Email Change of Address

How many readers have ever submitted an email change of address form? How many readers even know where to go to submit an email change of address form?
And I’m not talking about going to a particular retailer and saying “change my email address” I’m talking about using one of the companies that offer email change of address as a service. Where do they get their names and email addresses? I sure don’t know.
How many readers have actually purchased an email change of address service for one of your mailing lists? Do you know where the addresses came from?
I’m wondering how many people buy email change of address services, but have zero clue how to sign up for them. I mean, I know, you can go to FreshAddress or Experian and get ECOA services. But I don’t know how to tell either of them that I want to be included in their ECOA services.
So how do consumers get to be on a change of address list? And how opt-in is their participation?
One reason I ask is that a number of my clients have stumbled into serious delivery problems recently. Investigation generally points back to the ECOA service they used. So I’m wondering how actively and knowingly consumers are using ECOA services.
 

No one harvests email addresses any more
Have you audited your program lately?

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Are you sure? Part 2

There was a bit of discussion about yesterday’s blog post over on my G+ circles. One person was telling me that “did you forget you opted-in?” was a perfectly valid question. He also commented he’s had the same address for 20 years and that he does, sometimes forget he opted in to mail years ago.
As an anti-spammer with the idea that it’s all about consent, I can see his point. Anti-spammers, for years, have chanted the mantra: “it’s about consent, not content.” Which is a short, pithy way to say they don’t care what you send people, as long as the recipients themselves have asked for it.
This is the perfect bumper sticker policy. As with most bumper sticker policies, though, it’s too short to deal with the messy realities.
I’m not knocking consent. Consent is great. Every bulk mailer should only be sending mail to people who have asked or agreed to receive that mail.
But if your focus is on delivery and getting mail to the recipient’s inbox and getting the recipient to react to that mail then you can’t just fall back on consent. You have to send them mail that they expect. You have to send them mail that they like. You have to send them mail they will open, read and interact with.
If your permission based recipients are saying they forgot that they signed up for mail, that is a sign that the sender’s program is futile. These are people who, at one point or another, actually asked to receive mail from a sender, and then the mail they receive is so unremarkable that they totally forget about the sender.
Maybe that’s another reason the question “are you sure you didn’t forget you opted in” from clients bothers me so much. If I signed up and forgot that points to problems in your program, mostly that it’s totally unremarkable and your subscribers can forget.

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Some thoughts on permission

A lot of email marketing best practices center around getting permission to send email to recipients. A lot of anti-spammers argue that the issue is consent not content. Both groups seem to agree that permission is important, but more often than not they disagree about what constitutes permission.
For some the only acceptable permission is round trip confirmation, also known as confirmed opt-in or double opt-in.
For others making a purchase constitutes permission to send mail.
For still others checking or unchecking a box on a signup page is sufficient permission.
I don’t think there is a global, over arching, single form of permission. I think context and agreement matters. I think permission is really about both sides of the transaction knowing what the transaction is. Double opt-in, single opt-in, check the box to opt-out area all valid ways to collect permission. Dishonest marketers can, and do, use all of these ways to collect email addresses.
But while dishonest marketers may adhere to all of the letters of the best practice recommendations, they purposely make the wording and explanation of check boxes and what happens when confusing. I do believe some people make the choices deliberately confusing to increase the number of addresses that have opted in. Does everyone? Of course not. But there are certainly marketers who deliberately set out to make their opt-ins as confusing as possible.
This is why I think permission is meaningless without the context of the transaction. What did the address collector tell the recipient would happen with their email address? What did the address giver understand would happen with their email address? Do these two things match? If the two perceptions agree then I am satisfied there is permission. If the expectations don’t match, then I’m not sure there is permission involved.
What are your thoughts on permission?

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Emailpocalypse

Apparently emailpocalypse is coming on Monday. That’s when Facebook is going to release their email platform (the one no one knows anything about) and it’s going to DESTROY EMAIL MARKETING AS WE KNOW IT.
Are you ready?
I think my favorite doom and gloom scenario is: Facebook will throw out the book on email deliverability because it will likely be the first mass-user email platform that is whitelist-based. In other words, you will NOT be able to send to a user unless they have given you explicit permission to do so.
THE HORRORS! Marketers are going to have to get PERMISSION TO SEND EMAIL. OH NOES! The SKY! It is falling! Recipients are going to have to actually invite marketers in! They can’t just take permission, they have to be granted it.
Oddly enough, a lot of the folks who are having conniptions are also people who have been preaching permission for years. Really, if they’re already getting explicit permission, then this is no different. It’s just an email platform.
And even if Titan is somehow a total game changer and is going to require explicit permission, it’s not going to destroy email marketing. Everyone who has a facebook account already has another email account. Marketers who can’t get explicit permission to mail to the facebook account can certainly keep sending “permission” email to their other email accounts.

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