dickinson) played by Christopher Walken. Will Ferrell plays BOC’s percussionist and on this track he’s playing the cowbell with enough fury and persistence to drive his fellow band members absolutely nuts. Despite the band members’ protests, Bruce Dickinson insists, throughout the skit, on getting more cowbell on the track, “fellas, I’m telling ya, you’re gonna wanna have that cowbell.”  You really have to see the video to appreciate the humor.

 

So why all this More Cowbell stuff in this blog post? Well, Habeas and Return Path are merging together and the big question I expect customers, partners and industry colleagues to ask me is “Des, why are you selling Habeas to Return Path?”  No, the answer isn’t “More Cowbell”, it’s that the combination of the two companies provides more resources to enable the common mission statement of the companies (i.e., “saving email”) to be better addressed on a global basis. These “more resources” will bring benefits to senders, receivers, consumers and the email community.

 

Email deliverability/reputation companies are by their nature trusted third parties that provide services to both email senders as well as to email receivers. That means that resources for product development, marketing, sales and business development and customer services have to be engaged with two completely different sides of the market. On both the sender side (e.g., direct senders, email service providers, MTA vendors) and receiver side (e.g., ISPs, message security companies, MTA vendors) there are multiple market sub-segments with varying needs to be served. And increasingly at Habeas we have seen domestic and international customers with mailing lists have a significant cross-border component, requiring expansion of our services into Europe and Asia. Long story short, email remains vital to our customers which has been helping our business grow at a healthy rate, but our management team has seen for some time that the business opportunity is a global one requiring more resources across the company to best serve our sender and receiver customers.

 

In 2003 I had been at Habeas for a few months, trying to figure out what the business might really be, when Matt Blumberg and George Bilbrey from Return Path came to visit. They were interested in purchasing Habeas (which was 4 people at the time) and our flagship offering, Sender Warranted Email, to add a whitelisting service to Return Path’s existing deliverability tools and consulting services business. I liked George and Matt and their knowledge of email market. While that deal didn’t come to fruition, their interest in Habeas helped me further understand the value in the business and inspired us to grow it further. Here we are five years later with over 400 clients and 45 employees and now the deal to combine the companies is coming to fruition.

 

Honestly this acquisition of Habeas is something that I have mixed emotions about. Chuck Swenberg and I have invested five years of hard work in building this business with a goal of creating an independent, stand-alone company. We have an incredible staff of talented people who care deeply about our mission statement to save email.  A lot of hard work has gone into selling and servicing our customers. The Habeas SafeList is used by leading ISPs and a million email networks globally. We’ve created innovative reputation technologies. The easy path would be to continue the business as is with its 60% year over year growth for the last few years. But, strategically, to continue to improve our services for our customers and partners and to grow our footprint globally, in the words of Bruce Dickinson, “You gotta have more cowbell.” Or to put it another way, the business opportunity to save email is a large one and will be best served by the combined company that will have the resources to address it globally for senders, receivers and consumers.

 

So, I am very pleased that this time we *have* reached an agreement with Return Path as this is the perfect home for the Habeas business and team.  First, Return Path recognizes talent and they are retaining essentially all of the Habeas team on a permanent or on a transitional basis. Second, as we’ve gotten to know each other, we discovered that we have similar values in our company cultures which emphasize both our employees and customer service. Third, based on five years of competing with Return Path and working with the management team in various industry forums, I know that Habeas’ customers and partners will be in great hands with this executive team. Fourth, Habeas innovation will live on. In working on this transaction both companies have learned a lot from each other and the Return Path team is keeping not only the SafeList, but will be integrating other Habeas technologies and business processes into their existing platform and business model over time. Fifth, the combination of the two companies creates the undisputed global leader in email delivery and reputation with the critical mass of employees, customers and partners to actually save email – which is what Habeas and Return Path are all about.

 

There is plenty of work to do over the coming months to integrate the companies. And we’ll do that in a way that allows us to continue to serve our customers and partners, and to soon offer them more and improved services. I’ll be actively be helping with the integration efforts for the next several months, helping the combined company come together and then I’ll step back and watch it grow over the coming years. Email is too important not to be saved. Read more about the acquisition via these FAQs and Matt Blumberg's blog post.

We had another great turnout and discussion during this week's Habeas Huddle webinar. I had the pleasure of presenting with Jeanniey Mullen, founder of the Email Experience Council and CMO of Zinio, David Daniels, VP of JupiterResearch and Des Cahill, CEO of Habeas.

Key Takeaways to Consider:

1) Email and the Web will continue to maintain their leading positions as preferred communication channels through 2013, despite the rise of fast-growing channels like web meetings, social networking, blogging, instant messaging and video conferencing.

2) Email is proven, scalable, cost effective and is not going to go away; it's core to your digital company's success.

3) Users have growing concerns about becoming victims of fraud via email and the mobile web. However, users do prefer emails and make purchases online from businesses they trust.

4) Embrace customer empowerment online and their need for control and certainty, or risk losing customers and your competitive position.

5) Email reputation management absolutely helps to ensure email trust and online results.

We also received a number of questions from attendees; here's some Q&A to consider:

Q: How do you know if you have a good 3rd party reputation?
A: From a receiving perspective, we recommend you do a free Reputation Check that takes Habeas 24 hours to complete; this is also referred to as an email blacklist check.

Q: Do you have any tips for the 55+ market or trends with senior audiences?
A: Like any audience you're trying to engage and serve, know their hot buttons and communicate with them based on their expectations. Font sizes, content and creative should be easy to read since vision tends to decline as we get older.

Q: Should I send weekly emails?
A: It depends! Simply put, every customer has unique needs and expectations. Habeas suggests setting expectations upfront and using a preference center to help understand and segment needs that can then be applied in your email and outbound strategy. Operate with the recipient in mind.

Q: With email trends growing, at what point do internet users become overwhelmed, desensitized and apathetic to content?
A: Email is growing because of demand. Like anything, it's difficult to say when a good thing is too much -- but internet users have options to request and filter content via email, and are more empowered to hit the "this is spam" button.

To ask Habeas experts specific questions about your email strategy, operations and programs, please contact us and we'll do our best to provide useful information.

If you haven't already done so, take advantage of and share the on-demand webinar. Don't forget to download the new white paper just published by the Economist Intelligence Unit -- research that was co-sponsored by AT&T, Concep Global, Habeas, Nokia, PwC, SAP and WebEx. The webinar and white paper are free, factual and will likely spur some great ideas and content for your 2008 planning and execution. Stay tuned for more great content.

The final iteration of the CAN-SPAM Act regulations take effect this week, so this is as good a time as any to review the requirements of the law and to make sure the latest twists given by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are baked into your email, web, e-commerce and/or marketing operations.

 

The basics of the CAN-SPAM Act remain the same as they were under the interim regulations:

1. Do not have false or misleading header information or deceptive subject lines.  When you send email, the "from," "to," and email routing information must be truthful and accurately describe the entity who is initiating the email. The subject line must also accurately reflect the contents of the email.

2. Identify the message as an advertisement. Every commercial email must include clear and conspicuous notice that the email is an advertisement and that the recipient can opt-out of future messages.

3. Include a valid return email address or other Internet-based method for receiving and processing opt-out requests. You must give recipients a simple means of requesting to be removed from future mailings. This can be done via email, or through a link to a single web page. The mechanism must be functional for at least 30 days after the email is sent and requests must be processed within 10 business days.

4. Include clear identification of the sender's identity, including a valid postal address.

 
What's new under the new rules?

 

There are four main issues addressed, or clarified, under the final regulations issued a few weeks ago:

 

1. The opt-out mechanism must not require recipients to pay any fee, must not require recipients to provide any information other than their email address, and must not require any steps other than sending a reply email or visiting a single web page. In addition, the FTC made clear that if you utilize an opt-out web page, it cannot contain additional advertisements or exhortations not to unsubscribe. This may require some email marketers to change their current unsubscribe practices, particularly if they ask recipients to log in or to navigate through multiple pages to process the request.

2. In the case of emails sent on behalf of multiple advertisers, the FTC provides guidance on creating a "designated sender" in order to simply the notice, unsubscribe processing, and other compliance obligations. The designated sender will be the entity responsible for ensuring prompt opt-out processing, and ensuring that all of the advertisers receive copies of the opt-out (suppression) list for future mailings.

3. A post office box or private mailbox, if otherwise operated in accordance with postal service regulations, can be considered a valid postal address under the Act.

4. When the Act talks about a "person," that includes natural persons as well as corporations, associations, and non-profit entities.

Finally, if your site includes a "Refer-A-Friend," "Forward to a Friend," or other similar process, the FTC provided some lengthy guidance about how it will look at such emails in terms of compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. For example, the FTC made clear that any site, product, or service that is advertised in a "refer-a-friend"-type message may be deemed the sender of that message if the person "induces" its transmission.

 

The FTC did not provide a definition of "induce," but they did indicate that a payment or other consideration wasn't a necessary  requirement of an inducement. The FTC's discussion on this point is very lengthy and I won't try to summarize it all here. But suffice to say that if you depend on "refer-a-friend"-type mechanisms, you will need to consult your legal counsel regarding changes you might need to make in order to ensure compliance.

 

While Habeas cannot provide you with legal advice, we certainly can assist you in reviewing your email reputation management and deliverability strategy and practices with various legal and industry best practices in mind. Our advisory services team is happy to help you fortify your online strategy and brands, and stay off email blacklists!

Over the past few months, Habeas and some key vendors have been working on a number of communication projects to better serve customers, partners, prospects, the media, analysts, etc. -- or simply put, you our valued reader. 

Today, I'm pleased to make this post on behalf of the team about our new website including updated messaging and look-n-feel, new content and offers, improved navigation, etc. Other new projects in the works are this blog, a new newsletter with preference center, collateral, etc.

At Habeas, we're always trying to improve in everything we do that touches and supports email and interactive marketers, ESPs, agencies, e-commerce and CRM solution providers, Web 2.0 leaders, ISPs and message security companies and more. We are determined to help customers and partners with their email reputation management strategies and online results -- and to stay off email blacklists! Let us know what you think.

The Habeas team returned from this year's Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) Summit in Seattle, and by most measures it was a roaring success.

As with past AOTA Summits, this year's featured a wide array of top-tier speakers, including Craig Newmark from Craig's List, former cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt, and Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna.

Even at a time when travel and conference budgets are being slashed, the turnout for the AOTA Summit was great, with a tremendous mixture of brands, vendors, service providers, and current/former government officials.

There were also a number of excellent sessions covering the latest technologies and best practices in authentication, email security, and deliverability. We're proud to say that Habeas and some of our customers presented in several sessions, including at AOTA's first Email Deliverability and Trust Academy.

In this post are assembled some random thoughts and comments from several members of the Habeas team who participated in the event. Here are some of the most noteworthy observations:

The deployment of email authentication continues to grow, but it remains a daunting task. In January, AOTA reported that over 50% of email is authenticated in some fashion. These figures were confirmed at this month's Summit, and most of the attendees at AOTA are from companies that really understand the urgency and importance of authentication. The problem is not with the companies whose representatives are involved in AOTA or attending these conferences, rather it's with the thousands of companies who weren't there and who don't yet see authentication as a critical brand protection and reputation protection measure. Thus, some of the most interesting and difficult conversation topics at the summit were around how to grow that number.


There remains a great deal of tension between email senders and receiving ISPs regarding who owns the consumer relationship at the inbox. One attendee made the point that the existence of the "This is Spam" button makes it difficult for a sender to get more useful preference information from their customers. For example, perhaps a recipient really only wants to receive such messages monthly rather than daily or weekly. It's difficult to get a recipient to consider such a choice when the Spam button is glowing in their face.

 
In many of the sessions, we saw continuing evidence that deliverability remains a significant challenge for many major brands, in large part because it can be a very imprecise science. Even when companies employ the very best practices, the difference in how various ISPs assess reputation continues to make reliable deliverability a challenge. For example, SPF records may have a great deal of weight at one ISP, while DKIM signatures have more weight at another. Content filtering may also see a resurgence for ISP to ISP email due to some problems with hackers breaking the "CAPTCHA" process and automatically creating accounts for spamming. All of this points, yet again, to the importance of comprehensive and ongoing reputation management.


Adding further confusion to the deliverability landscape is the proliferation of "best practices" documents and recommendations. With recommendations out there from the DMA's EEC, the ESPC, MAAWG, the IAB, and others, it will be increasingly difficult for senders to stay on top of what "state of the art" actually means. If there's good news for Habeas customers, however, it's that we stay on top of these for you. More importantly, we are very involved with these organizations, and others, and continue to work to resolve any discrepancies and contradictions between all of these standards.


We closed the event with a fabulous group dinner at “The Met” including our customers Sal Tripi from Publishers Clearing House and Sean Walker from The PGA -- and were joined by Craig Spiezle from the AOTA board, members of the team and a few industry friends.


The AOTA Summit continues to be the premier event focusing on authentication issues and technologies. But even though the event is over, the challenges being addressed by the members and attendees continue. Habeas is proud to be helping AOTA drive the effort to get everyone to "Authenticate in '08!"


As always, Habeas Advisory Services and our extended team are happy to help you and your organization with email reputation management and inbox deliverability strategy and execution to achieve your business goals.

The Internet is an incredibly powerful and empowering medium.  It’s changed our lives in countless ways that we take for granted. Instead of going down to Tower Records to buy that new record (yes, I am that old) I can download the album instantly. Rather than wonder when that package will show up, I just go to FedEx’s website and track the delivery process. If I need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack to make my old noise cancelling headphones work with my iPhone, I don’t have to find a RadioShack and deal with the guy with the pocket protector anymore. I can Google and find a bunch of vendors who sell that obscure part (long tail anybody?). Those are a few small examples of how the Internet has changed things in my life and there are many, many others.

The top three empowering aspects of the Internet’s development in the last 15 years or so has been the emergence of the Web itself, web directories and search, and web-based, free email services. I’d like to talk a little bit about the latter in this post, the empowerment of consumers from the mass adoption of email in their personal lives.

Habeas, the world leader in online reputation management services, periodically fields a study with our research partner Ipsos to understand consumer attitudes and usage patterns for email and the Web. We have just started publishing the results from our May 2008 study and we found some encouraging and interesting things in the results. The study interviewed over 3,000 U.S. and Canadian Internet users and the panel was constructed so as to accurately represent overall North American Internet user demographics. Here’s what we learned:

1.  Consumers love email

About 75% of Internet users check email daily. About 95% check email 3-6 times a week.

67% of Internet users say they prefer email, more than any other medium (postal mail, phone, fax, web, SMS, etc.) for communicating with businesses. 65% of Internet users said they expect email to still be their preferred communications medium in five years. The 18-34 year old demographic (the social networking generation) supported email with slightly stronger numbers.

Net: Personal email use is ubiquitous in penetration and increasing in frequency among North American consumers. We prefer to communicate with businesses via email versus other mediums and don’t expect that to change in the next 5 years.

2.  Consumers are increasingly concerned about online crime and therefore selective about who they do business with online

69% of Internet users say they are concerned about becoming a victim of online fraud via email.

When asked how to distinguish fraudulent and legitimate email – the leading method was that the consumer had asked for the email and received emails from them previously.

Consumers are also using multiple personal email boxes, over 61% had 2 or more, which they are using to segregate trusted email from less trusted email.

Net: For email senders, it’s no longer about getting into the inbox – it’s about building a trusted relationship with consumers who have empowered themselves with multiple free webmail accounts – and getting into the consumer’s trusted inbox.

3. There are steps that senders can take to build trust with Consumers

Consumers were quite clear about what makes them trust a sender – and what makes them not trust a sender.

Net: Consumers want control. They are empowered by the Internet (see introductory paragraph) and expect that empowerment to extend to their email experiences. Consumers want to give you their permission to receive email. Consumers want email weekly, not daily. Ideally, consumers want control over the frequency and content of their email. And do not share their email address with others.  Consider how to install a preference center for your subscribers. Think about how to segment your list so your campaigns deliver the most relevant content possible to your customers.

So what’s the takeaway – build a great online reputation through adoption of best practices in email. You’ll get two wonderful benefits, both improved email delivery rates to the inbox and the trust of your subscribers. If you can accomplish the latter – you’ll have a great competitive advantage – you will have established an ongoing dialogue with your customers and prospects in the Internet’s leading medium today and into the future.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

By: Ray Everett - Church

After four years of drafts and discussions, the Federal Trade Commission has approved the Final Rule - the enforceable implementing regulations - that say how the FTC will be enforcing the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act).
 
The Final Rule was issued by the FTC on Monday, May 12, and will be published in the Federal Register, most likely within the next week or so. They will take effect 45 days after their publication. You can find a copy (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/05/canspam.shtm) in PDF form at the FTC's website.
 
(Obligatory disclaimer: The information contained in this blog posting is not intended to serve as legal advice. If you have any questions about compliance or liability, you are urged to seek appropriate legal counsel.)
 
The entire federal register notice is 109 pages long, although the rule itself is only six pages of that. The rest of the document is a lengthy but incredibly informative discussion of all the feedback they received during the process and an explanation of why they did or did not choose certain approaches.
 
The rule itself sets out four main issues that will affect senders of commercial email:

* The FTC clarified that when the law uses the term "person," that will include not only individual human beings, but also corporations and non-profit organizations.

* To satisfy the Act's requirement that commercial email display a "valid physical postal address," a sender is allowed to use an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox, so long as it is established under the applicable United States Postal Service regulations for such services.

* An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than "sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page" to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender.

* The definition of "sender" will be modified to include a means of creating a "designated sender" who will be responsible for complying with the Act in those situations where multiple parties may be advertising in a single e-mail message.

The first two points are neither earth shattering nor controversial. But the same cannot be said of the other two, or of the many issues which the FTC chose to discuss in its notice but on which it ultimately chose to punt rather than issue regulations.
 
Prohibiting the charging of a fee to be unsubscribed is a no-brainer. But by prohibiting the asking of additional information, which would include usernames and passwords, could mean some changes for how sites handle the unsubscribe process.
 
Moreover, the discussion makes it quite clear that the FTC will not look kindly upon any process that takes more than one page, or fills that page with other advertising or marketing pitches. A big flashing banner that says "Please don't unsubscribe!" will definitely not be allowed on the unsubscribe page. Whether you could place some kind of appeal on the landing page after the unsubscribe request itself has been processed is not clear in the discussion by the FTC.
 
The biggest news in this Final Rule, however, is how the FTC chose to modify the definition of "sender" in response to many inquiries about multi-advertiser messages. They added to the definition of "sender" to clarify that:
 
"...when more than one person's products, services, or Internet website are advertised or promoted in a single electronic mail message, each such person who is within the Act's definition will be deemed to be a "sender," except that, only one person will be deemed to be the "sender" of that message if such person: (A) is within the Act's definition of "sender"; (B) is identified in the "from" line as the sole sender of the message; and (C) is in compliance with [the Act and the FTC's Final Rule]."
 
In creating the concept of a "designated sender," the discussion in the notice indicates that the FTC intends that the "element requiring identification of the person in the "from" line [be] mandatory."
 
Under the Act, the "from" line (the line identifying or purporting to identify a person initiating the message) must accurately identify any person who initiated the message. So when taken in conjunction with this change, the FTC seems to be requiring  that there be at least one entity accurately identified in the "from" line and they're probably going to presume that that entity will be deemed to be sender.
 
Applying this process to an example, let's say a newsletter publisher "PublishCo" sends an advertisement containing promotions for Company A, Company B, and Company C. Under the originally proposed definition of "sender," all four entities could be considered a sender, and thus all four would be responsible for ensuring CAN-SPAM Act compliance.
 
But under the Final Rule, the FTC would allow PublishCo to be the "designated sender" to be responsible for all compliance tasks, no matter how many advertisers appear in the body of the message.
 
To be the designated sender, however, PublishCo would need to be accurately identified in the "from" line, include their physical address in the body of the email message, and provide one of the two designated opt-out mechanisms (e.g., "sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page").
 
It's important to note that the rule does not require that there be a designated sender. The FTC discussion indicates that having an entity identified in the "from" line is "mandatory," but the discussion goes on to indicate that the rule:
 
"does not eliminate the possibility that a message may have more than one "sender." However, marketers can use the criteria set forth in the proviso to establish a single sender and reduce CAN-SPAM's compliance burdens. If marketers fail to structure the message to avoid multiple senders under the sender definition, then each sender is obligated to comply with CAN-SPAM requirements for senders, notably, to provide its physical postal address and to honor any opt-out requests."
 
In other words, if you don't have a designated sender, every advertiser appearing in a message could be deemed a sender and be responsible for processing unsubscribes and sharing suppression lists with all other senders. In a newsletter containing ads for a half-dozen advertisers, this could rapidly turn into a compliance mess, with each and every one of the advertisers liable for ensuring that all the collecting, processing, and trading of unsubscribe lists with all the other advertisers occurs without a hitch.
 
Under our example above, if the email "from" line did not indicate a single designated sender and instead provided something less definitive (e.g., "A_Consortium_of_Fine_ Businesses@PublishCo.net"), then all of the advertisers in the message could still be considered "senders" under the Act and be responsible for not only its own compliance but the compliance activities of every other "sender" on that message.
 
There's also another twist to this. In order for PublishCo to meet the Act's definition of a sender, it would need to be considered as advertising in the message. This requirement could be met with something as simple as including the words, "For the best in new products and services, come visit PublishCo.net." Without some content that could be clearly considered advertising for itself, however, PublishCo might not fulfill the legal definition of a sender and leave all the other advertisers on the hook.
 
The decision about whether to be a designated sender is one that a company like our fictional PublishCo will have to make with its legal counsel. But it might make sense for PublishCo to step up and be the entity identified as the designated sender, placing their address in the "from" line, their contact information in the message body along with their unsubscribe process, allowing PublishCo to take on the tasks of providing consumers with the opt-out choices, and in turn providing each advertiser with the suppression list arising from that campaign. For most ESPs or publishers, this could mesh well with the existing value-added services such organizations already provide.
 
Taking on this role as the designated sender would also allow PublishCo to offer choices to subscribers about exactly which advertisements they want to receive. While we noted that the FTC expects the unsubscribe process to be simple and unencumbered with additional advertisements or appeals, the law does still permit offering an array of choices.
 
Simplifying the compliance process by having a "designated sender" may help avoid legal problems, but it can also help email deliverability. Think of our example above with three advertisers and a publisher. If all four entities were considered senders, each with its own boilerplate disclosures and opt-out processes, a consumer receiving such an email might be confused about whether they might need to follow four different unsubscribe processes in order to effectively communicate their desire.
 
Some less-than-reputable advertisers might rejoice at such a prospect: by making the unsubscribe process cumbersome some recipients might be dissuaded from doing so - or so the theory goes. But in the end, it is really all of the senders who will wind up as the ultimate losers.
 
When faced with a confusing or cumbersome process, consumers will take the path of least resistance and click the "Report Spam" button or report the senders to email blacklists. Anything that drives consumers to click the spam button is among the most damaging things a sender can do to its email reputation.
 
At Habeas, we have long encouraged the customers of our online reputation management services to adhere to prevailing email industry best practices. Foremost among those is compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, including making sure that the unsubscribe process is clear and simple.
 
At the end of the day, if a consumer is no longer interested in your email, you want to get them off your list as quickly - and from the consumer's perspective, as effortlessly - as possible, in order to avoid being labeled as spam and harming your email reputation.
 
Finally, it is worth noting that the FTC decided not to address a number of other thorny issues in the regulations. But the Federal Register notice does include some useful, if lengthy, discussions of many of those topics and provides some insights into how the agency might rule if pressed on those points.
 
Among the other topics discussed are: CAN-SPAM's definition of "transactional or relationship message"; the Commission's decision not to alter the length of time a "sender" of commercial e-mail has to honor an opt-out request; the Commission's determination not to designate additional "aggravated violations" under the Act; and the Commission's views on how CAN-SPAM applies to forward-to-a-"friend" email marketing campaigns.
 
The viral "tell a friend" email model, in which someone either receives a commercial e-mail message and forwards the e-mail to another person, or uses a Web-based mechanism to forward a link to or copy of a Web page to another person, is a hallmark of today's hottest social networking websites. The FTC declined to wade into regulating those kinds of emails, but they took pains to explain that, as a general matter, if the seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act's requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests.
 
At the end of the day, for those familiar with the regulatory process, it's not surprising that this one has produced a set of rules that raises almost as many questions as it answers. We will undoubtedly see a number of additional inquiries to the FTC seeking further advice as companies explore how the Final Rule affects their particular ways of doing business.
 
But the good news for senders is that the new FTC rules will probably not have a significant adverse effect on senders who are already following the industry's best practices recommendations.
 
For those Habeas customers who are already utilizing our online reputation management services, our deliverability analysis and auditing process will be updated to reflect the guidance provide by the FTC for CAN-SPAM Act compliance. (Should you have any questions about your compliance practices, your customer service rep can provide you with further information.)
 
In the meantime, all email marketers should assume that the 45-day compliance clock is running and that they will soon be held accountable under the new regulations. For some senders, these new regulations will require changes in how they process unsubscribes or manage multi-sender campaigns.
 
To tackle these and other compliance questions, senders should consider a Compliance Analysis by the Habeas Advisory Services team, in which experts from Habeas review your CAN-SPAM Act compliance practices and make recommendations for reducing your risks. You can contact Ray Everett-Church <ray@habeas.com>, Director at Habeas, for more information.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

By: Des Cahill, CEO

 It's an exciting time in Silicon Valley and spring is in the air. The fruit trees, the ones that haven't been replaced by buildings housing start-ups, are in full blossom. Habeas' headquarters are located just a stone's throw from such iconic companies as Google, Apple and In & Out Burger. The ongoing tussle between Yahoo! and Microsoft is keeping the Valley blogs buzzing. Judging by the recent San Francisco ad:tech and Google's earnings report, Silicon Valley companies in the interactive marketing space are not feeling the effects of any recession. The energy and optimism of the Valley springs eternal.
 
And it's truly an exciting time at Habeas. We're growing our customer and partner base rapidly -- revenue growth for 2008 is more than 50% year over year. We hit or exceeded all our financial targets in the first quarter of 2008. Habeas recently announced partnership deals with eleven and Cloudmark to extend our SafeList coverage and reputation data network. We've launched major enhancements to our software platform to deliver blazing speed, add new reputation data sources and increase overall capacity for our growing customer base. While I could look back in amazement at the progress in the company from 4.5 years ago when Chuck and I re-started the company (we used to have a haiku?), there isn't any time for that. We're too busy looking ahead. And what we see is exciting.
 
Online reputation management (previously known as: accreditation, whitelisting, email deliverability...) is ever more critical in a world where the Internet and email have increasing importance in the global economy, yet online crime and exploits like spam, phishing, keylogging and malware continue to grow. We're proud to be the only company solely focused on online reputation management services. We've successfully been building a trusted brand, great group of employees and a sophisticated reputation network and technology platform since 2003.
 
There's been some chatter about Habeas as of late. Here's the deal. Habeas, like some of our competitors and many leading email companies, is venture backed. Venture backed companies talk to each other all the time about partnering, investing, etc. Those discussions are often facilitated by investment bankers. Habeas is working with a firm called William Blair. They're helping us look at our options to finance the continued growth of our business. There are many options available to Habeas to do so and these guys are the experts -- they know email and SaaS (software as a service) business models. William Blair has worked with Constant Contact on their recent IPO as well as the S-1 filings of both Exact Target and Convio.
 
Those projects that William Blair has been involved in underscore a key point -- email and interactive marketing industries are hot areas now and going forward. Habeas believes in the current and long-term importance of reputation services to the overall health and sustainability of the email and interactive marketing industries. We're proud to be a unique leader in this area and to be managing the growth and capabilities of the company to best serve our customers and partners. Onward!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

As I flew from Chicago, both physically and metaphorically, treasuring my autographed copy of a Joe Frazier poster, numerous, unmatched, $.59 per 1000 unit pens and a throbbing tequila induced migraine it occurred to me what was wrong with my annual DMA experience. The problem with the annual conference is that it's a desultory activity.
 
I say this because I wanted to use the word desultory and also because it is very true. It's not that the DMA is too big. It really isn't. The conference next door, the National Safety Council, was three times larger but appeared to be much more cogent to its assembled multitude. The problem is that the interests of the DMA attendees have broadened to the point that one single monolithic conference cannot possibly address the range of interests.
 
The average marketer is like the average doctor, very specialized. They focus on search, they focus on email marketing, they focus on making really cool 3D magnets for your refrigerator. But "they" are not the same person; they are the various segments of marketers. By becoming the largest aggregation of activity around direct marketing, the DMA has lost its specific compelling drivers for the segments of its attendees.
 
The DMA should produce separate promotion, email and other segmentation conferences. Those segments could occur back to back like the search and email conferences of that other, not to be mentioned here, organization. That way folks who interested in the collection of all that the DMA offers could spend the equivalent number of days. In other words, the 0.5% of the attendees that currently find relevance for all that the DMA has become.
 
At the very least I say there are at least two. On-line and Direct Mail. So let's start there, and I'll see you at the craps tables...

Thursday, June 28, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

Just to put this blog in perspective I should confess that I always love seeing Maureen Caplan Grey in print, as she is always insightful and always informed. When reading her recent article entitled, "Will honest mail ever prevail?" she highlighted a need for a definition that still remains unfulfilled.
 
What *is* the definition of an email reputation?
 
Much like anti-spam tools in the early days of 2002, the definition of reputation services varies greatly amongst the vendors described in her article. Let's break them down if only to further the discussion - and perhaps stir up a bit of controversy in the process!
 
First are the reputation services you already know. Anti-spam technologies and edge-of-network solutions that protect you from incoming spam. Many of these solutions are leveraging and/or creating reputation technologies. However, with no intent of malice, one could classify these as "negative reputation" systems. In that, they are observing much of what is "bad" on the Internet and therefore they are able to assess a negative reputation with a variety of senders and sending systems.
 
A close cousin of these anti-spam systems are the more popular blocklists (colloquially termed blacklists) which identify spammers or senders who look a lot like spammers either by using spam trap email addresses or other creative detection mechanisms. One could say that these are an unadulterated version of negative reputation systems.
 
In another camp we have the large ISPs who are developing their own proprietary reputation systems - such as the one Hotmail recently announced. These systems are designed around a number of parameters but are HEAVILY weighted towards complaint rates. Hence, while a sender may appear good in all other respects, if complaint rates are too high, the sender will earn a bad reputation and be blocked from the inbox.
 
On the other hand, the reputation service providers such as Habeas, as well as our e-marketing based counterparts at Return Path, have a more holistic view of reputation. Given that both companies began as public Internet whitelists, they were already complementary approaches to anti-spam and blocklist services. More recently however, we at Habeas see our reputation systems evolving beyond the purely positive, i.e. whitelisting, towards more of an aggregate view of reputation. By observing hundreds of millions of senders daily, their infrastructure, practices, and sending behaviors, we are able to attribute a multi-faceted reputation to a sender that takes into account a whole host of factors.
 
While we're on the topic of these cottage industries, I am on record as stating that I can certainly understand why some senders would want to invest in Goodmaill to pay for guaranteed email rendering at AOL, Yahoo and four other ISPs. That being said, as a technology, Goodmail Systems has nothing whatsoever to do with reputation systems, services or technologies. Anyone who states otherwise is just trying to include them in conversation for PR...utterly shameless I should think!
 
Finally, I find that the ESPC and MAAWG, (i.e., the Email Sender and Provider Coalition and Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group ) while certainly furthering the conversation around reputation services, are better characterized as interested bystanders than organizations that are driving standards. For an organization that is truly driving standards, interested parties should check out the Domain Assurance Council which was founded by Habeas, Return Path and Ironport (now Cisco) to drive standardization around reputation information access.

Monday, June 25, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

Recently, a new type of spam surfaced. The content was the same old penny stock pump and dump scam we've seen millions of times. But this time, the content was in a PDF attachment, not the body of the email.
 
Frankly, this was inevitable.
 
Spammers are going to use whatever means necessary to get their message across. The fact that they are using PDF attachments, something assumed to be innocuous and trustworthy, is no surprise. Frankly I'm astonished they haven't resorted to .PPS files to show cheap animations for their spams via PowerPoint!
 
Now here's a question: since the anti-spam vendors have to filter the content, why weren't they doing the same for the attachments? A few possibilities are that PDF scanning:
 
a) oversteps the bounds of what is considered private communications
b) makes it difficult to analyze content
c) is very, VERY costly
 
No doubt the truth is a combination of the aforementioned, but the last is certainly a major contributor. Consider that on a moderately configured system, spam detection and commensurate flagging of the message can reduce performance by an average of about 30 percent. What does doing this for attachments mean?
 
A LOT of increased processing and decreased message throughput is my guess. So perhaps the next field of battle is spammers forcing security systems to chew up so much processing time that the war of attrition moves to the equivalent of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack?
 
Ugly indeed.
 
Seems to me, the move towards email behavior analysis and reputation systems for managing inbound mail is more important than ever. Beyond the fact that Habeas has evolved our business to be a source of reputation information - why would we argue this? Simply because the more we move away from filtering and towards an examination of the activity and behavior of a sender, the more efficient our receiving systems will be. Moreover, the more difficult it is for spammers to hide, the easier it will be for legitimate senders to reach the inbox.
 
After all, anything can paint itself pink and stand one leg like a flamingo. But, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can be pretty darn sure - it's a duck!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

By: Des Cahill, CEO

"Road Noise" was the title of an audio journal I made during a long and interesting car journey through the Pacific Northwest sometime in the late 80's. The exact date and route is somewhat fuzzy. I visited various relatives and friends in Northern California, Oregon and Washington during that epic journey - and the tape has achieved mythic cult status amongst this group. Who can forget the interview with the sorority sisters in Eugene or the entry from I-5 just north of Medford when we nearly got clipped by that semi?
 
Well, I'm resurrecting the brand. Road Noise is appropriate as I've been traveling a lot this last month. MAAWG in Dublin, then a quick jaunt to London for eTail and hop over the pond to New York for the Stevie Awards last week. DM Days in New York this week. And more to come in July with the FTC Spam Summit in DC. Once again, it's all a little fuzzy. So here's a Road Noise post on these past few days in New York and DM Days. It'll help me remember the key happenings and hopefully provide an interesting perspective for you.
 
Ahhhh, New York City in the early summer. Warm weather. Times Square. Street vendors. Food carts. Groups of tourists. Throngs of tourists. Tourists everywhere. Buses and hotels full of them. All from Europe or Asia - yes, the falling dollar has made $500. hotel rooms a bargain if you're paying in pounds, yen, or euros. New York is a great place to be in June, but it isn't a place to seek solitude.
 
But if you're in the online marketing or email business, then a great place for some alone time would've been the Jacob Javitz Convention Center where DM Days was being held. The conference was fairly well attended, but it wasn't an INBOX level affair. 95 percent of the vendors and attendees were in the off-line list business. There was a small interactive enclave, but the only friendly faces I saw exhibiting were FreshAddress and ListTrack. There was an all-day email 101 track that Austin Bliss was running, and he was kind enough to invite me to present at one of the sessions on compliance and best practices. It was well attended and reminded me that there are a lot of email marketers out there who don't know about authentication or reputation, and are still trying to figure out best practices basics. There is still a lot of education and outreach to be done through the AOTA, ESPC, MAAWG and of course, the DMA.
 
So, I give a bleak review of DM Days. This morning, I pointed out DMA's lack of relevance to online marketers to someone in the industry. "Why doesn't the DMA 'get' interactive marketing?" I said, "ad:tech is eating the DMA's lunch with their conferences." My breakfast guest pointed out that the DMA, unlike ad:tech, does more than conferences. It covers a broader spectrum of marketing activities and does extensive policy work and outreach through its lobbying efforts. He pointed out that the DMA may not be the best at representing best practices standards in email or online marketing but, "the DMA is a lot like the U.S. It's imperfect, it's powerful, it's influential and until someone or something else comes along, it's the only game in town."
 
Great line I thought.
 
So if the fear of being surpassed by Japan motivated U.S. economic and educational reform in the 80's, and fear of being surpassed by China may yet motivate the U.S. to be more globally competitive in the latter part of this decade - who is going to motivate the DMA to get more attuned to the radical shift in marketing dollars to the online world?

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

I was fortunate to participate in one of the sessions at INBOX that provided the illusion of broad show attendance. :-) In any event, our session, "Getting Email to the Inbox", chaired by James Campbell of the ESPC addressed the normal issues of address harvesting, B2B vs. B2C, etc., etc. As usual, Stefan Pollard had, arguably, the most useful information to dole out with regard to any number of subjects. Austin Bliss had some particularly useful insights into the use and abuse of list acquisition. Then, the expected question about certified email emerged.
 
So, as we vendors performed our normal dance about how certified email is probably not a bad thing - and it may be, in certain instances, a good thing - it suddenly occurred to me. Certified email is not reputation-based email, and that is a more important distinction than the ways we have previously thought of certified email.
 
My thinking went something like this: certified email is a way of paying to ensure image rendering and ostensibly, inbox delivery to AOL, Yahoo, and a growing list of other ISPs. But as recent announcements from several quarters have indicated, reputation is the determining factor in getting your email delivered. So, the usual comparison of certification services versus certified email is no longer relevant. The real landscape is that there's only one way of ensuring delivery to multiple ISPs and enterprise messaging systems around the planet - and that's by maintaining a positive reputation. If you want to leverage certified email to enable AOL to make money on the traffic - that's an ethical discussion I will steadfastly refrain from. My sole point is that certified email is an esoteric choice in the same way that certification services were a choice. Reputation maintenance is not a choice at all. Either you maintain good a reputation and send effectively or you won't be getting to the inbox - even if you do pay for certified email. 

Thursday, May 3, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

Recently, a customer of ours had to be suspended. They were suspended because they appeared on the ROKSO blacklist. For those of you who don't know what this blacklist is, suffice to say, it's the kiss of death in the email delivery circle. Essentially, appearance on this list means that the sender as been officially blocked by at least three (and counting) ISPs having been, in their measurements, identified as a spammer. The policies that guide this kind of transgression dictate that the customer would be suspended for a long, long time. How long you ask? The suspension would be a minimum of six months from the point that contact has been established as fixing whatever problem lead to the listing.
 
Holy Unspam Batman!
 
As it turns out the reason that they were identified as a spammer was because - drum roll please - they had decided to no longer use a range of IPs that they had traditionally used to send email. These IPs were no longer under their control so the real Spammers, opportunistic predators that they are, almost immediately co-opted these IP addresses. The Spammers then them to generate an armada of spam messages before the customer in question was locked down. The customer was locked down because the IP addresses were associated with them for so long that those IPs were now part of their reputation profile. Unfortunately, practices such as this are becoming more and more commonplace.
 
Not to go off on a rant here but it sure seems like this is, yet another, classic example of folks not monitoring their reputation at all times. Perhaps, it's an even better example of folks not keeping in mind what goes into a reputation. We all know that the complaints and sending behavior are elements of your online reputation but consider that, at least in this example, neither complaints nor sending behavior is directly attributable to the customer in question. What happened was a combination of forgetfulness, non-automated processes and identity theft. The net effect was the catastrophic listing on ROKSO.
 
So could reputation monitoring have absolutely prevented this situation? Perhaps not, but certainly putting instrumentation in place which keeps track of your IPs and domains is a start. Also, services which alert you of impending problems either with your servers as well as your ISP blocking issues would be good idea. Finally, perhaps a dashboard that continuously updates the various activities of the Internet that affect your reputation, and just what is going into your reputation, would useful as well.
 
Point is, do not take this noise about reputation monitoring lightly, the bite is much worse than the bark!

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

By: J.F. Sullivan, VP Marketing

For months now, vendors have been pushing the topic of monitoring and maintaining your online reputation. In the very cottage industry of email, it seems there are more companies springing up to inform you about your online reputation than photographers gathered around Alec Baldwin these days. Why is that?
 
The fact is, much of what folks refer to as reputation is not a new thing, it has existed for years. Blacklists were always a form of negative reputation. Whitelists, conversely, sprung up as a form of positive reputation. ISPs have been holding the axe of user complaints, aka feedback reputation, over the heads of senders for years now as a way of determining the "goodness" of an emailer. Recent announcements have repositioned anti-spam content analysis vendors as now supplying reputation add-on tools.
 
We openly confess that we ourselves have been aggregating and maintaining a reputation data network of several million receiving systems for years.
 
So why all the sudden fuss?
 
Perhaps all this energy was directed at the moment last week when Microsoft announced that they will begin throttling the connections of new senders not by whether or not they were on a whitelist but solely by the established reputation of that sender. A reputation that is determined by creating an aggregated view of the sending volume, complaints, etc. over time.
 
So are you interested in maintaining the relationships you enjoy today with your customer? All the former rules apply with regard to message content and construction. But, whereas you may have found blacklists, whitelists, and other reputation information an inconvenient annoyance in the past, the future is going to be very different. Your customer relationships are going to start with that reputation, or your customer relationships won't be relationships at all.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

By: Des Cahill

Two Thousand and Seven was a great year for e-mail and 2008 is going to be even better. The key for e-mail success in 2008 will be continued vigilance in the cause of online brand reputation and careful segmentation and treatment of your outbound e-mail. The best practice of sending fewer e-mail messages to a more targeted audience of customers in your database will emerge as a standard in 2008. Less e-mail will mean more success for your business, whether you define success in terms of reliable communications, revenue, click-through, registrations, retention or other success factors.
 
In that spirit of "less is more," let's look back at 2007 and think more about 2008!
 
In 2007, email became sexy again! Witness the IPOs of Constant Contact and S-1 filings of ExactTarget and Convio. The public markets are enthused about e-mail again and the merger and acquisition realm sees it no differently. The acquisition of eDialog by publicly-traded e-commerce platform company GSI Commerce shows how valuable e-mail is as a core component of any online business or platform.
 
The DMA published its annual statistics guide in October 2007 and once again cited e-mail as the highest ROI online marketing medium. DMA projects e-mail marketing to generate an average of $48.56 in return for every $1 spent. That's why online marketers love e-mail; done right, it's incredibly cost-effective. And e-mail usage is booming among consumers too. According to a recent Pew Internet Research study over 90 percent of U.S. Internet users use e-mail regularly and most of them use e-mail once a day or more.
 
When measured as a percentage of consumer time spent online, email once again staked its claim as the number one online application -- beating out search, news, traffic and weather applications. Furthermore, penetration into the population and the frequency of e-mail usage are both growing year over year.
 
But you didn't need me to tell you that consumers love e-mail. You know you're addicted to your Blackberry, your webmail, your Outlook and so is everyone around you!
 
That's not to say that 2007 was all just a bed of roses for e-mail. Unfortunately, spam continues to cast a long, dark shadow over the world of e-mail marketing. Anti-spam solution vendors are telling us that over 90 percent of e-mail traffic on the Internet is spam. Our own Habeas data tells us that 99.8 percent of IP addresses sending e-mail are, in fact, spammers!
 
The good news is that most of the spam isn't getting to your inboxes or cluttering the inboxes of your customers. The bad news is that the continued growth of spam levels means that you need to continue to vigilantly protect your online brand and your connection to your customers' inboxes. Your company needs to stand out and join that 0.02 percent of senders who aren't spammers and whose legitimate e-mail is delivered regularly to customer inboxes.
 
How can the holy grail of reliable e-mail delivery be accomplished? Through hard work and perseverance, continual segmentation, testing and self-education. It requires getting your entire team -- including marketing, IT and executive management -- on board with adopting e-mail best practices and working with the right vendors as partners to execute those practices.
 
Simple, right? It isn't.
 
It's a lot of hard work to do e-mail well. It was hard work in 2007 and it will continue to be a challenge in 2008. We call all this hard work "online reputation management": keeping a focus on and visibility into your brand's online reputation with ISPs, blacklists and, most importantly, your customers.
 
All that discipline pays off when you are thinking carefully about what offers to send to different audiences on your prospect list. Do you send offers for a 20 percent discount on Coach handbags to the same people who have been responding to your Super Bowl Lazyboy promotion? Probably not a good idea, as you'll generate complaints, unsubscribes and brand erosion amongst the Super Bowl set.
 
For 2008, the industry must adopt the mantra of "less is more." Before your next campaign, think about segmenting your list -- by gender, historic response rate, self-disclosed interest or item last bought -- and tailoring more targeted offers to those segments. Your volume may be less, but your complaints will drop dramatically, your unsubscribe churn will decrease and your business results should be solid. The days of "batch and blast" are long gone.
 
Your 2008 New Year's resolution must be a commitment to building a discipline of online reputation management that reduces the outreach that drives customers away and, through intelligent targeting, brings "more" success to your business.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

By: Tobias Knecht, European Email Policy Manager

Because many commercial emailers are sending messages internationally, feedback from these sources are just as important as in the US. This begs the question: how do unsubscribes function in Europe? At the moment, there are quite a few opinions about the correct unsubscribe mechanisms and the "must-haves" for newsletters or commercial mail.
 
For example, a German court issued an order at the beginning of this year that email users must be able to instantly unsubscribe from a newsletter or email list. This is called the "One-Click-Unsubscribe" and means that the instant you click the button you are unsubscribed. This court order requires the following:
 
* No confirmation questions during the unsubscribe process.

* Any questions about the reason for unsubscribing must be asked after the unsubscribe process is complete.
 
* You may confirm the unsubscribe via email, but may not require any action within this email.
 
In addition, the court has also stated that any user who marks a newsletter or other communication as spam via a feedback loop must be immediately unsubscribed from that list.
 
Another point is that most ISPs in Europe require that volume email contains a "List-Unsubscribe Header". More information about the "List-Unsubscribe Header" can be found on www.list-unsubscribe.com
 
A combination of both the List-Unsubscribe Header and the Unsubscribe Button would create an ideal new great scenario for senders, receivers, and customers. Imagine a customer receiving a travel newsletter in his personal email account that he decides he does not want anymore. Instead of clicking the "This is Spam" Button he can click the Unsubscribe Button the ISP provides for him, and the ISP unsubscribes him automatically. For more information about list unsubscribes go to:

www.list-unsubscribe.com/2006/09/case_study_wind.html

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

By:  Des Cahill, CEO

The mornings are crisper, the days shorter. The Yankees and Red Sox are in the pennant race. Well, the Red Sox anyway.  And DMA's annual conference is coming up next week, October 13-18 in Chicago.
 
DMA '07 Conference and Exhibition is run by the U.S. Direct Marketing Association. It is billed as the world's largest event for marketers for innovation, education and inspiration. If measured by the sheer number of marketers attending, the event lives up to its billing. It is simply "the" annual show for offline direct marketers. The guys that put that junk mail in your snail mail box.
 
It is debatable, however, if the DMA conference is "the" show for practitioners of online marketing - like email, SEO/SEM, display ads, blogging, etc. It will be interesting to see how well, or how poorly, online marketing is promoted at the show. Will the online marketing vendors be put in the "interactive ghetto", lost among a see of direct mail list brokers? Or will online marketing be front and center of the conference's overall debate and discussion - prominently featured as the revolutionary and disruptive marketing force that it has become.
 
Fact: According to Internet Advertising Bureau/Price Waterhouse Coopers data - online ad spending in 2006 in the U.S. was $16.9B - or 6.4% of the total $265B spent in total offline (radio, TV, print, billboards, etc.) and online (email, lead generation, search, online classifieds, etc.). The key statistic to note is that the online slice is projected to grow at an annual rate of 22.5% between now and 2011, while overall ad spending is not going to grow anywhere near that rate.
 
Conclusion? Online ad spending is here to stay, growing fast and shifting significant dollars away from traditional media spending.
 
So I'm going to the windy city not expecting that email and other online channels will not be relegated to a secondary role at the DMA annual conference. I am hopeful that the DMA leadership has recognized that they need to sacrifice some of the ties to the past in order to get at the head of the interactive marketing, online advertising parade. I'll let you know what I see and hear at the show. If DMA doesn't show the leadership and vision it should for interactive marketers, there are other trade associations and conferences that would be more than happy to take on that role.
 
If you're at the DMA annual conference in Chicago it would be great to see you. Habeas is exhibiting in the Online Marketing Solutions Pavilion at booth #1528. I'll be speaking at a "Ask the Experts" roundtable session on Monday October 15 at 12:30 -1:30 PM in the exhibit hall in room F1-2 west. I'll also be participating in a panel entitled "Email Deliverability. Is it the List, Sender, or Content?" run by Austin Bliss of Fresh Address on Wednesday, October 17, 11:30AM-12:30PM in room W-194B.
 
Hope to see you there!

Monday, July 23, 2007

By: Des Cahill, CEO

Well the Fourth of July has come and gone, we are officially in the thick of the summer season - June really flew by this year. One of the highlights for me so far this summer was the honor of attending the 2007 Stevies - an award ceremony in New York City that is hosted annually by the American Business Awards to recognize leading U.S. companies. Habeas was nominated in the category of "Most Innovative Company Under 100 Employees." It was an honor to be recognized with this nomination and a thrill to attend the awards ceremony.
 
I didn't quite know what to expect of the awards ceremony - a cheesy affair or the equivalent of the Oscars? Well, no red carpet or paparazzi - but the Stevies were an amazing event. One of the larger ballrooms at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square was filled with hundreds of smartly dressed leaders from the marketing, technology, and advertising industries who had been nominated for an award or were there to cheer on a nominee. The ballroom was filled with a vast number of "ten-tops" (tables for ten in restaurant parlance for those of you who never waited tables) with white tablecloths and flowery centerpieces. And at the front of the ballroom was a massive stage and podium where winners would pick up their awards from the host. And all of this was being broadcast over the Internet. Hi mom!
 
Well, honestly this was all a little more than I had expected. If Habeas won, I had 25 seconds to say all the right things before the orchestra (well, the tape recorded orchestra anyway) kicked in the music to politely get me off the stage. Do I thank my mother? The "Academy"? No, first and foremost Habeas employees. Each of them? The board? The execs? Yes, yes, and yes. How to fit it all in? I realized I had better get my act together and think of a few words to say.
 
I sat at my designated table and introduced myself to my dining companions. A gentleman on my right from the insurance industry, to his right someone in public relations and on my left a woman in the email industry. Email? And she was from San Francisco. San Francisco? So my good fortune was to sit next to Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse, someone who I had very much wanted to meet. We had to travel 3000 miles from home to run into each other! VerticalResponse, an email service provider, was nominated in several award categories. Janine was a veteran of the Stevies, so she helped keep things loose and fun as the ceremony began and the winners were being announced in the categories.
 
As the clock ticked forward and I watched the line of winners accepting their awards under the glare of the lights on the podium, I started to wonder if I'd be up there myself. And if so, what would I actually say? And how would I traverse the football field size ballroom in time to get up to the podium before they moved on to next award?
 
A glance at the program revealed that there were just over 20 companies nominated in the category of "Most Innovative Company Under 100 Employees". And I recognized most all of the nominees, many of whom were terrifically innovative and exciting companies. So maybe I wouldn't be tripping over a ballroom of chairs in a full sprint to the podium to grab my award after all. Perhaps I wouldn't get drowned out by the music as I tried to thank my entire ancestral lineage. The competition was pretty darn fierce. I knew that Habeas has been taking the difficult path of true innovation from day one of my four years here - carving out a new market area for delivery and reputation services. We are a company of true evangelists and innovators! I knew we deserved to win the award. However, I didn't know if THEY knew.
 
Janine poked me in the middle of my thinking and reminded me that my award category was up next. I still hadn't come up with my speech. And anything remotely clever that I had come up with had already been used by prior nominees in their speeches. Well, doesn't matter, I thought, the judges probably won't make the right choice - it's over 20 to 1 odds.
 
I was wrong - the award presenter ran through the nominees and the winner is "Habeas!" Huh? It was all pretty surreal. I jumped to my feet to high fives and hugs from my table and began the sprint to the podium. Applause around the room. An announcer telling the crowd about Habeas. The presenter was the CMO of SilverJet, a fractional jetshare company that was a sponsor. He looked like Pierce Brosnsan, and had an entourage of four flight attendants who hovered around him. He welcomed me to the podium and posed with me for the congratulatory photo.
 
My speech? I think it came out OK. I thanked Habeas employees, the board, and then gave a short soliloquy about the importance and wonders of email and how we were proud to help make it safe and usable. I even avoided the dreaded "you've gone too long and get off the stage" music. And oh yes, during all of this I was presented with a Stevie - a very large, very heavy metallic trophy. Taking this home to share with everyone else at Habeas was something I was very, very happy about.
 
It was a blur. I got back to my seat to more photos, high fives and hugs. Then, the very next award winner was..."Janine Popickof VerticalResponse." Awesome. Another winner from our table. Another winner from the world of email.
 
In a startup, it's all too easy to forget to take a moment to step back and look at what the company has accomplished. How it has grown and what it has achieved. I am indebted to the American Business Awards for providing their acknowledgement of the level of innovation and amount of progress that Habeas has achieved over the past four years. Thanks again to the team at Habeas. I am proud to be your CEO.