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Protecting customer data

There have been a number of reports recently about customer lists leaking out through ESPs. In one case, the ESP attributed the leak to an outside hack. In other cases, the ESPs and companies involved have kept the information very quiet and not told anyone that data was leaked. People do notice, though, when they use single use addresses or tagged addresses and know to whom each address was submitted. Data security is not something that can be glossed over and ignored.
Most of the cases I am aware of have actually been inside jobs. Data has been stolen either by employees or by subcontractors that had access to it and then sold to spammers. There are steps that companies can take to prevent leaks and identify the source when or if they do happen.

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Data Integrity, part 2

Yesterday I blogged about eROIs contention that consumers should not be wasting the time of lead gen companies by filling in fake data. There were lots of good comments on the post, and I strongly encourage you to go read them if you are interested in different perspectives on the data issue.
One of the arguments I was making is that people are only going to give accurate information if they trust the website that is collecting information. I do, strongly, believe this. I also believe very strongly that websites collecting information need to do so defensively. It is the only way you can get good information.
This ties in with an earlier post about a website that collects email addresses from any visitor, then turns around and submits those addresses to webforms. Hundreds of mailing lists have already been corrupted by this group. They are a prime reason companies must design address collection process defensively. There are people who do bad things, who will take an opportunity to harass senders and recipients. This company is not the first, nor will they be the last to commit such abuses.
Taking a stand against abusive companies and people may be useful, but that will not stop the abuse. It is much easier to design process that limits the amount of abuse. For lead gen, in particular, confirmed opt-in is one way to limit the amount of bad data collected. As a side effect, it also results in less blocked mail, fewer complaints and better delivery.

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Best time to send marketing email

Pages and pages have been written about the best time to send email. Marketers spend significant amounts of energy discussing and researching the best time of the day and the best day of the week to send email. I have long thought that these discussions do not put enough attention on individual end users and how the recipients interact with email.
Researchers recently developed a model for email user behaviour that splits email users into two classes “e-mailaholics” that send, and presumably read, email all the time and “day labourers” that send, and presumably read, email during standard business hours. There is very little transition between groups, 75% of users stayed in the same usage group over the 2 years of the study.
What does this mean for senders? Senders need to know know how their recipients use email and which user group recipients are. By analyzing clicks and opens, senders can classify recipients and use that data to send mail that is more relevant and better targeted.
h/t arXiv blog at Technology Review

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