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Helpful Hints From An Industry EXPERT!
Mario,
I am forwarding you a copy of a message in which I
replied to a customer's concerns.
As a lead broker yourself, I thought you and
your customers might profit from the content.
Your comments and additions are welcome as we stand
together to protect our businesses from
the pitfalls of the email marketing industry
and consumer ignorance and misinformation.
Thank you,
Vance
********************************
Dear XXXX,
Regarding your message of : Earlier
this week I ran the leads we received from you against the national
email "do not contact" registry and got more than 10,000
addresses that do not want to be contacted.
I
respectfully reply that there is no such list as evidenced below:
_______________________________________________________________________
Congress
Shoots Down Do Not Spam Registry
Congress "do not email registry" not a viable solution
Overall, 10k leads on a Remove System is about
0.0166% - 2% of the fresh lists you recently purchased. People do re-opt
in and human error must be considered.
Do even the most reputable website ad brokers fail
to remove names or even add in some bad apples. I will be the first in
line with my hand on The Holy Bible to say, "Yes, it is my belief that
they some indeed do".
In my opinion, to monitor an uncontrollable
monster such as the internet , sending 12,400,000,000 spam emails
daily, and attempt to do so as absolute authority under fail-proof
expectations, is unrealistic.
I reference below from Spam Review:
Spam Statistics 2004
Email considered Spam: 40% of all email
Daily Spam emails sent: 12.4 billion Daily Spam received per person: 6 Annual Spam received per person: 2,200 Email address changes due to Spam: 16% Estimated Spam increase by 2007: 63% Users who reply to Spam email: 28%
Within the 600,000+ plus names you received from us,
which is a rather large number of recipients sitting in front of a
PC who may already have a bone to pick with the world, "opt
outs" and complaints are to be considered the norm, not the
exception. That figure is similar to 5-6 times the number of people in
the stadium at a Super Bowl, each receiving an email. I fully expect
complaints and "opt outs", not the opposite. These are real
people living in stressful times, not just fonts in an EXCEL
spreadsheet.
I called several agencies in NY yesterday with
high-profile, upscale operations. They wrestle with spam complaints,
double opt-in verification, spam traps, duplicate leads, and people who
think they are safe from spam. Personally, I would not like
spending 50 cents per email lead and getting the same results as a
1-4 cent lead. And the truth is: complaints from our leads are
actually very, very low.
Autoresponders and "upstreams" are all
under pressure from the next link above them. The blame is ultimately
passed down to the consumer who loses their autoresponder and has
their history and leads erased. In many cases, customers are simply
asked to register again, PAY again, and the cycle continues with
the consumer losing money again and again with the current or subsequent
autoresponder.
We care and do the very best we can to deliver a
quality lead. However, I honestly doubt we can ever cut hardcore
complaints on 800,000 leads a month to less than 100 , which is
0.000125%, and identify less than 25,000 email addresses ( 3.125%) who
are under the false impression they are shielded from receiving email
from entities other than their friends and relatives by a pseudo-remove
system.
As a friend and business owner, I certainly
"feel your pain". But this is the reality :
email marketing is a precarious business; our methods, while legal, are
not popular and we all share in the outcome equally. We are all
on the same team and the same page. It is not us against you.
If the prospect has declared an interest in making
money by opt'ing in to receive offers, at what point do they no longer
have an interest? I am still interested in making money after 10 years
on line and thousands of offers.
Two seemingly unsolvable problems are :
(1) At what point does a person scream," I've
had enough unwanted email"? Is it 1 email...2 emails..1000
emails? Who sent them that one email that actually pushed them over
the edge and subsequently makes everyone else pay equally?
Will it be John or Sally who ultimately gets an
unsuspecting autoresponder user slammed after their ignorance led them
to believe he/she has already opt'ed out from society at large because
of a Global System that is not even interfaced to the building
next door, much less globally.
(2) How can we play fair against entrapment
and entities who don't even give us a fair chance to play by the rules?
We are forced to play by their rules, yet we have CAN SPAM on our
side.
I do not always doubt the anti-spam community. Yes,
perhaps a lead was entered as a spam trap 90 days ago. And maybe they
do have secret email addresses embedded on the net that can only be
found through spyders. Harvesting a lead from a trap with a full name,
postal address, IP and phone # etc., however, does make me
question the harvesting defense argument. As a general rule,
harvesting collects email , url, and message/posting board addresses.
You conveyed to me that you discovered the hard way
that leads purchased from some of the flashy, promise-laden websites
just peddle garbage, and that
our company has made you a believer that quality
does exist. However, I admit we have found no way to fully come
out from under the dark shadow of the downside of email
marketing....but we endeavor to do so each day. Today, we have already
identified one particularly aggressive spam trapper. Yet, does he
have 3, 5, or 50 other addresses..who knows?
We also received this interesting reply to a
question we sought help with today:
Yes, duplicate leads can be unique users. AOL gives out the same proxy to a number of their customers. So, though a user may be on a separate machine, even possibly in difference states, the AOL IP Address , for example,152.163.101.14, would be the same for each user.
From the above, I conclude: There are problems here that are beyond control and some yet to even be identified and addressed. Neither us nor the anti-spam community have the technology to protect us one from another. We have a "given" here; like it or not the battles will continue and people will continue to be hurt and lose money.
I end with the graph below (note: Reports Sent) ,
that was published in real time when I copied it this morning. I do not
mean to sound over-dramatic here, but in this environment we are up
against an enemy that often plays less fair than the spammers they so
dislike.
We are all tossing around hot
potatoes every single day that we involve ourselves in email
marketing. And, we all need to work together instead of blaming
the list providers and autoresponder companies.
Thank you,
Vance
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