MarketingSherpa Blog

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 It’s scary how quickly privacy policies become outdated.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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.”

Fact #1: Gmail is still officially in test mode, but Google just doubled the number of invitations a tester can send at a time — six now, instead of three.

Fact #2: Some people, including the WSJ’s Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry, are delighting that Gmail invitations don’t have the same ‘cool’ factor, not to mention cash value, they used to because they’re not as rare as they were. Another sign that Gmail is in a soft rollout, soft enough not to violate Google’s quiet period before its IPO but active enough to build up a good database of names before it launches.

Fact #3: It’s taking Gmail’s tech staff longer to reply to complaints. Two weeks ago, an answer to a thorny problem arrived in 12 hours. Now, Gmail is taking even longer than Yahoo! to send a tech response, and it’s just about as useful.

We posted a problem a MarketingSherpa reader was having using a Gmail invitation we sent her on June 21. The answer came 1 week and 4 hours later, with no reference to my specific complaint but with an apology for the delayed response and an explanation: “Gmail is experiencing rapid growth. We have been working hard to keep pace with the popularity of our service while we respond to each individual message. Thank you for your patience.”

The user inbox still shows the “beta” tag along with the Gmail logo, but as far as we’re concerned, Gmail’s here.

Take a moment to find out exactly how many Gmail addresses are in your database now. A few weeks ago, probably none. Today, maybe a few. Tomorrow, who knows?

Nobody’s matching Gmail’s 1GB of storage space yet, but Hotmail and Ask Jeeves just announced they will give their email users lots more space, too, just as Yahoo! did earlier this month.

Microsoft said Wednesday it would raise Hotmail users from 2MB to a relatively dizzying 250MB of space and give its premium users 2GB of space for $19.95 (matching Yahoo!’s move for its premium customers).

Ask Jeeves, which offers email through its My Way, iWon and Excite services, will boost users from 6MB to 125MB.

The extra space means you should see fewer over-quota mailbox bounces in your delivery reports, although if you’re really cynical, it could mean you’ll just ending up sending more email that much longer to abandoned mailboxes.

Ouch. When affiliate management company Linkshare announced their Titanium Awards Winner last week for best performing affiliate of 2003, turns out the winner 24HourEDeals.com, was a cookie-stuffer.

So Linkshare had to rip the tiara off the winner’s head and take back the $15k award.

Cookie stuffing is when an affiliate puts loads (sometimes hundreds) of cookies with their commission codes on an unsuspecting Web surfer’s computer, who happened to click on just one link the affiliate controlled. Then the next time that surfer goes to a merchant’s site of their own accord, the merchant thinks the affiliate sent them. So the merchant pays out a commission for the traffic.

In other affiliate news, Ken Evoy an online merchant who’s famous for encouraging thousands of mom’n’pop affiliates to market his wares extremely aggressively, is upset because he says his own email is being blocked by Brightmail’s filters.

The thing is, Evoy says he personally doesn’t send any non-permission email, so he should not be blocked just because of a few bad apple affiliates who may be. It appears that Brightmail — which is just about the most used filter in the world — may not agree with him.

Last but not least, although Google has not made their planned public announcement that they’ll cease to honor trademarks for AdWords, I learned yesterday that it’s a pretty good bet they’ll do so very soon after their IPO this summer.

So, if you are counting on Google to stop affiliates and competitors from running AdWords ads against your trademarks, watch out.

Got an affiliate program? Perhaps you should have a quick meeting with your team to make sure they are taking active measures to protect you on these three fronts.

UPDATE: Several of you have written in since I posted this article a few hours ago, wanting to know how to detect cookie stuffing. I asked Brian Clark, who as Publisher ReveNews.com is a real expert, for some advice.

Here’s what he says, “Only real ways of detecting it are:

1) watch for affiliates that seem to have an abnormally high click thru quantity but with an abnormally low conversion rate.

2) go to the affiliate’s page with a cleaned out cookie folder, then look and see what cookies have appeared.”

Good news keeps coming in for companies who are looking for additional venture-capital funding. NewsStand Inc., which delivers digital copies of major print publications such as USA Today, just nailed down $7.2 million from Adams Capital Management, whose partners include the New York Times, one of NewsStand’s content partners.

NewsStand said it would use the money for “marketing and sales initiatives” to boost worldwide market penetration and to “perfect its digital reading experience through Web and print integration,” President/CEO Kit Webster said.

Visit NewsStand here.