• by Tom Hespos , January 14, 2003

How about being a spammer, but not knowing it?

If you use email lists as an advertising tool, it’s easy to become a spammer and not even know it. Advertisers may not know it, but there are several middlemen between their ad agency or in-house email capability and the origination point of a given email list.

This kind of structure muddies the waters and makes it difficult to hold a single individual or organization accountable for names that ought not to be on email lists. The unscrupulous email providers that paint the entire industry with their sketchy reputation operate within these murky waters, dodging suspicion and responsibility for their actions. And some of those actions can really get us into trouble, like harvesting email names from the web and claiming that they’re opt-in names, or refusing to let people unsubscribe from future mailings.

We may never escape the true underbelly of the email industry – people who send porn spam and spam for products that are just plain illegal are simply grabbing email addresses from wherever they can get them. But sometimes we see spam coming to our boxes from otherwise respectable brands, and we know that somewhere along the line, our email addresses were added to a database that they never belonged in, and then they got sold through a tangled web of brokers to some poor media planner who wasn’t paying attention to where the email names were coming from.

A week or so before Christmas, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Email Committee announced its Ethical Email Guarantee. This new set of guidelines is “to be applied to the manner of obtaining and use of email lists by IAB member companies. The guidelines will assure advertisers and agencies that proper list sourcing efforts have been adhered to and that disclosure is articulated on insertion orders by IAB member companies,” according to the IAB’s press release on the subject.

IAB member companies adhering to these guidelines agree to guarantee to the advertiser that every name they mail to has opted in to receive third-party offers. They also agree to disclose the source of any record mailed to, including the exact method by which permission was obtained, if the advertiser or the recipient makes an inquiry. In addition, the guidelines call for the list provider to issue a refund of an invoiced amount if any of the guarantees provided for in the guidelines are violated.

These guidelines can help to separate the responsible email marketers from the unethical, get rich quick types.

As I mentioned before, many times we see spam coming from otherwise respectable brands and simply know that they didn’t mean it – they were probably sold a crummy list. When this happens, I’d like to suggest that we do something about it. After all, we’re a pretty small industry, and many times we know someone on the marketing side at these brands. We should be letting them know what’s going on. Try using the sample email below:

Dear Marketing Director:

I recently received the attached correspondence from one of your marketing partners. As I have never opted in to receive third-party offers, I consider this communication spam. I felt it was my duty to inform you that your list provider has violated your trust by misrepresenting my email address as an opt-in record of their database. I also feel it is appropriate to inform you that if the terms of your contract with the list provider are governed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ethical Email Guarantee, you are entitled to a refund from said list provider. I would suggest that you forward this communication to your agency partner or in-house group that handles email advertising so that they can obtain your refund.

Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]

If we send enough of these letters, and if enough marketers act on them, we can provide a significant economic incentive for email providers to clean up their act. And that’s a good thing.