Your purchased list … is spam.

This morning I got spam from someone selling email addresses. The mail starts:

Hi Laura,
I am aware of your expertise in the field of marketing and how well you execute your campaigns.
We specialize in customized email list services and provide global data. […]
“You are receiving this email as you have shown interest in data related solutions. Occasionally you will receive brief messages with offers and our services. Please reply UNSUBSCRIBE if you no longer want to receive messages from us”.

Yeah. No. Just. No.
trashforblog
The above message is a prime example of why spam is a problem.
They’re selling targeted email lists…

… but their targeting is SO BAD they targeted me.

They are attempting to compliment me…

... but in a way that demonstrates they are just randomly throwing words in an email.

They’re selling addresses…

… wonder if these are the folks that are selling my address and resulting in a lot more B2B spam in my inbox.

Their email violates CAN SPAM…

… because of course it doesn’t have a physical address. 

They tell me they know I’m interested in “data related solutions”…

… but I have no idea what “data related solutions” are.

Look, this is spam. No one really wants it.
This doesn’t stop companies from wanting to send spam, though. In fact, I’ve had a lot of calls recently from folks looking for deliverability help when they’re sending to B2B purchased / acquired / rented / traded lists. But there isn’t anything I can really do. The mail is unsolicited and while and most people don’t want it or don’t care about it. The filters are actually designed to block this kind of mail.
That’s something I’m not sure we discuss enough. We talk about wanted mail and inbox delivery and engagement and opens and clicks and all these measurements as part of delivery. But I’ll tell you a secret: filters are about stopping unsolicited mail. That’s right, filters use wanted as a way of measuring unsolicited. If a lot of people say the mail is unwanted then it’s probably unsolicited and it’s a target for blocking.
If you’re sending unsolicited mail, and you’re getting blocked, there isn’t a lot anyone can do for you. Anything deliverability folks tell you to do, like authentication, just makes it easier for the filters to block mail. Asking for a whitelist will just make the filter maintainers laugh. They are hearing from their users that the mail is unwanted. With opt-in data, we can present data showing that users asked for it. Without it, we are stuck with “uh, I’m sure they’ll like it if they saw it!” That’s not very persuasive.
There is a pervasive opinion among marketers that buying and selling B2B lists is OK. That unsolicited mail to businesses is acceptable. This opinion is not shared by the recipients.
Look, I’m a small business owner. Time is one of my most precious commodities. My days are full. Marketers waste my time and energy. There’s very little that I’m interested in that comes in unsolicited. I mean, OK, it gives me blog content, but it’s still a waste of time, particularly when they drop my address into marketing automation and don’t have unsub links.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like marketing email! I do. In fact, I just made another purchase today from AppSumo. I subscribe to other marketing lists, too. But those offers aren’t unsolicited and they are actually targeted and they are wanted mail. The point is, mail doesn’t have to be unsolicited to be effective and generate revenue.
 

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Appendleads is not unusual

I called out David Williams from appendleads.com yesterday for his spam. Sure he’s a spammer, his database is full of garbage information and his email violates CAN SPAM but he’s not that unusual in the realm of list sellers. He is very typical of the people I see offering lists for sale.
List sellers are the internet version of used car salesmen. Everyone knows they are slimy sales guys who will do anything to close the sale. They don’t have a real web presence, just visit appendleads.com and see what I mean.
And yet, people still buy lists from them! I have no doubt that my spammer friend has a nice little business selling email addresses. He sends out spam, he gets a few responses, makes a tidy profit and then sends out another spam, hooks a few more people and makes more money.
OK, so not all list sellers are like appendleads. Some of them go so far to build a website. But at the core they’re the same. They are selling data that isn’t clean, it’s not opt-in, it’s not been verified.
This is why so many of us harp on not buying lists. The sales guys talk a great game, but they aren’t selling what purchasers think they’re getting. They also don’t care. They have no incentive to clean up their data. They have no incentive to accurately represent what they’re selling. All of the risk is on the person that sends the email. Once they have their money, the buyer is on their own.
Can you ever successfully purchase a list? I’m sure some senders have. But that experience is closer to winning more than a thousand dollars in the lottery than an actual good business decision.

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April 2016: The Month in Email

We are finishing up another busy month at WttW. April was a little nutty with network glitches, server crashes, cat woes, and other disruptions, but hopefully that’s all behind us as we head into May. I’ll be very busy in May as well, speaking at Salesforce Connections in Atlanta and the Email Innovation Summit in Las Vegas. Please come say hello if you’re attending either of these great events.
April2016MiE
Speaking of great events, I participated in two panels at EEC16 last month. We had a lot of great audience participation, and I met many wonderful colleagues. I wrote up some more thoughts about the conference here. I also had a nice conversation with the folks over at Podbox, and they’ve posted my interview on their site.
In the Podbox interview, as always, I talked about sending mail people want to receive. It always makes me roll my eyes a bit when I see articles with titles like “5 Simple Ways to Reach the Inbox”, so I wrote a bit about that here. In addition to sending mail people want to receive, senders need to make sure they are collecting addresses and building lists in thoughtful and sustainable ways. For more on this topic, check out my post on list brokers and purchased lists.
These same not-so-simple tricks came up again in my discussion of Gmail filters. Everyone wants a magic formula to reach the inbox, and — sorry to burst your bubble — there isn’t ever going to be one. And this is for a good reason: a healthy filter ecosystem helps protect all of us from malicious senders and criminal activity. The email channel is particularly vulnerable to fraud and theft. The constant evolution of filters is one way mail providers can help protect both senders and recipients — but it can be challenging for senders and systems administrators to keep up with this constant evolution. For example, companies sometimes even inadvertently filter their own mail!
I also wrote a bit about how B2B spam is different from B2C spam, and how marketers can better comply with CAN SPAM guidelines in order to reach the inbox. We also republished our much-missed friend and colleague J.D. Falk’s DKIM Primer, which is extremely useful information that was at a no-longer-active link.
One of my favorite posts this month was about “dueling data”, and how to interpret seemingly different findings around email engagement. We also got some good questions for my “Ask Laura” column, where we cover general topics on email delivery. This month we looked at “no auth/no entry” and the Microsoft Smartscreen filter, both of which are useful things to understand for optimizing delivery.
Finally, we are pleased to announce that we’ve joined the i2Coalition, an organization of internet infrastructure providers. They posted a nice introduction on their blog, and we look forward to working with them to help advocate and protect these important technical infrastructures.

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Are you still thinking of purchasing a mailing list?

Last week there was an article published by btobonline promoting the services of a company called Netprospex. Netprospex, as you can probably gather from their company name, is all about the buying and selling of mailing lists. They will sell anyone a list of prospects.
The overall theme of the article is that there is nothing wrong with spam and that if a sender follows a few simple rules spamming will drive business to new heights. Understandably, there are a few people who disagree with the article and the value of the Netprospex lists.
I’ve stayed out of the discussion, mostly because it’s pretty clear to me that article was published solely to promote the Netprospex business, and their point of view is that they make more money when they can convince people to purchase lists from them. Dog bites man isn’t a very compelling news story. Data selling company wants you to buy data from them isn’t either.
They are right, there is nothing illegal about spam. Any sender can purchase a list and then send mail to the addresses on that list and as long as that sender meets the rock bottom standards set out in CAN SPAM. As long as your mail has an opt-out link, a physical postal address and unforged headers that mail is legal. The only other obligation on the sender is to honor any unsubscribe requests within ten days. So, yes, it is legal to send spam.
But legal action isn’t the only consequence of spamming. Today I received the following in an email from a colleague.

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