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COMPLIANCE:
CAN-SPAM is the law, but permission is good marketing
Experienced online marketers recognize there is a huge gap between what the law
permits and what consumers consider SPAM. Ultimately, consumers want content that
is relevant to them delivered when they can use it. Best practices including confirmed
opt-in, delivery authentication, and sender reputation are important components
of quality email delivery, but in the long run are not enough to satisfy consumers'
demand for relevance. Other commonly touted best practices such as double-opt-in
also do not address the fundamental issue of content relevance, and even worse cannot
be verified by a third party. Tactara encourages its customers to use available
technology and information to deliver consumers content that is expected and relevant.
Ultimately, sending consumers off-topic or unexpected content, even if CAN-SPAM
compliant, will result in reputation problems and consumer dissatisfaction.
AUTHENTICATION:
Best practices start with identity authentication
A gaping hole in the original standards adopted for email transmission has been
the lack of sender authentication, making it easy for senders of SPAM, phishing
attacks, viruses and other malicious email content to use falsified header content
as a tool to thwart filters and deceive consumers. Authentication standards, such
as SenderID and DomainKeys, have been proposed over the past few years to prevent
such header falsification, and recently DomainKeys has been adopted as an IETF proposed
standard under RFC 4871. DomainKeys is a domain-level authentication framework for
email using public-key cryptography for verification of both the source of the email
and its contents. Both SenderID and DomainKeys are part of the basic set of tools
used by legitimate marketers to differentiate themselves from senders of SPAM and
other illegitimate email content, and should no longer be considered an option,
but a requirement. As part of its technology services, Tactara provides customers with
access to software tools enabling the automated setup of SenderID records (SPF)
and DomainKey records (DKIM) for all customer campaigns.
REPUTATION:
Consumer satisfaction equals optimal results
Critical to any online marketer's long-term success is the development of a high
quality reputation within the online community. Large recipient domains now routinely
evaluate the messages they receive and assign a reputation score to the senders.
This reputation is typically built on two basic metrics: the number of user complaints
and the percentage of invalid recipients. These metrics are also the basis for the
bulk email whitelisting programs provided by the largest recipient domains, including
America Online and Yahoo! Marketers that receive high reputation scores understand
that the foundation of a good reputation begins with maintaining the highest quality
standards for the source of consumer data. This means either first-order data collection
and ownership, or managing data sourced directly by the data owner. Ongoing data
pruning based on non-responsiveness and other criteria is also a critical component
of maintaining quality data.
DELIVERABILITY:
Consistent delivery requires domain expertise
Often overlooked or inadequately understood by online marketers, the technical methods
used to deliver email are just as important as the email recipient and content.
Many of the largest consumer ISPs place restrictions on the delivery of email to
their domains, and understanding these criteria is critical to achieving successful
delivery while maintaining cost- and time-efficient operations. Some recipient domains
also support whitelisting programs specifically for bulk email senders, enabling
marketers to develop reputation-based sending with the specific ISP. These whitelisting
programs, along with related informational tools such as feedback loops, can be
utilized to support best practices and ensure the highest quality delivery.
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