Another opt-in in the wild
- laura
- Asides , Best practices
- October 10, 2008
The EEC has an article today about a poorly done opt-in email that DJ Waldo received. How close is that to what you send?
Related Posts
Opt-in Reconfirmation in the Wild
What’s an opt-in reconfirmation email? Also called, as fellow blogger Al
Iverson mentioned lately, a re-engagement email, or a permission pass email.
Al links to DJ Waldow’s write up on Shop.org’s recent re-engagement
strategy, and today I see that Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse,
talking about Coach’s turn at culling their list through this process. What’s interesting here is that, according to Janine, Coach didn’t target this reconfirmation email only at recipients who never open or click. She says she does both, regularly, and received this email message anyway. Another friend of mine, who is also a Coach subscriber, reports to me that she receives regular emails from them (most recently as just about
ten days ago), but that she did not receive this reconfirmation email message.
Spamfilters are stupid
Ben over at MailChimp writes about spamfilters that are following links in emails resulting in people being unsubscribed from lists without their knowledge. I strongly suggest clients use a 2 step unsubscribe system, that does not require any passwords or information. The recipient clicks on a link in the email and confirms that they do want to be unsubscribed once they get to the unsubscribe webpage.
Even more concerning for me is the idea that people could be subscribed to emails without their knowledge. For some subset of lists, using confirmed (double) opt-in is the best way to make sure that the sender really has permission from the recipient. Now we have a spam filter that is rendering “click here to opt-in” completely useless. I am sure there are ways to compensate for the stupidity of filters. As usual, though, the spammers are doing things which push more work off onto the end user and the legitimate mailers.
SpamZa: corrupting opt-in lists, one list at a time
A number of ESPs have been tracking problematic signups over the last few days. These signups appear to be coming from an abusive service called SpamZa.
SpamZa allows anyone to sign up any address on their website, or they did before they were unceremoniously shut down by their webhost earlier this week, and then submits that address to hundreds of opt-in lists. This is a website designed to harass innocent recipients using open mailing lists as the harassment vehicle.
Geektech tested the signup and received almost a hundred emails 10 minutes after signing up.
SpamZa was hosted on GoDaddy, but were shut down early this week. SpamZa appears to be looking for new webhosting, based on the information they have posted on their website.
What does this mean for senders?
It means that senders are at greater risk for bad signups than ever before. If you are targeted by SpamZa, you will have addresses on your list that do not want your mail. Some of those addresses could be turned into spam traps.