April 27, 2006 4:00 AM PDT
Cleaning up a bad e-mail reputation
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The company, known for its sweepstakes and magazine subscription promos, stepped up its efforts to be a good e-mail citizen, and to make sure it didn't send out unwanted messages. It developed its own tools. It hired outside consultants. It signed up two full-time employees to oversee all of its e-mail delivery.
Quite an investment of time and money--but worth it, if it meant the company, which relies on mail to do business, avoided having its messages junked by spam filters.
"It has become more of a challenge to send e-mail," Sal Tripi, the director of operations at Port Washington, N.Y.-based Publishers Clearing House, said in an interview. "Because the ISPs are taking certain actions to catch illegitimate mailers, legitimate mailers have to take action to make sure that they are not caught in the same net."
In reputation-based filtering, senders are graded on their practices and assigned a reputation score based on several variables, such as complaint rates, volume of mail sent and response to unsubscribe requests. It's one of the latest techniques used to combat the problem of spam, which makes up more than 80 percent of all messages sent today, according to e-mail security service Postini.
Also in response to spam, e-mail service providers are aggressively filtering messages to keep the medium useful for their customers. That, allied to the reputation push, is putting a burden on companies to meet the requirements of those providers. If they don't, they risk a slur on their character--and a subsequent ding to their business.
"It is a consistent and ever-changing business challenge to keep abreast of changing ISPs, policies and filtering," said Heather Soule, a representative of online invitation service Evite. "We adhere to the policies that most spam filters recognize, like proper formatting, and test through Habeas to ensure that the e-mails are delivered to our users' in-boxes and not junk/spam or bulk boxes. It is a laborious, constant challenge."
As a result, e-mail is no longer an easy and cheap way to get messages out to a large number of people, but one that needs careful management.
The score
Habeas, a Mountain View, Calif. Company, is a reputation-filtering service that also offers to help companies fix their e-mail reputation--for a price. Companies such as WalMart.com, Staples, Vanguard, Geico and Tickets.com have hired its services, Habeas said. One rival, which also specializes in getting mail delivered to the in-box, not the junk mail folder, is New York-based ReturnPath.
What makes a reputation?
These factors are typically used by antispam filters to tag offenders.
- The number of complaints, often generated by recipients flagging the e-mail as spam.
- The percentage of mail sent to nonexistent e-mail addresses.
- The frequency with which mail hits spam traps (e-mail accounts set up to monitor spam).
- Unsubscribe performance. How quickly is a recipient unsubscribed or are such requests ignored?
- Sending infrastructure. Spammers tend to have poor sending infrastructure, often stealing resources.
- Volume--how frequently and how much mail is sent.
Source: ReturnPath
"E-mail is everything but free. Nothing good can remain free," Habeas CEO Des Cahill said. "Just like everyone spends money on search engine optimization, e-mail reputation and delivery is fast emerging as an industry."
Industry experts liken an e-mail reputation to a driving record or a credit score. With a bad driving record, you pay more in insurance premiums. With a low credit score, you don't get good rates on loans. If your e-mail reputation is bad, your mail gets junked.
"We monitor our reputation on a daily basis," Tripi, of Publishers Clearing House, said. "We like to make sure that our reputation remains clean, but it is a big effort."
But if you have a credit score problem, you really only need to hit the three agencies that maintain those records. It's a lot tougher for businesses that want to set their e-mail reputation straight: Hundreds of places compute e-mail reputations, and they may all do it in a different way.
"E-mail senders have not been able to see or touch their reputation," Habeas's Cahill said. "The actual reputation data is distributed among hundreds of antispam vendors and ISPs."
It would be easier if there was a central database of good mailers as opposed to bad mailers, Tripi noted. However, if one Internet service provider delivers a company's mail, others will likely deliver it too, since practices are similar, he said.
"If your business is based on best practices, and your customers are treated appropriately, the ISPs want to deliver that mail," Tripi said. "They are not going to hold back good mail from their customers if they are confident that the businesses sending that mail are doing the right things."
See more CNET content tagged:
reputation, spam, spam filter, inbox, e-mail
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Without notice or finishing my perishables log extentions of the tomatoes from this weeks produce order, I walked into the auditorium to pull a grey tote from next to the spread of delicious bacon sandwiches and glazed cookies with sugar sprinkles on them for discovery:
Regarding the greatest prize of all, a clean election vote; I descided to weigh in the bucket as shrink and cut my losses; less my meal expenses and the raffle, to submit as my email for insurance purposes.
Getting something for nothing takes and makes 'Oodles' of paper for pocket change.
'Coffee talk for JBoss"
-Samiam
Sure you may not LIKE advertisements in your email box, but then again, watch where you enter your e-mail on the internet.
I hear no one complain about the tons of coupons and crap you get in snail mail, but people want to cry and ***** about email ads.
Please make sure when you talk about spam, you speak of REAL spam. Not just things you DON'T Want in your e-mail.
9 times out of 10 people who complain about spam, put their e-mail address in a box and checked off 'I agree' to something which put your email on a list for mailing. Regardless of it was apparent to you or not, read what you sign before you sign it.
You may think my e-mail is spam when it is really not. I am I'm 100% CAN-Spam Compliant, and all our e-mails are opt in or double opt, but people still complain. "Report as spam" is NOT an unsubscribe link. So as educate yourself on what is and is not spam. People who think anything they don't want in their email box is spam, is flat out wrong. There are criteria and we live by them.
Often I suspect it's people who are too dumb or too lazy to actually unsubscribe and just junk the newsletter. (Although having had my share of newsletters keep coming after you've unsubscribed, I could believe some complaints of failed unsubscribes.)
Although, equally bad... people who pay your ISP to let them deliver mail to you THAT YOU NEVER ASKED FOR. And no matter how many times you hit JUNK, there it is, every week, in your inbox. Yes, I'm referring to Hotmail and the stupid MLB e-mails.
let's stop be so nice to criminals!
The FAQ: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#ISPSolutions" target="_newWindow">http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#ISPSolutions</a>
The application: <a class="jive-link-external" href="https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts" target="_newWindow">https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts</a>
Also the best way to avoid spam filters is ask your subscribers to whitelist you email address. I have a email whitelising generator on my site as a free service to all here: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.keywebdata.com/?page_id=28" target="_newWindow">http://www.keywebdata.com/?page_id=28</a>
seem to `think' that i have ever even bothered looking at spam
`HELLO' (rapps on skull)
if i wanted something from you
I WOULD HAVE ASKED OR LOOKED FOR IT
i dont care how they try to `justify' it
they(and the other 2 billion spammers out there that clog up my inbox)
are basically wasting my time(and my $$-as im paying per meg..)
the next time some git in some resturant goes `hey bill i got a great idea'
can i buy a small thermonuke
Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure ... You're going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study. ...