Permission and B2B spam

Two of the very first posts I wrote on the blog were about permission (part 1, part 2). Re-reading those posts is interesting. Experience has taught me that recipients are much more forgiving of implicit opt-in than that post implies.
The chance in recipient expectations doesn’t mean, however, that permission isn’t important or required. In fact, The Verge reported on a chatbot that will waste the time of spammers. Users who are fed up with spam can forward their message to Re:Scam and bots will answer the mail.
I cannot tell you how tempted I am to forward all those “Hey, just give me 10 minutes of your time…” emails I get from B2B spammers. I know, those are actually bots, but there is lovely symmetry in bots bothering one another and leaving us humans out of it.

Speaking of those annoying emails, I tweeted about one (with horrible English…) last week. I tagged the company in question and they asked for an example. After I sent it, they did nothing, and I continued to get mail. Because of course I did.
These types of messages are exactly why permission is so critical for controlling spam. Way more companies can buy my email address and add me to their spam automation software than I can opt-out of in any reasonable time frame. My inbox, particularly my business inbox, is where I do business. It’s where I talk with clients, potential clients, customers and, yes, even vendors. But every unsolicited email wastes my time.
It’s not even that the mail is simply unwanted. I get mail I don’t want regularly. Collecting white papers for my library, RSVPing to events, joining webinars all result in me getting added to companies’ mailing lists. That’s fair, I gave them an email address I’ll unsubscribe.
The B2B companies who buy my address are different. They’re spamming and they understand that. The vendors who sell the automation filters tell their customers how to avoid spam filters. Spammers are told to use different domains for the unsolicited mail and their opt-in mail to avoid blocking. The software plugs into Google and G Suite account because very few companies will block Google IPs.
I’ve had many of these companies attempt to pay me to fix their delivery problems. But, in this case there’s nothing to fix. Yes, your mail is being blocked. No, I can’t help. There is nothing I can say to a filtering company or ISP or company to make them list that block. The mail is unwanted and it’s unsolicited.
The way to get mail unblocked is to demonstrate the mail is wanted. If you can’t do that, well, the filters are working as intended.
 

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July 2017: The month in email

August is here, and as usual, we’re discussing spam, permissions, bots, filters, delivery challenges, and best practices.

One of the things we see over and over again, both with marketers and with companies that send us email, is that permission is rarely binary — companies want a fair amount of wiggle room, or “implied permission” to send. There are plenty of examples of how companies try to dance around clear permissions, such as this opt form from a company we used to do business with. But there are lots of questions here: can you legitimately mail to addresses you haven’t interacted with in 5 years? 10 years? What’s the best way to re-engage, if at all?
We frequently get questions about how to address deliverability challenges, and I wrote up a post about some of the steps we take as we help our clients with this. These are short-term fixes; for long-term success, the most effective strategy is sending email that people want and expect. Engagement is always at the core of a sustainable email program.
We’ve also discussed the rise of B2B spam, and the ways in which marketing technologies contribute to the problem. B2B marketers struggle to use social and email channels appropriately to reach customers and prospects, but still need to be thoughtful about how they do it. I also wrote about some of the ways that marketing automation plugins facilitate spam and how companies should step up to address the problem. Here’s an example of what happens when the automation plugins go awry.
I wrote a few posts about domain management and the implications for security and fraud. The first was about how cousin domain names can set users up for phishing and fraud, and the second was a useful checklist for looking at your company’s domain management. We also looked at abuse across online communities, which is an increasing problem and one we’re very committed to fighting.
I also highlighted a few best practices this month: guidelines for choosing a new ESP and active buttons in the subject line for Gmail.
And finally, we celebrated the 80th birthday of the original SPAM. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know why unwanted email is called SPAM, but just in case, here’s a refresher….

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Parasites hurt email marketing

As a small business owner I am a ripe target for many companies. They buy my address from some lead generation firm, or they scrape it off LinkedIn, and they send me a message that pretends to be personalized but isn’t really.
“I looked at your website… we have a list of email addresses to sell you.”
“We offer cold calling services… can I set up a call with you?”
“I have scheduled a meeting tomorrow so I can tell you about our product that will solve all your technical issues and is also a floor wax.”
None of these emails are anything more than spam. They’re fake personalized. There’s no permission. On a good day they’ll have an opt out link. On a normal day they might include an actual name.
These are messages coming to an email address I’ve spent years trying to protect from getting onto mailing lists. I don’t do fishbowls, I’m careful about who I give my card to, I never use it to sign up for anything. And, still, that has all been for naught.
I don’t really blame the senders, I mean I do, they’re the ones that bought my address and then invested in business automation software that sends me regular emails trying to get me to give them a phone number. Or a contact for “the right person at your business to talk to about this great offer that will change your business.”
The real blame lies with the people who pretend that B2B spam is somehow not spam. Who have pivoted their businesses from selling consumer lists to business lists because permission doesn’t matter when it comes to businesses. The real blame lies with companies who sell “marketing automation software” that plugs into their Google Apps account and hijacks their reputation to get to the inbox. The real blame lies with list cleansing companies who sell list buyers a cleansing service that only hides the evidence of spamming.
There are so many parasites in the email space. They take time, energy and resources from large and small businesses, offering them services that seem good, but really are worthless.
The biologically interesting thing about parasites, though, is that they do better if they don’t overwhelm the host system. They have to stay small. They have to stay hidden. They have to not cause too much harm, otherwise the host system will fight back.
Email fights back too. Parasites will find it harder and harder to get mail delivered in any volume as the host system adapts to them. Already if I look in my junk folder, my filters are correctly flagging these messages as spam. And my filters see a very small portion of mail. Filtering companies and the business email hosting systems have a much broader view and much better defenses.
These emails annoy me, but I know that they are a short term problem.  As more and more businesses move to hosted services, like Google Apps and Office365 the permission rules are going to apply to business addresses as well as consumer addresses. The parasites selling products and services to small business owners can’t overwhelm email. The defenses will step in first.
 

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Your purchased list … is spam.

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

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