October 23, 2002

  • Thought

    Well, it looks like the “DMA giving in” on Spam is not exactly what it seems. From my understanding of reports I’ve read over the last day or so, the DMA is calling for legislation, which is good, because we’re at that stage now.

    But they are suggesting (as they always have) that unsolicited e-mail is okay as long as you have a real From and Subject line and provide a street address.

    The idea is that this law would get rid of all the dubious spam that gets sent, but would also clear the way for “legitimate” companies to spam anyone they wanted to. This was always their position and it is dead wrong.

    The DMA should follow the strategy of the CMA which has had a very enlightened policy since 1997 (disclosure: I was one of the authors of the CMA policy).

    This Wired News article called “Spam So Bad the Spammers Balk” gives a good overview.

October 22, 2002

  • Thoughts on Spam as a Marketer and a Human

    Alexander Bosika wrote recently about the DMA’s decision to “crack down” on spam. Since he baited me to comment, I’ll fall for the trap.

    Spam is a big issue that I tend to look at from two vantage points.

    1. As an individual.

    2. As a marketer.

    As an individual, spam is certainly a huge issue for most people. I think the issue has been somewhat exaggerated by the fact that the people comment on spam (journalists, pundits, those active online) also tend to have the most exposure of e-mail addresses online and therefore tend to have their e-mail addresses harvested and passed around a bit more. Good luck using your inbox effectively if you used your main e-mail address to register a domain.

    Still, for those less highly involved in online issues, spam is still a big problem for them. And certainly, the rise of hard-core spam with really raunchy subject lines doesn’t give anyone comfort that things are getting better.

    As an individual, I use Spamnet by Cloudmark. This is the best solution I’ve seen to date, building on the P2P concepts of Napster and some clever pattern recognition algorithms. The software is still buggy (it’s in beta), but it is getting close to primetime and more and more I’m seeing it listed as one of the options people list when talking about “fighting spam”. My guess is that 9 months from now (if not soon), Cloudmark will be the Google of spam-catching.

    So as an individual I see Cloudmark as a gift from above and use it constantly, even with the bugs in the beta version.

    As a marketer, Cloudmark scares the crap out of me. Because it allows users to determine what is spam, it has a tendency to give “false positives”. A False Positive in this context is a legitimate opt-in e-mail marketer getting labeled as spam. Cloudmark tends to be better than most, but the false positives it gives are very interesting. Because people vote on each message in real-time rather than identifying in advance which IP addresses or domains to block, you see the internal workings of people’s feelings on e-mail marketing.

    When the NYT sends me a book or movie updates, they always get through. As soon as they send a “special offer to NYT subscribers”, it invariably gets dumped. Amazon new release listings tend to get through Cloudmark, but the “affiliate updates” which contain a lot of promotional information, some of it for partners, gets labeled as spam.

    This means that marketers need to live in constant fear of having any given message deemed as low enough value to be spam, even if every name is legitimate. And the problem will only get worse as these tools become more prevalent and more effective.

    My guess is that e-mail marketing will change radically in the next 9 months as Cloudmark hits critical mass. When it tips, everything will change.

September 24, 2002

  • Double Opt-out?

    Many e-mail marketing experts recommend “Double Opt-in” as the best approach to building your e-mail marketing list. Double Opt-in means that the subscriber must respond to a confirmation e-mail before they are put on the list (i.e. you sign up at a site, get an e-mail saying “confirm subscription”, and only if you reply to that confirmation e-mail do you get put on the list). This is done to ensure that there is no abuse of an open e-mail list (for example, some people have been known to sign up enemies to lists they know they will hate — like baptists on the Barbie Fetish list.)

    Yahoo seems to have taken this to some perverse extreme by introducing “Double Opt-out”.

    I just unsubscribed from the Tom Tom Club mailing list (don’t ask), and got this reply from YahooGroups (where the list lives):

    Subject: Please reply to unsubscribe from tomtomclubnewsflash

    Hello,

    We have received a request from you to unsubscribe from the

    tomtomclubnewsflash group. Please confirm your request by

    replying to this message. If you do not wish to unsubscribe from

    tomtomclubnewsflash, please ignore this message.

    Regards,

    Yahoo! Groups Customer Care

    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

    While double opt-in is good because it keeps consumers off lists they might not want to be on, double opt-out is bad because it keeps consumers on lists they clearly want to get off of. Another move by Yahoo! that shows that they just don’t get the ‘Net anymore. Very sad.

    (And the pop-up ad for a casino on the Yahoo!Groups homepage didn’t help much with my opinion either.

July 25, 2002

  • Thought

    Fascinating article in the New York Times on the increasing elusiveness of privacy in a world that continues to move online.

    Here’s a quote:

    These days, people are seeing their privacy punctured in intimate ways as their personal, professional and online identities become transparent to one another. Twenty-somethings are going to search engines to check out people they meet at parties. Neighbors are profiling neighbors. Amateur genealogists are researching distant family members. Workers are screening co-workers.

    In other words, it is becoming more difficult to keep one’s past hidden, or even to reinvent oneself in the American tradition. “The net result is going to be a return to the village, where everyone knew everyone else,” said David Brin, author of a book called “The Transparent Society” (Perseus, 1998). “The anonymity of urban life will be seen as a temporary and rather weird thing.”

September 26, 2001

  • Thought

    It is understandable that people will grab at any solution to a complex problem, but sometimes we create unintended results in our race for quick fixes.

    Case in point is the current move to limit personal freedoms, particularly on the Internet. Talk of Carnivore and Echelon — once considered urban legends — is now common and often positive. New legislation looks at enhancing the amount of information officials can collect without warrants and talk of national “identity” cards is being raised in the US and Great Britain.

    Add to this biometric surveillance and you have the makings of a very dangerous loss of freedom of movement — online and off.

August 29, 2001

August 7, 2001

  • Thought

    This CNET Article gives more details on the increasingly antagonistic approach to marketing that is developing online.

    One of the biggest issues I see with these applications that “enhance” the browsing experience (thereby offering new ways to advertise) is how the consumer actually gets the application in the first place. If the application is unknowingly downloaded as spy-ware along with a wanted application and then is very hard to get off a user’s hard drive, is it really ethical to support such applications? The fact that Gator is happy being known as “hijackware” says something about their feelings towards consumers I think.

July 20, 2001

  • Thought

    I’m looking forward to moderating the “Permission Panel” at the AIMS event on July 31st (if you’re an AIMS member you should have received your e-mail invite by now).

    The panel looks great:

    Nancy Lee Jobin

    President & Founder, Graffiti Direct & Interactive

    Kevin Krossing

    Managing Partner, Net Perceptions

    Farhan Merchant

    CEO, PointSite

    I’ve got a bunch of questions I want to ask, but if you’ve got some burning questions about permission-based marketing, personalization and building loyalty online, drop me an e-mail and I’ll try to get them to respond.

July 10, 2001

  • Thought

    “My Mother”

    Whenever you need to test whether a data/trust/permission concept is okay, try substituting the words “my mother” for consumer or user.

    So instead of saying “Company X has revised their privacy policy to allow for third party access to consumer commerce data”, try saying “Company X will sell my mother’s shopping habits to anyone who wants them.” Feels a bit different.

    Note I said “my mother” not “my” to make it more real — marketers are generally more comfortable with giving data to try out services so don’t use yourself as an example of the average Jane or Joe.

    (Interestingly enough companyX.com is available! Maybe the “company changes” mentioned on their home page have something to do with the way they treated my mother!)