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SPAM & black lists

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Subject:  SPAM & black lists
Author:   Alex Chudnovsky:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   15:10:20 22 February 2004
 
> 1. What can an organisation do to ensure their ability to send
> valid e-mails to their customers are not filtered by Spam
> filters.

Well, the first thing to do is to monitor _very_ carefully number of bounce backs and email opens. Some increase in these are expected over time as people change email addresses, forget to use hotmail and their accounts expire etc. However, any significant drop might point out to "blacklisting".

In my experience of running Jungle's email database (600k) we never were blacklisted, however we did get complaints sent to our mail server provider (Energis) that accused us of spam. This is critical point as blacklisting by itself is bad, but having your upstream provider rejecting to deal with you is worse.

To play safe I'd have a spare mail server and spare from-to address to use from time to time on a small sample of customers to see if bounce back and open rates are any different from average - this would allow to determine if you got blacklisted, which is always a good first step of identifying that there is a problem related to blacklists rather than anything else like great new episode of East Enders aired at the time of mailing ;)

> 2. How can one stop a malicious intention from a competitor or
> very unhappy customer to add one to one of the RBS lists?

I don't think there is anything that can "stop", but I think it is possible to minimise risks. I'd say the following should help a lot:

1) GET RIGHT PEOPLE: ensure that you only send email to those who opted into it, try to be upfront and avoid confusing double negatives that we all know are specifically designed to confuse people in order to increase ratio of those "subscribed".

2) SEND WORTHY CONTENT: Make sure what you send to your customers is really worth reading! Always track your unsubscription ratio on per campaign basis and strive to evolve your marketing efforts to minimise it.

3) LET GO THOSE WHO WANT: make sure it is easy to unsubscribe - ideally 1 click link, not anything complex. You are likely to have arguments with some business people who might think that this would contribute to erosion of your email base, however, its better to let go someone who does not like you rather than get blacklisted and lose a lot more.

> 3. Are Spam filters having a growing negative effect on e-mail
> marketing?

The certainly do, the question is "how much". Unfortunately I can not answer is as I am not currently involved with heavy duty email marketing, however I think effect of spam filters would be specific to inherent features of given email lists.

Spam in itself will have a wider effect on all lists, but this is another big question.

regards,

Alex
www.Majestic12.co.uk
 
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  • SPAM & black lists, matt , 19 Feb 18:00
    With the ever growing amount of Spam I receive daily, I am continuously trying new products which filter Spam. It appears there is a growing trend for Spam filters to send a chall ...
    • SPAM & black lists, spxdcz, 19 Feb 20:00
      Some good questions, which I haven't given much thought to before. Just a quick suggestion for question 1: most spam filters, even given a RBL, will allow emails through that ...
      • Spam filter - dealing with confirmation bounce backs, Obi Felten, 20 Feb 10:09
        I've also noticed the increase of confirmation bounceback emails recently - brilliant tool for the consumer, tricky for the marketer! A confirmation bounceback (are you real/do ...
        • Mobile marketing versus e-mail marketing, Ashley , 20 Feb 12:10
          This thread reinforces for me the real issues and challenges that e-mail is facing as a marketing medium. The recent regulatory changes have made no difference to the levels of spa ...
          • Mobile marketing versus e-mail marketing, nicoko, 20 Feb 13:54
            Ashley you're spot on. In my former life I dealt extensively with email marketing (for artists/records), and it worked great, especially with click-thru to decent content offerings ...
          • Make people pay for email delivery?, Obi Felten, 20 Feb 14:22
            Agree about email being too cheap, hence spam. Interestingly both Yahoo and Microsoft are looking at email stamps as a way of reducing spam, see NYT article below. I think charg ...
            • Re: Make people pay for email delivery?, Alex Chudnovsky, 22 Feb 14:51
              On 14:22:18 20 February 2004 Obi Felten wrote: > Agree about email being too cheap, hence spam. > I think charging is a good idea. Well I disagree with a passion - people ...
    • SPAM & black lists, Alex Chudnovsky, 22 Feb 15:10
      > 1. What can an organisation do to ensure their ability to send > valid e-mails to their customers are not filtered by Spam > filters. Well, the first thing to do is to mo ...
      • SPAM & black lists, Alex Chudnovsky, 9 Mar 15:57
        Well, it appears that my domain name which I published above now blacklisted by Google - it is there if you search by domain name, but usual search words that did show I was index ...
        • Re: SPAM & black lists - search engine bans?, Alex Chudnovsky, 9 Mar 16:08
          In fact thinking (but by no means blaiming) of the way E-consultancy links to external sites, which is a local to this site link that will presumably record a click-out and then re ...
          • Re: SPAM & black lists - search engine bans?, Russell , 9 Mar 16:21
            Alex, if your site has been dropped from Google it has NOTHING to do with this site. ...
            • Re: SPAM & black lists - search engine bans?, Alex Chudnovsky, 9 Mar 16:40
              Thanks for responses. I certainly appreciate that my site (in its present form) is not worthy of being indexed, I just found it interesting that instead of dropping rank it seems t ...
              • Re: SPAM & black lists - search engine bans?, Alex Chudnovsky, 10 Mar 13:47
                Right just to wrap it up - my site is back in the index where it was, and looks like there _was_ an update or something like that a few days ago - http://www.webmasterworld.com/f ...
          • Re: SPAM & black lists - search engine bans?, matt , 9 Mar 16:23
            Hi Alex In regards to "... the way E-consultancy links to external sites, which is a local to this site link that will presumably record a click-out and then redirect to externa ...
    • SPAM & black lists, Russell , 27 Feb 14:08
      > surely one could be malicous towards an organisation and ensure > that they are added to the e-mail black lists. Theoretically, yes. In practice, no, since they'd have to se ...
      • SPAM & black lists, GavinMacaulay, 8 Apr 12:32
        Hey Russell I am a complete new kid on this block but have to find out what blacklists our company is on and see what can be done to get us removed. We are an online scuba d ...
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