Email Service Provider

The Success of Behavioral Targeting: Earning Consumer Trust

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

A recent study performed by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports that Americans believe marketers should not advertise to them based on preferences and behavioral data…But why? In a marketplace of abundant information and almost innumerable and varied products, why don’t consumers desire some assistance to narrow down their selection? Why don’t people appreciate that marketers want to provide them with relevant advertising? If I am going to see advertisements on a website…and there is no question that I will…I would much rather see advertisements that pertain to my interests. Wouldn’t you?

The Annenberg/Berkeley study reports that 66% of Americans do not want to see website ads that are tailored to their interests. This sounds discouraging, but I believe the information provided by this study offers valuable insight for marketers seeking to capitalize on relevant, 1 to 1 marketing efforts. This study’s stats highlight consumers’ desire for control and trust—observations that can inform behavioral web and email marketing strategy.

Advertising preference is not the only metric this study provides, as eMarketer’s article “Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark” points-out. There are several other, seemingly contradictory metrics this study reports that can help us solve this puzzle. For example, close to 50% of Americans would like websites to give them discounts specific to their interests. Hmmm…So you don’t want to see the ads, but you do want the coupons presented in those ads? Puzzling…let’s dig deeper.

eMarketer highlights another Annenberg/Berkeley metric: 67% of all Americans feel that they have “lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies,” and at the same time 54% of Americans believe that “existing laws and organizational practices provide a reasonable level of protection for consumer privacy.”

This issue is one of trust, not necessarily the failure of behavioral marketing. Consumers like discounts, but people feel as if they have lost control over their personal information, and no one likes to feel like they have lost control. As a Catapult at ExactTarget, I spent two days in Chicago with fellow Catapults, interviewing people on their marketing preferences. Overwhelmingly, people expressed that they felt their personal information was abused by spammers and companies they had no relationship with. Yes, there are “reasonable” laws regarding consumer privacy, but consumers ask, “Why do I get so much spam?!” “How did they get my email address? My phone number?”

When asked how they felt about tracking on “websites in general,” people stated that they felt behavioral tracking was creepy and “Big Brother-like.” On the flipside, when given a concrete example, like Amazon.com’s personalized product recommendations that appear when browsing the website, interviewees’ tone changed: “Yes, I find that helpful, but they don’t send me a million emails after I buy something and pester me all the time. And, I have a relationship with them.”

Lesson learned: people want to feel safe, respected, and protected. Amazon.com is not scary, because they have a trustworthy reputation. As marketers, we cannot neglect that relationships are the foundation for business. Leverage your landing pages, emails, voicemails, and SMS organically to build trust with clients, at point of sale, for example. In your emails, provide a reminder of how clients signed-up. Provide a link in your emails to a page on your website that explains how you use subscriber information. Perhaps you should only advertise on trusted websites. Finally, don’t be abusive: be cognizant of email frequency and content.

I encourage you to check out our whitepapers on building quality lists direct marketing channel preferences. Use our List Growth Advisor for custom recommendations on how to responsibly grow your subscriber lists so that you can leverage subscriber data respectfully and effectively. Behavioral tracking does not have to "miss the mark."

Marketers Moving More Budget to Email Marketing

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Joel Book

Two recent studies provide compelling evidence that marketers are turning to digital marketing – and specifically email marketing – to improve marketing effectiveness.

According to the “2009 ANA/MMA Marketing Accountability Survey” from the Association of National Advertisers and Marketing Management Analytics, “The No. 1 strategy for marketers who wanted to improve effectiveness without spending more, according to the June 2009 poll, was shifting from traditional to digital media. More than one-half of respondents also reported shifting spending away from brand-building initiatives, and 38% were putting more spending into lower-cost media.”

Tactics Used by US Marketers to Improve Marketing Effectiveness

Change in Marketing Spending for Select Media in 2009

And as more marketers shift to digital media, the tactic that is seeing the largest increase in spending is email.

According to the “2009 Media Survey Results & Analysis” study conducted by Round2, “40% of US Marketers reported that they had increased spending on email marketing in 2009.

What This Means for Marketers

Increased dependency on email marketing means three things:

1. Email is no longer optional. It has firmly established itself as the #1 tactic for 1to1 marketing. And email has become the “go to” tactic for word-of-mouth marketing as brands empower email subscribers to “share” email messages and offers with their friends on Facebook, their followers on Twitter, and their connections on LinkedIn.

2. Email marketing will become more sophisticated as marketers move aggressively to integrate email with other tactics and technologies – like CRM, SMS, POS, Websites, and Social Networks -- that are used to keep customers connected to the brand. The cornerstones of effective email marketing will be Integration, Automation and Optimization.

3. ESP (Email Service Provider) selection will become a more strategic decision. Marketers must evaluate and select an ESP by their ability to provide “industrial strength” application functionality plus consulting services including 1to1 marketing strategy, email and landing page design, email deliverability, and application integration.

What do you mean my tracking is phishing?

Monday, September 14, 2009 by Karen Balle

Click tracking. We all do it. It's a best email practice. We all want to see who is following our links, what draws our subscribers in. Was this targeted email marketing campaign effective? What was the most interesting part of the email? Where are my readers engaged? Was this email campaign better targeted than last week's?

But how you do it makes a huge difference with spam and virus filters. What do I mean? I'll tell you a secret. Phishers and spammers like to use IP addresses and URIs of popular websites in the text of their emails and then put in HTML that makes it look like the recipient is clicking on http://www.bank.com. But you don't do that, right? What you might do is use http://www.partnercompany.com or even http://www.yourbusinesssite.com in the email that you're sending out through your favorite ESP, ExactTarget.

That's a no-no. Definitely not an email deliverability best practice. Why not? Because you want us to track email clicks in those targeted emails. You have a domain set aside just for us and that's the domain that we use for your email campaigns. Your subscribers see http://www.yourbusinesssite.com, but they click on a link to http://email-yourbusinesssite.com.

And that, my friends, looks like you're trying to be tricksy.
"So what do we do, email guru?" you cry in despair. Let me give you a little email design tip that will make a huge difference with filters like Postini and MessageLabs (both of which are used frequently in B2B email), or email providers like Gmail and Hotmail.

Use your words. Wow your targeted opt-in audience with your awesome descriptive powers.

What's more appealing to you anyway? I know which one I'd click on.

Look how we've grown! or http://www.exacttarget.co.uk/
Come party with us! or http://www.connections09.com

Email is Still Communication King, but Social Media is No Jester

Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Blaine Cooper-Surma

In 2003, with the introduction of MySpace, the way we communicate with one another drastically changed.

Last year, MarketingSherpa ran a survey to help it better understand society’s perception of social media regarding its role in marketing communications. What did these marketing experts discover, you ask? They found that 97 percent of respondents use social media platforms, like MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook as complimentary marketing mediums to the current communication king – email.

So why are email service providers like ExactTarget not threatened with the rise in social media usage? The answer is simple. Email, as a means of communication, allows social networking sites to send relevant information to its users. Social media enterprises have realized the convenience and effectiveness of email – hence the reason you receive an automated email when someone posts on you Facebook wall or sends you a Linkedin connection request. Essentially, your personal email account funnels all activity that occurs throughout your numerous social media accounts into one location. For this reason, email isn't going anywhere – at least anytime soon.

So where does ExactTarget fit in this picture? We fully understand the importance of social media and its ability to expand the reach of your email marketing campaign. For example, another resource that should be added to your marketing arsenal, as a means of facilitating subscriber list growth, is the social forward feature.

In the past few years social media has emerged as an effective tool in the marketing world, however, we agree with the 97 percent that still find email is the primary means of marketing communication.

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. – Irene Peter

Truly a One-to-One Marketing Company, Not Just an Email Service Provider

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

As I am looking back over the 14 weeks that I have been here this summer, one of the biggest things that has hit me is that ExactTarget is not just an email marketing company. They are not just an email service provider. They are truly a one to one marketing company that has a full line of products to help increase the marketing ROI for a company.

Yes, we do email. We actually send some of the most intelligent and customer-driven email through our dynamic content capabilities.

But what else is in our product line?

SMS: We have the ability to develop and execute powerful SMS text message campaigns to engage customers on the spot.

Voice: We have a product that can send targeted and specific messages to consumers by telephone. Adding this personal touch moves a company way beyond simple TV advertisements.

Landing Pages: These microsites enable users of ExactTarget’s already powerful email software platform the chance to call customers to action through a targeted website, designed specifically for the particular action.

When a company uses all four of these tools together, they have the ability to become a very sophisticated marketer that engages consumers in a relevant way.

Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern

Email Marketing Software Integration Tool: Embedded

Friday, August 21, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

One question I find that comes up all the time is: what is embedded?

To begin to answer that question, you have to first know what ExactTarget’s software does. ExactTarget is not simply an email service provider, but a One-to-One Marketing software that services permission based email marketing, SMS marketing, and voice campaigns for companies throughout the world.

So what is embedded?

In the simplest form, ExactTarget Embedded is a product integration of the power of ExactTarget’s one-to-one marketing software with an external application. Companies then build their own tools and software on top of the platform ET has created.

Both independent software vendors (ISV) and web-based applications are prime candidates for embedding this platform into their list of tools.

Let’s say I sell a CRM tool and want an email component as well, ExactTarget can be embedded into that software and is then powered by ExactTarget.

If I am an eCommerce site that offers web-based services and want to offer email marketing in my product mix, then ExactTarget can be embedded into the platform I am already using.

In both of these examples, the end customer never knows that they are using ExactTarget because the company provides its own look and user interface on top of the ExactTarget software.

Kyle Schroeder

Email + Social Media: The Future of B-to-B Marketing?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 by Joel Book

At the recent ANA/BtoB Magazine conference in Chicago, Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director for services marketing at Avaya, and Jason Ferrara, VP Corporate Marketing at CareerBuilder.com presented a terrific session titled "How B-to-B Marketers Are Using New Media," in which they discussed how they have increased spending on new media, especially in the past year.

"We do search, email marketing and social media. That's the holy trinity of online marketing," said Dunay. He also noted that – with no new money in the marketing budget – he has paid for his new media efforts by decreasing spending on print, TV, radio and other traditional media. Ferrara has done the same at CareerBuilder.com

Avaya and CareerBuilder.com are not alone in embracing new media. According to a recent survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB Magazine, 20% of b-to-b marketers used social media in 2007. This year, 66% of b-to-b marketers are using social media.

My Take

I think it’s becoming more and more clear that email + social media is an effective strategy for business development. And there are three reasons:

1. Attracting Email Subscribers. One of the biggest benefits to social media is the ability to attract new email subscribers. Brands that provide a compelling reason for members of social networking sites to subscribe to their email communications are finding that these sites are an ideal venue for list growth. And as these people become new email subscribers and use Social Forward to share email content with those in their online social networks, they become powerful influencers.

2. Professional Networking. With more than 45 million users representing 150 industries around the world, LinkedIn is the biggest networking watering hole for business professionals. It’s just as effective for attracting talent as it is for generating referrals and product recommendations. But be on the lookout for WSJ Connect from The Wall Street Journal, a new networking site that’s in the works. It will also be aimed at professionals and its being billed as the “LinkedIn killer.”

3. Lead Generation. Social networking sites provide a natural gathering location for people who are passionate about a particular brand or interest. Engaging these individuals with offers that are relevant is proving to be smart business. An excellent study from OneUpWeb shows that ads on social networking sites work. As the report states in its summary, “Repeated exposure through the synergy of sponsored ads and search results increases familiarity with the brand. This is vital for generating sales both online and offline.” And once these leads are generated, email provides the most effective tactic for lead nurturing and aiding the buyer’s decision-making process.

Will Email Security Learn From SSL Certificates?

Thursday, July 16, 2009 by Kevin Nuest

In Al Iverson’s blog post, Gmail: Authentication icon for verified sender he talks about the new “Super-Trustworthy” icon that can be turned on in Gmail. Right now it only appears beside legitimate emails from Paypal and eBay.

This made me begin to wonder if email clients like Gmail and Yahoo would take a page out of the SSL certificate industry’s playbook. If you go to any of these sites you will notice when you click on “Login” that the address bar in the browser changes. Not only does it go to the https site, but the address bar also appears green with the company’s name and logo in it. Companies pay good money to provide this piece of mind to their customers.

What does the future hold for email deliverability? Will the Googles and Yahoos of the world start charging each company if they want to be put on the whitelist to ensure commercial email is delivered? With many email providers out there, it could get very costly and confusing if you had to work with each one individually to make sure your 1 to 1 Marketing campaign was a success.

Regardless of what the future holds, having a strong Email Service Provider will help alleviate many headaches. To learn more about working closely with you ESP to improve deliverability, check out another great post by Al Iverson, You Control Your Deliverability Reputation, but Your ESP is Critical to Ongoing Success.

You Control Your Deliverability Reputation, but Your ESP is Critical to Ongoing Success

Thursday, July 16, 2009 by Al Iverson

Over on Email Insider, George Bilbrey of ReturnPath provides some very good advice on how senders are ultimately in control of their own ability to enjoy deliverability success. He writes, "From time to time we run into marketers who think that they have deliverability covered because they have signed up with an Email Service Provider (ESP). You've probably even seen some ESPs that are promoting their very high delivery rates. This is confusing and misleading, because the ESP fully controls only one of the five major drivers of deliverability failures."

Though there is a caveat or two, this is actually very solid advice. So much of deliverability is driven by your list hygiene and send practices. But, I do believe that an ESP brings a lot to the table; empowering you to get as much of your mail delivered as possible. ExactTarget is actually pretty darn good at doing this, if I do say so myself. George explained five different things that impact your deliverability, and explained that only one of them is controlled by the ESP.

True, but simplistic. What about proactive block and bounce monitoring? Customizable blacklist alerts. Specialized reporting to review and monitor your sending reputation. Active deliverability and strategy consultation. The Big Rolodex of every ISP we've ever dealt with. Active multi-client experience, helping you understand if the deliverability issue you're facing today is really aimed at you, or if you're only in the cross hairs accidentally due to an ISP issue.

We help you translate all of this crazy data and these complex issues into plain English terms that can be easily understood so that clients can apply our best practice guidance to their day-to-day email marketing campaigns.

On the flip side of that, there's a secret that ESPs rarely reveal: ESPs are very bad at getting bad mail delivered. If you're a spammer, ISPs want to block you. No amount of "ISP Relationship Management" on the part of ExactTarget or some other ESP is going to prevent that. What we do instead, is teach you how not to be a spammer. The ExactTarget application does some of the work there; it sets you on the right track to process bounces, feedback loops, authenticate mail, and so on. But none of these things can overcome a deliverability issue caused by poor permission practices.

In that way, George is absolutely right. People are very much mistaken if they think that they are all set just because they happen to be working with an ESP. You can't discount the fact that high complaint rates, bounce rates, spamtrap hits, and content issues all play a role in your deliverability. Get these things wrong and your deliverability is sure to suffer. To that end, these are things that we help ExactTarget clients address every day, but George is right: these are all data points that refer to what is being sent and whom it is being sent to, not which ESP platform it is being sent from.

The moral of the story? I think we're both right. What do you think?

Quality Internships Begin with Effective Recruiting

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

ExactTarget has an excellent internship program that is well developed and focused on providing worthwhile experiences for both the student and the company.

I hear from many of my friends that they just aren’t be utilized at their internships. They sit around and surf the internet for 6 of the 8 hours they are on the clock because they don’t have anything to work on.

That is not the case at ExactTarget.

This is week #7 for me and I am juggling a handful of meaningful projects. I have been able to work with several different people and departments and take on work that is significant and challenging. I didn’t really know much about the world of email service providers or email marketing software, but after an intense week of training and a dive headfirst into the channel sales department of ExactTarget, I have picked it up.

I would strongly encourage any company to carefully consider how they build an internship program. Be willing to challenge and push your interns. Let them fail. But, should you hire the best and brightest, maybe they will succeed.

Keep in mind, this all begins with recruiting the best talent. Using a targeted email campaign or SMS marketing can be a great way to reach out to college students.

While undergoing this process, make sure you emphasize three areas of your company:

1. What an intern does and how you will challenge them.

2. The kind of culture your company has fostered.

3. The core values that are rooted in your company.

You will find these are important questions that college students have when they think about and talk up companies.

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

Showcase Your Expertise in Email Marketing!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Joel Book

On January 20-22, 2010 hundreds of top email marketers will gather in Miami for MarketingSherpa's 5th Annual Email Summit & Expo. It's the world's largest email conference and will feature Best Email Marketing examples of how email is being used for Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer 1 to 1 Marketing.

If you'd like to be a featured speaker at this conference, now is your chance. MarketingSherpa is looking for B-to-B and B-to-C email marketers to share Case Studies and best practices from their own recent real-life tests and tactics.

But don’t delay. Speaking proposals are due by Friday, July 24^th. Click here to submit your speaking proposal.

What Kind of Presentations are Selected by MarketingSherpa?

MarketingSherpa is looking for actual email marketers (i.e., not email marketing software vendors or agencies) to present Email Marketing Campaign case studies that show what they did, how they did it, and what results they achieved. So if you’re an agency or service provider, encourage your client to speak at this important event.

If you’re an agency or service provider, consider moderating a panel of multiple email marketers that are focused on “proven” advanced tactics -- see MarketingSherpa’s list of suggested panels below (or make up your own).

If you want to see an example of the kind of email marketing case study that gets rave reviews at MarketingSherpa Email Summit, check out the following ExactTarget Recorded Webinars that feature Johnston & Murphy and Dreamfields Pasta. Both of these case studies were presented at last year’s Email Summit.

And one more thing to remember -- All speakers get their own free ticket to the Summit!

Marketing to the Gen Y College Student’s Interests When Recruiting

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

Marketing to the Gen Y College Student’s Interests

In Experience, Inc.’s Recruiter Whitepaper, they suggest marketing to student interest as a way for today’s companies to recruit Gen Y employees. They found a discrepancy in students’ top fields of interest and fields they find job offers in (page 5).

Experience suggests tailoring job postings to fit student interests may increase recruiting yield. I think they are right on track of keeping information relevant.

An opt in email marketing campaign can be one way to connect with Gen Y and keep them updated with job information that might be different from someone in their 40s. The ability to develop targeted email campaigns is another feature of a quality email service provider, like ExactTarget.

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

Metrics-Driven Video Email Marketing

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Just noticed this story on PR Newswire:

Flimp Media, a developer of online video marketing and viewer analytics solutions, announced today that it is partnering with on-demand email provider ExactTarget to offer email marketers a metrics-driven video email messaging solution.

Flimp is a solution that allows you to create, distribute, and track video content in your email and landing page marketing. They are working with ExactTarget through the Extensions Network, a program in which applications that integrate with the ExactTarget application are made available to users.

Read more about the solution on the ExactTarget Extensions Network website.

How to track opt-ins?

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Al Iverson

A client wrote me in response to a previous blog post on spam complaints, asking about the best way to track how people opt-in. That's a good, but complicated question. It might be too detailed for a blog post, but here are my thoughts on the topic. (Feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions.)

If you're using an online method of list signup, track all the variables you request from the person. Name, address, phone number, whatever. Also, make sure you track the IP address they signed up from. If you're really technology savvy, track browser information (Firefox on Linux, for example). All of this data will help prove to ExactTarget that the person opted-in, if there is ever a spam complaint issue.

If recipients opt-in to your mailings when ordering a product or service from you, the transaction details are important. Obviously we're not going to ask you to provide the person's credit card number, but the rest of the details (what was ordered and when, with details) helps to make the case. I used to work for an e-commerce service provider, and that data was always excellent protection against spam allegations.

If the signup method is an offline signup method like a paper form, record all that information obtained via the paper form. I'd recommend recording it in something like an Excel file or Access database. On the (unlikely) chance somebody would ever sue you for spam, you probably should keep those paper forms, too. Make sure you record the date that the form was filled out.

You don't have to actually upload all of this extra information into ExactTarget. It can amount to a lot of data, and if you're not actually using it for segmentation or personalization, I wouldn't bother. The important thing is that you keep this data somewhere that you can access, in the event that we contact you about a spam complaint. Keep it in an Excel file, an Access database, text file, your CRM system, or some place similar.

Keep in mind that we're going to ask you for this info only in unique situations. We're not asking you to pull this information and send it to us for every single spam complaint received back from an ISP, for example. We have a process wherein specific complaints are escalated when the potential for a broader spam issue is observed, and that's when we're going to reach out.

And thank you everyone who has helped us resolve a spam complaint issue by providing this information upon request. As I've mentioned before, there's a direct tie between resolving these issues and getting your mail delivered. I'm very appreciative of how helpful our clients are in working with us to ensure their deliverability isn't negatively impacted by a spam issue.

A Single Spam Message Can Sink the Ship

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Al Iverson

Here's a tale that highlights why it's important never to send a single spam message. Every email message you send should be desired by and explicitly requested by the recipient. If not, you're going to end up doing something that upsets an email administrator, blacklist operator or internet service provider.

Last week, one of my coworkers approached me. She tried to forward a personal message from her work email account over to her university alumni account. That message was bounced back with "Message rejected due to spam policy." She sent it to the deliverability team, and I investigated. Here's what I found:

Some client of ours sent ONE SINGLE MESSAGE to a bad address at that university.
The university's email server caught the spam message and routed it to an administrator for review.
The administrator reviewed the message and saw that there is no way that recipient could have legitimately opted-in. It wasn't a valid address; it didn't belong to a person.
The administrator then immediately blocked ALL emails from ExactTarget.

Thankfully, we picked up on this very quickly. I contacted the university, who kindly worked with me to resolve the issue, and the block was quickly removed. I won't always be that lucky, though. Some administrators are not always so friendly, not always so willing to address an issue and remove a block. If that administrator had been unwilling to help, mail sent by other clients would have been negatively impacted.

As a result, that client found their ability to send email messages suspended, while they work with us to figure out what the heck went wrong, and implement a resolution plan to help ensure they're not mailing any other non opt-in email addresses. (And if the client won't do what we require, they won't find their ability to send re-enabled.)

This is the kind of thing we're trying to prevent with our anti-spam policy and opt-in contract clauses. Simply put, opt-in matters. Wander away from opt-in and stuff like this is going to happen, and you're going to end up blocked, maybe even causing other people to get blocked. This issue shows that there is a direct correlation between opt-in and the ability to deliver mail.

In a perfect world, the university would have notified us before blocking. But, the university administrator (whom I actually know from industry circles) is overworked, just like every other spam fighter. He knows me, but he didn't remember that I worked at ExactTarget. Nor does he have the time to notify every single company who he's blocking for sending spam. If he did, his workload would explode exponentially, and he would be deluged with replies from bad guys wanting to debate him on the merits of their send practices. (Seriously, nobody sending spam ever admits that it is spam. They always lie. Get lied to a couple dozen times a day, every day, by every spammer you talk to, and eventually, you stop listening. This is why ISPs work from complaints and statistics, not your personal assurances.)

Email Marketing Term of the Day: Content Detective

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Amanda Cross

The spam that you receive in your inbox on any given day is probably only a fraction of what is actually sent to you. This is because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) evaluate the content of the emails that are sent to you and reject many of them.

There are many different factors that an ISP can use to tell if an email is spam. Without knowing all of the criteria that the ISPs judge emails against, it's possible that you could accidentally include content in your email marketing message that causes the ISP to think it's spam.

Content Detective is a tool within ExactTarget that helps you identify spam triggers in your email content. this feature mirrors the logic used by spam-filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters. It then recommends a resolution to each identified problem. After you run the Content Detective, you can then edit the email to remove the triggers.

Typically, having just one potential trigger word or phrase will not affect your email's deliverability. However, if two or more potential triggers are found, you should remove them to improve your email's chances of being seen by the subscriber.

Yahoo Issues

Monday, June 1, 2009 by Al Iverson

Some clients may be experiencing intermittent issues delivering mail to email addresses at Yahoo domains. The bounce message incorrectly indicates that the sender is blacklisted on one of the Spamhaus blacklists. This issue has been ongoing since approximately May 22nd, 2009.

Note that Yahoo appears to be bouncing this mail in error. No ExactTarget IP address is blacklisted by Spamhaus. Also note that various industry sources have indicated that this issue is not specific to ExactTarget. List managers utilizing other email service providers (or sending via their own server) are also running into this issue.

On May 27th, Yahoo sent the following notice to the Yahoo Mail Admin email list: "We have received reports that some senders are seeing intermittent IP blocks when sending to Yahoo! Mail, with the SMTP error message from us citing that the block was due to a Spamhaus listing -- e.g., "553 5.7.1 [BL21] Connections not accepted from IP addresses on Spamhaus PBL." (See our full list of SMTP error messages at http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/ <http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/> .)

If your IPs are currently not listed on any Spamhaus blocklist but you are seeing this error, please be assured that we are looking into the matter. We shall post an update once we have resolved the issue."

Spamhaus noted this issue on their blog on May 30, 2009, referring to the blocking of mail under these circumstances as "erroneous."

Note that we have been working directly with Yahoo on this issue throughout the past week, and will continue to do everything within our power to drive this issue toward resolution as quickly as possible. As the situation is out of our control, we are not able to provide an ETA for resolution.

If you have any questions, please contact ExactTarget's client success center or deliverability team through the usual channels. We'll be sure to update everyone with more information as soon as possible. (Click here to sign up for this blog's RSS feed.)

Calling all MAAWG Senders!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Al Iverson

If you’re an ET client, this post probably isn’t all that useful to you. However, I do know that a lot of other industry folks read my blog, and so I’m using this platform (my work blog) to spread the word to others in the email industry.

ExactTarget is a member of MAAWG, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group. MAAWG is comprised of internet service providers, email service providers, webmail providers, direct senders, security/anti-virus-related technology companies, and other related entities. MAAWG exists so that all of these constituencies can work together to collaboratively address spam and security issues.

I’ve found MAAWG to be a useful forum to work both with senders and receivers to address issues relating to spam and best practices. It’s helpful to hear other perspectives and to learn from many different experts, all with different experiences and areas of focus.

If you are a MAAWG member, and if you work for a direct sender or email service provider, have you signed up for the Sender Subcommittee email list? At the last MAAWG general meeting, Laura Atkins and I found that a lot of senders don’t seem to know about the email list.

Hence, my post here. If you’re an email sender, and you’re in MAAWG, and you haven’t signed up for the Senders Subcommittee email list, please do so! It’s very valuable, and the more folks that join in on our discussions, the more good work we’re able to accomplish together.

If you don’t know how to sign up for the senders list, feel free to contact Laura Atkins or I, and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.

(Note that this is for MAAWG members only. If you’re not a MAAWG member, this doesn’t apply to you. If you send your emails through an email service provider, that entity (i.e. ExactTarget) is where you would want to start to discuss best practices and email abuse-related issues. Probably not MAAWG.)

What do you want out of DKIM?

Monday, March 23, 2009 by Al Iverson

I'm active in a lot of the different email industry groups, and on a number of those lists, the hot topic lately is DKIM – DomainKeys Identified Mail.

What is DKIM? Wikipedia explains that DKIM “is a method for E-mail authentication, allowing a person who receives email to verify that the message actually comes from the domain that it claims to have come from.”

A lot of the ongoing discussion surrounding DKIM relates to what people want from the specification. Senders (ESPs, big brands) and receivers (ISPs, spam filtering device manufacturers, and MTA (mail transfer agent – i.e. “mail server software”) publishers seem to want different things from the spec.

Anything I tell you about my desires for the specification are certain to be tinted by my own biases. As is the case with anyone. But, allow me to be up front about those biases. I'm a representative of a sender, email service provider ExactTarget. But I also have a strong history in the realm of blacklists, having created more than one of them myself, and having worked with various ISPs over the years to help them filter out spam.

So what do I want out of DKIM? I want two things out of DKIM, or out of email authentication in general:

Enable better whitelisting. Prove that mail from domain.com really came from domain.com, and then a receiving site has the ability to better develop statistics specific to those messages. Maybe IP address reputation doesn't go away, but if an ISP can see that very few messages sent from a domain generate complaints, I suspect the smarter ISPs are going to be more likely to allow that mail through, regardless of its source IP address. (The flip side of this is that if I'm a bad sender, it becomes harder to sidestep a bad reputation by changing IP addresses. This I believe to be a feature, not a bug.)

Enable better blacklisting. Is there a better way to promote message security? Block, or more heavily filter, unsigned mail, especially if it comes from a domain where you've recognized that other messages sent are being signed properly. This is controversial, and it's hard to say if it would ever come to be. But this is about what I want, and this is what I want. I want, when signing up for an ISP feedback loop, or registering with a spam filterer or MTA vendor, to be able to tell them that all of my mail is signed, and that you can feel free to discard or reject unsigned mail.

Pros: Stops a lot of phishing in its tracks. Helps recipients to understand that if the from domain is “ebay.com”, the message really did come from eBay.

Cons: Doesn't stop “lookalike domain” attacks. (What if the message came from ebay7.com?) Some technology experts really hate the idea of using DKIM in this way, because they feel that a system issue would cause a legitimate message to be nuked. I think the risk here is lower than others represent, and I also think that some of the folks making this case, while I respect them, they do not run abuse desks at large ISPs. I find it hard to believe that ISPs would never consider this.

Making things better for those who send mail isn't my only consideration. Making things easier for those who block or filter mail is also very important to me. If I ran a spam filter, how would I want things to work? That's part of where I'm coming from here. How does DKIM, or authentication in general, fit into a spam filtering strategy?

So what do YOU want out of DKIM, or out of email authentication in general? Comments and feedback welcome. (Please keep it gentle – I won't approve any comments with insults.)

Five Ways You Can Use One-to-One Marketing to Engage Families

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Angela Khan

Retailers have been facing the multi-channel purchase challenge for years now. How do I get customers to keep shopping in the stores? How do I track when they’ve purchased from my store or online? What are they buying online that they don’t buy in the store?

Triggered shopping cart abandonment emails and cross-sell product recommendations have helped combat these challenges, but there’s still a variety of one-to-one marketing tools that anyone can use to better engage families. 2009 introduces the multi-touch messaging challenge. Where does mom prefer her marketing messaging? When does she check her email? When do the kids check their email? Do they still use traditional Internet Service Providers (ISP) to check their email? Should we be connecting with them via email, text, or social media?

Below are five solutions to the multi-touch messaging challenge. These solutions not only target audiences by demographic sector, but provide messaging options that connect the whole family.

#1 – There’s a good chance that stay-at-home parents just went back to work. This means there’s no time for non-relevant marketing communications.

What you can do: Use Email with Live Offers and AMPScript. By creating emails with personalized offers based on past purchase history or self-selected preferences, subscribers will get offers that are relevant to only what they’ve requested offers for. And they need them now more than ever.

#2 – With less disposable income than ever before, families will be highly selective in what they spend their leisure activity budget on.

What you can do: Stop sending messages with offers that don’t engage. Use Filters and Measures to pull only segments that open and click-through (or even redeem) your prior offers. By targeting this engaged group you can offer the most compelling offer possible to encourage them to spend their budget with you.

#3 – Mom is becoming more digital than ever thought possible.

What you can do now: Start incorporating social media tools (such as ShareThis) into your emails to empower mom to become the hip trend-setter her children never thought she’d become. By making it easy for her to share your messages, you reach a wider audience in the social realm.

#4 – Teens connect much more often with text messaging than with email.

What you can do now: Use text messaging to reach teen customers and you’ll reap the benefits. With the power of text messaging, teens can forward along offers for products they want their parents to purchase for them.

#5 – Multi-lingual families and friends connect online more than any other communications medium.

What you can do now: Segment subscribers by language preference. With International Sends, emails are translated to the appropriate language of the subscriber’s Internet browser. Family and friends will be happy to know they can connect to home…wherever they are.

Finally, the parent’s age will likely determine the social media tools they use.

What you can do now: Profile parents by segment. Typically older parents will appreciate emails with product ratings and reviews while younger parents appreciate emails that connect them to other communication channels. Not every tool will be for every parent. Test, test, and retest to get the best results.

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