MarketingSherpa Blog

If you host your newsletter with SparkLIST, you might or might not know that the broadband giant RoadRunner has been blocking SparkLIST email deliveries for about three weeks for reasons they apparently won’t even share with Sparky’s own people. (ISPs usually cough up at least one reason, even if it’s not the *real* one, why they’re blocking you.)
The block was supposed to be lifted today (Monday, July 12, 2004). That’s what SparkLIST reported to the client, who then reported everything to us.

We’ll know for sure whether RR has lifted the block by tomorrow, when her next newsletter is scheduled to go out (including one copy to our own RR address).

In the meantime, if you find your newsletters are getting blocked, you should call your account exec at your broadcast vendor, who might or might not be aware of the problem.

That’s what our reader did. Her exec was on top of the situation and told her exactly what they were doing to solve the problem. Then, she got a follow-up phone call telling her what the current status was. (That’s pretty astonishing by itself!)

If you don’t host your list with an outside vendor, you’ll have to go it alone to find out where the problem is. The problem with RoadRunner is there’s very little information at the Web site, beyond some generic email addresses, to help you either connect with real-time help or pinpoint the problem areas.

RoadRunner does have provide some information at this Web site:
http://security.rr.com/

(Disclaimer: We used to work for a sister company to SparkLIST and had our newsletters hosted by SparkLIST before investment partner Lyris bought out the remaining shares of the company it didn’t own previously.)

How are you notifying visitors to your Web site about the information you collect from them when they visit or register? If it’s with a privacy policy that you’ve buried on an inside page or with a teeny-tiny little link or icon, you’re violation a new California privacy law.

If a California resident accuses you of violating the law, which extends current state privacy law to cover Web sites and online services, you get 30 days to fix the problem. If you don’t, that resident could sue you.

The Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 requires any Web site operator who collects “personally identifying information” from California residents to have a clearly marked and accessible privacy policy, which meets four conditions:

Condition 1: List all the categories of personal information you collect at your site and whom you share that information with.

(“Personal information” is full name, address, email address, phone, Social Security number, anything else that would let you reach an individual and anything you collect in a cookie or other online device.

Condition 2: Explain whether and how visitors can review and change their personal information.

Condition 3: Explain how you notify users that you have changed your privacy policy.

Condition 4: Post the policy’s effective date.

You also can’t bury your privacy policy on an interior page unless you link to it with an eye-catching icon or text link whose type size is larger than the rest of the copy on the page.

Esteemed ContentBiz Publisher Anne Holland also found three vague areas in the law, too:

Grey Area #1. Email programs
Check with your own legal advisers if the term “online service” equals your emails to house lists. We suspect it does. So, you may have to make your privacy link much more conspicuous there.

Grey Area #2. Landing pages
Also, check with legal to see if you should assume the Act extends to campaign microsites and landing pages which may not be obviously part of your main site. We suspect it may, and this means you’ll need to change your privacy policies there, too.

Grey Area #3. Third-party-hosted registration forms
If you collect any consumer data using third-party services such as a co-registration deal, an online lead generation service, or a co-branded marketing presence, check with legal to see if you need to fret about your partner’s privacy links and statements. We suspect you do.

You can read the law here (go ahead and check it out; it’s short and written in what to bureaucrats is plain English):
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/
ab_0051-0100/ab_68_bill_20031012_chaptered.pdf

A new study from Arial Software, which makes email-marketing software, found 67% of businesses sending promotional newsletters didn’t comply with CAN-SPAM rules, but that didn’t automatically mean they were spamming their recipients.

The company spent six months subscribing to and analyzing the performance of email newsletters sent by companies of all sizes — including brand-name, Fortune 500 companies — and found that only 3 of the 1,057 it subscribed to engaged in what the surveytakers considered spamming: sending high-volume commercial email or emails with unsubscribe links that didn’t work.

Although the survey didn’t name the three apparent spammers, it did bust 12 that apparently ignored unsubscribe requests, including About.com, Backcountrystore.com, Knight-Ridder, Kraft Foods, Omaha Steaks and Camping World.

Some other findings:

— 51% didn’t offer an unsubscribe link

— 93% didn’t confirm new addresses. That doesn’t break the law, but it does make an emailer more vulnerable to spamming claims by people who say their addresses were added without their permission. In addition, 72% of companies didn’t send follow-up emails to confirm opt-ins.

— 45% didn’t identify themselves clearly in their email messages.

— 36% sent no emails in the six months since Arial workers opted in to their programs.

The survey has lots more statistics and suggestions for why companies aren’t meeting the law or following email best practices. Download the survey here.

Do me a favor — open another window on your computer as you read this and click over to your site’s Privacy Policy.

Why? Because California’s 2003 Online Privacy Protection Act just kicked in July 1st 2004, and if anyone from California visits your site and sees you’re not compliant… say hello to potential law suits.

You have to be involved (not just your legal department) because the Act affects marketing directly in two ways:

#1. You’ll have to make the link to your privacy policy FAR more visible than it probably is now. Tiny type hidden at the bottom of a page won’t do the job.

A smart marketer can make this work to his or her advantage, by developing a graphical icon or text-link copy that’s reassuring to visitors without diverting from your intended conversion path.

In fact, I’ve seen cases in which a properly placed and written privacy link increased conversions by as much as 10%.

#2. You’ll have to make sure whatever you’re doing with the data collected actually matches the privacy policy. It’s scary how quickly privacy policies become outdated. Most marketers don’t have a regular schedule to check the policy still matches reality.

Three semi-grey areas I spotted in the Act:

Grey #1. Email programs

Check with your own legal advisors as the term “online service” equals your emails to house lists. We suspect it does. So, you may have to make your privacy link much more conspicuous in your email creative.

Grey #2. Landing pages

Also, check with legal to see if you should assume the Act extends to campaign microsites and landing pages which may not be obviously part of your main site. We suspect it may, and this means you’ll need to change your privacy policy creative there too.

Grey #3. Third-party-hosted registration forms

If you collect any consumer data using third party services such as a co-registration deal, an online lead generation service, or a co-branded marketing presence, check with legal to see if you need to fret about your partner’s privacy links and statements (both what they say and how links to them appear visually.) We suspect you do.

Why worry?

If a consumer visits your site and alerts you that you are non-compliant (time to ask customer service to look for emails on that topic) you have 30 days to become compliant. If you ignore things, then law suits can be brought against your organization.

Who is not affected?

The Act says it’s about “commercial” Web sites and online services so if you’re not selling anything, you may be ok. Also ISPs, email broadcast firms, database firms, and Web hosting firms can’t be sued for carrying someone else’s non-compliant site or email.

Please note, I’m not a lawyer nor have I had a lawyer review this column. It’s not intended to serve as legal advice you should follow without checking with your own legal counsel first.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the actual Act itself. It’s only four pages and a pretty easy read compared to most legislation I’ve seen in my time.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/ab_0051-0100/ab_68_bill_20031012_chaptered.pdf

Looks like all the time and money HighBeam Research invested in redesigning its online-information site is paying off: the company announced today it has registered 600,000 Basic (free) users since the site launched Jan. 26, 2004 and added about 4 million documents to its 32-million-item eLibrary archives.

(Paid subscribers are at about 45K right now.)

HighBeam (formerly Alacritude) was at about 375,000 free registered users in May 2004 when CEO Patrick Spain and VP/CMO Kathleen Greenler spoke at the ContentBiz Summit in NYC.

HighBeam had to rebuild the entire sign-up process, since they didn’t have a way to move visitors from a first-time visit to the point where they’d hand over a credit card and buy a full membership for $19.95 a month or $99.95 a year.

Patrick and Kathleen blueprinted everything they did in point-by-point detail for our ContentBiz attendees.

Just got a question from a reader whose company is revamping its newsletter design:

“You use a specific format in your sender/subject line highlighting the most interesting topics in “subject”, while leaving the newsletter title in “sender.” I would like us to change to this format but I need specific evidence supporting that it will be useful. Do you have any data on why you chose this?”

Five reasons you should list your newsletter name and/or email sending address in the “sender” or “from” line has become a best practice in email publishing:

1. It quickly IDs you to readers who will give you a second, or less, to prove that your newsletter belongs in their in-boxes and isn’t spam.

2. It allows readers to filter you more accurately into a special folder rather than languish with all the junk mail. It also makes it easier for ISPs and individual users to whitelist you.

3. Because you now don’t have to waste characters by putting your name in the subject line, you have more room to list the things that will entice your readers to open your email.

4. Some email clients read the sender’s name in different ways. Some will use your name (Outlook), while others will use the email address (AOL is one). So, if you have your name AND the email address which should also include your company name) in the “from” line, that will make it clear to the reader who you are and why you’re in the in-box.

5. Many companies use it as a branding tool and insist on having the company name show up in the “from” line.

But ….

That’s why you SHOULD do this. Whether you CAN depends on your broadcast vendor’s software.

You SHOULD be able to format it so that your newsletter name and your email sending address (the actual email address your newsletter goes out from) in the “from” line. However, not all vendors do this. Some assign a random or job number to the email address so that it’s different every time. (This hurts you with readers who whitelist you on your name or email address, since your address will change every time.)

Ask your vendor if you can customize your “from” address with your name and/or email address. If it can’t help you, it’s probably time to start looking around for a new vendor.

Who says email marketing is dead? Not the venture-capital firms that continue to funnel email expansions. The latest is Convio, which just announced it raised $15 million in a fourth round of financing to help fund product development, expand services and “advance toward profitability.”

The money came from a mix of new and present backers, including Adams Street Partners, Granite Ventures and Silverton Partners.

Convio specializes in helping nonprofit organizations with Web and email services, including marketing. Based in Austin, it’s one of the broadcast vendors profiled in MarketingSherpa’s 2004 Buyer’s Guide to Email Broadcast Firms, the final version which just came out.

Thanks to everyone who asked about the Gmail invitations I was giving away. They’re gone, and so far Gmail hasn’t come through with any new ones. The waiting list is up to 12 now.

I didn’t think I had any ulterior motives when I offered up my addresses to EmailSherpa readers, but maybe I did. That’s because I got some great conversations going with readers who haven’t previously sent in comments.

So, let’s keep it going. Every MarketingSherpa article announcement includes a feedback address you can use to send in your comments, your complaints, raves, rants, etc. What’s going on in your company? What’s working? What’s not? What’s your thorniest email problem? What company are you eager to read about?

I’d really like to hear from someone besides my beleagured friends in Nigeria and Ghana, who have all this money they need me to smuggle into the country for them.

Just hung up from long phone interviews with Michael Mayor, president of the new NetCreations division of Return Path, and Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg about the NetCreations acquisition.

Some details:

1. Return Path had been talking about buying NetCreations for about a year before the company went on the market.

The company, which built its business first on eCOA services, then added deliverability and email-marketing consulting services when it bought Assurance Systems and Gas Pedal Consulting in 2003, wanted NetCreations for its list management, customer acquisition and research divisions.

Why an acquisition and not a spin-off and return to independent status for NetCreations? Mayor said he and his management team considered several possibilities but said the sale to Return Path was “the best one for the company. It keeps NetCreations intact and helps us provide more services for our clients and partners.”

2. Return Path paid an undisclosed amount of cash for NetCreations, using its own money and venture capital provided from companies that have invested in email concerns before.

3. Mayor and Blumberg said no layoffs are planned as the two companies consolidate operations, although some back-end operations such as accounting and HR could be affected. Instead, they said, both are hiring because they anticipate attracting more business to the expanded firm.

4. About the only thing missing now under Return Path’s umbrella now is actual list hosting. Blumberg said the company’s not shopping for an email broadcaster right now.

“The email delivery space is very crowded and very well covered by the companies we do a lot of business with.” Blumberg said.

5. Cross-promotion and data integration are two of the top items on the to-do list. Blumberg said

“We’re looking at a lot of innovation,” Blumberg said. “We’re getting ideas from our customers about getting into new email data-oriented services, and we have a lot of ideas about different things customers have asked us for. We have a pretty good idea of the need out there for helping companies build their lists and enhance their lists.”

We don’t know the terms yet (money, deal structure, etc.) but we were just told Return Path has acquired list-management powerhouse NetCreations from Consodata, a unit of Italian directory publisher Seat PG.

“NetCreations isn’t in touble at all,” we are told. “The bottom line is that NetCreations is a healthy company with great market opportunity and strong revenue that (previous owner) Seat PG wanted to unload to focus on its directory business. This is a win-win for both sets of employees, shareholders and partners, as well as for all clients.”

Seat PG, an Italian directory publisher, bought NetCreations in 2001 after bidding successfully over DoubleClick. Acxiom recently acquired other Consodata operating units.

NetCreations CEO Michael Mayor will join Return Path’s board of directors. NetCreations will become a division of Return Path (name: “NetCreations, a Return Path company”) with Mayor as president.

NetCreations is the home of PostMasterDirect, one of the biggest email list managers, as well as Survey Direct for email sampling, ITProsDirect and NetCreations Technology Services.

Some numbers resulting from the deal:

— 1,500 clients, 500 data partners, more than 1,000 channel
partners and 41 million consumers

— 70 employees in New York and Boulder, Co. offices (no word on consolidation or potential layoffs)

More as we learn it!