E-mail Marketing: Beating The Deliverability Crisis Brian S. Klais VP eBusiness Netconcepts Sunday, October 17, 2004

1. E-mail Marketing: Beating The Deliverability Crisis Brian S. Klais VP eBusiness NetconceptsSunday, October 17, 2004

2. State of the Inbox

3. Agenda • State of the Industry • Spam thresholds • Optimizing Deliverability • Network reputation • Filter-friendly design • Deployment timing • Name that SPAM game • The Road Ahead • Sender authentication • RSS

4. Email Marketing Benefits • Critical mass • Reaches 93% of internet users • Response rates • 10x greater than direct mail • Lower costs • 1/10 the cost per communication • Still effective and targeted retention vehicle

5. The Resulting Deluge • 76% of global email is spam (MessageLabs, 2004) • 90% of all US email is spam • 12 billion per day 2005 (IDC) • Average consumer received 3,920 unwanted emails in 2003 (Jupiter) • Spam has made 52% of consumers less trusting of email (Pew) • Most marketers plan to increase in 2005!

6. Legislating & Regulating • CANSPAM took effect January 1, 2004 • Places burden on recipients to opt out • Allows you to send unsolicited emails if you: • Provide valid postal address • Clearly indicate advertisement in subject line • Provide functional opt out mechanism • Fines $200 per email, up to $2MM per incident • Remove un-subscribers immediately from master list • EU opt-in legislation

7. CAN-ning SPAM? • 56% of spam originates in US (Commtouch) • Forecast >95% of all email is spam in 2006

8. Filtered But Not Pure • 20% of legitimate emails are being blocked as spam (Return Path, 2004) • 38% of consumers report wanted emails being blocked by filters (RoperASW, 2003)

9. The New Face of Email Marketing • The consumer is deluged and jaded • Reach and attention is made more difficult • Relevancy and trustworthiness more important • The medium is much more complex • Deliverability is uncertain • Format control is lost • Regulation increases filtration risks • How to optimize reach and effectiveness?

10. The Email Funnel Deliverability Blacklists, Whitelists, Filters Open-ability Subject, From, Frequency Readability Design, Content, Organization

11. Network Blacklisting • Either your vendor or your own network • Major symptoms • Bounce rates > 10% • Open rates < 30% • Blacklist monitoring • SpamCop, SpamHaus, MAPS, etc. • Check multiple blacklists simultaneously: SenderBase.org • Halls of Shame • NANAS (news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Usenet newsgroup) • http://groups.google.com/groups?q=yourname+group:news.admin.net-abuse.sightings • Clean network gets more emails through • May cost more, but likely worth it • Guilt by association

13. Maps

14. maps

15. spamcop

16. spamhaus

17. senderbase

19. White listing • Ask customers to add you to their white list: • AOL 9.0, Yahoo and Hotmail filter unknown emails to junk folders, but let known senders in. • On your site and in emails (for forwards) • Email address or domain name - choose carefully! • Earn white-list status with ISPs • Manage directly if deploying email in-house • Only outsource to a vendors white listed with AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail

20. Request white-listing BEFORE sending the email

21. Achieving AOL Whitelist Status • AOL Criteria • Submit IP for monitoring • Setup feedback looks to monitor spam complaints • Dynamically blocks if 10% bounce • Remove repeat bounces immediately and automatically • Or if 1/10 of 1% complain • Can suspend white list status • You receive the complaint but NOT the complainer • Embed tracking codes to simplify auto removal • http://postmaster.info.aol.com • AOL policies, guidelines and bounce thresholds

22. Yahoo Whitelist Status • Yahoo Process • Thresholds not as clearly defined as AOL • Must complete application process • Describe list source/ownership • Describe permission verification • Bounce/unsubscribe handling policies • IP activity is monitored for 3-5 weeks • Contact: mail-abuse-bulk@yahoo-inc.com

23. Other Forms of Whitelisting • 3rd party white listing services • Bonded Sender: Post a financial bond. Every spam complaint costs you $$ • Throttle your sending • Hashcash: CPU-intensive to calculate a single-use, recipient-specific “postage stamp”. 2 emails per second

25. Spam Filters • Lots of spam filters & email firewalls • SpamAssassin • MailWasher • Yahoo! SpamGuard • BrightMail

26. SpamAssassin • One of the most popular spam filters for ISPs • Open source • Predicts whether a message is spam using: • Scoring content based filters (rules-based) • Bayesian filtering (adaptive message content analysis) • Sender Policy Framework (for sender authentication) • Hashcash (for proof of message intent)

27. Bayesian Filtering • Analyzes your legit email and your spam (e.g. that you’ve already separated) to calculate the probability of various characteristics appearing in spam vs. in legit email • Learns to differentiate spam from legit email • Gets better over time

28. Got High Bounce Rates? • Best rates OUCH! “Negotiate The Best Rates on Local Advertising Media”

29. Test Deliverability • Seed list with 100 – 200 hotmail & yahoo addresses. Check for delivery on each of those accounts. • Check your ‘spam score’ before sending • Free version available at: www.gravitymail.com/spamscore.php • Aim for < 5 SpamAssassin points • Note: This tool is only indicative. Not everyone’s using SpamAssassin to filter spam. Other filters will interpret your campaign differently.

30. Name that SPAM! • The Prize: • A Crunchie bar… from New Zealand! • The Rules: • Point out things in the email campaign that caused it to be unceremoniously junked by SpamAssassin • Must be something that’s displayed on the slide • The thing must be worth at least 0.4 points • Be the first one to find it, then raise your hand (no yelling out before I call on you!) • One bar per person

32. 7.3 / 5.0 4 things

33. 7.3 / 5.0 2 things

34. 6.2 / 5.0 2 things

35. 6.2 / 5.0 Work from Home 2 things

36. 7.4 / 5.0 Link: mailto:newsletter-remove@developershed.com?subject=REMOVE 4 things

37. 5.8 / 5.0 2 things

38. 5.2 / 5.0 1 thing

39. MS Internet Explorer adds this tag when you “Save As” (Peeking under the hood at the HTML of this campaign…) 5.2 / 5.0 1 thing

40. 9.9 / 5.0 3 things

41. 13.2 / 5.0 2 things

42. 13.2 / 5.0 3 things

43. A thick HTML table border 2 things 5.0 / 5.0

44. 5.2 / 5.0 http://66.38.189.161/maestro/link/1497084910/2/17517/13123909/2/167362/1/1377/1382/lnk.htm?lc2 3 things

45. 2 things 9.0 / 5.0

46. 5.0 / 5.0 1 thing

47. 5.9 / 5.0 3 things

48. 6.4 / 5.0 1 thing

49. base-64 encoding 6.4 / 5.0 1 thing

50. 3 things 7.9 / 5.0