It seems while the experts are meeting to figure out how to stop spam, the spammers are exploiting new ways to spam. This morning my mailbox had over 100 messages with either the subject “market report” or “eviction notice.” What headers I checked showed this was from a botnet, sent to dozens of addresses at my domains.
Things are getting stranger and stranger with Newsmax and the politicians they’re managing lists for. Earlier this week, recipients on Scott Brown’s list received emails with the subject line “5 Signs You’ll Get Alzheimer’s Disease.” The advertisement was for products and information from Dr. Blaylock, a contributor to Newsmax Health. Scott Brown told the political reporter at WMUR in New Hampshire that he did not authorize this email was cutting ties with Newsmax
Newsmax contacted me after I posted about unexpected email to the Herman Cain mailing list. They wanted to make it clear to me that their mailings were all double opt-in and that they adhered to all best practices. They also said that select advertisers were allowed to put ads in the body of messages from the politician to their supporters.
It seems, though, that may not be the whole truth. After I received the message from Newsmax, I signed up on caintv.com to see if they really were using double opt-in. While it is very possible that Mr. Cain was using double opt-in during the campaign, he isn’t any longer. I started receiving emails immediately, with neither a welcome message or a confirmation message.
In the case of Scott Brown’s list, the advertisement wasn’t from an outside advertiser, the advertisement was for a Newsmax columnist. And the ad wasn’t in the body of a message to supporters, it was the message to supporters. Mr. Brown has this to say about his likeness and mailing list being used by Newsmax.
Christine Borgia has a post on the Return Path blog where she interviews a number of different groups (spamfilters, DNSBLs, mailbox providers) about their filtering strategy for the holidays. Overall, no one changes their filtering during the Holiday Mailing Season. On the other hand, many marketers do change their marketing strategies in ways that trigger more filtering and blocking.
The take home message? Pay attention to what is being sent and who it is being sent to. This is nothing new, but many marketers seem to forget it in the effort to get into their customers’ inboxes.
Mickey has a great story of what happened when he gave a lead gen company his email address. Over 200 emails in 2 weeks from companies that seem unrelated to the signup company.
It’s this behavior by PayDay senders that causes their mail to be filtered and has caused many, many ESPs just to prohibit that kind of mail on their systems. It’s very much the ugly underbelly of email marketing.