Political Spam

Back at it

Back at the office after traveling to visit a bunch of our US friends recently. A lot of news, both in and out of the email space, happened while we were gone. The biggest stories are outside the email space and I will admit to following the coronavirus news probably closer than I should. (My graduate work was done across the hall from one of the major avian epidemic monitoring labs. This is the kind of thing we discussed at lunch and over beers.)

July 2016: The Month in Email

We got to slow down — and even take a brief vacation — in July, but we still managed to do a bit of blogging here and there, which I’ll recap below in case you missed anything.

At the beginning of the month, I wrote about email address harvesting from LinkedIn. As you might imagine, I’m not a fan. A permissioned relationship on social media does not equate to permission to email. Check out the post for more on mailing social media contacts.
Even people who are collecting addresses responsibly can face challenges. One of the most important challenges to address is paying attention to your existing subscription processes, testing them regularly, evaluating effectiveness and optimizing as needed.
Our most commented-upon post this month was a pointer to a smart writeup about Hillary Clinton’s email server issues. Commenters were pretty evenly split between those who agreed that they see this kind of workaround frequently, and those who felt like regulatory processes do a good job managing against this kind of “shadow IT” behavior. I wrote a followup post on why we see this kind of workaround frequently in email environments, even in regulated industries, and some trends we’re seeing as things improve.
In other election-related email news, we saw the challenges of campaign email being flagged as spam. As I pointed out, this happens to all campaigns, and is nothing unique to the Trump campaign. Still, there are important lessons for marketers here, too, in terms of list management, email content, frequency, and engagement — all of which are inextricably linked to deliverability.
Speaking of spam and engagement, Steve took a look at some clickthrough tracking revealed through a recent spam message I received — and why legitimate marketers should avoid using these sorts of URL referrers.
On the topic of authentication, I wrote a quick post about how seeing ?all in the SPF record tells me one thing: the person managing the record isn’t doing things properly. Need a refresher on authentication? Our most-read blog post of all time can help you out.
And as always, send me your interesting questions and I’ll be happy to consider them as I resume my Ask Laura column in August.

Spam filtering is apolitical

It’s time once again for news organizations to pay attention to spam filters. This happens sometimes. Intrepid news organizations breathlessly report on how a particular ISP is blocking mail from a certain political figure our organization. I’ve written about political and activist lists being blocked or filtered before. Some of these posts are from the very early days of the blog even.

In 2007, AOL came under fire when their filters were blocking mail from Truthout.org. Truthout’s response was to yell, loudly, this was censorship and unfair. I talked about it in two blog posts: They’re not blocking you because they hate you and It really can be your email.
The reality is mail wasn’t blocked because AOL didn’t like Truthout or what they stood for. In fact, the folks I knew at the postmaster desk who handled blocking issues were more likely to support Truthout than try and censor them. But, the reality was that truthout.org was sending bad mail and it wasn’t wanted and so it got filtered. Don’t believe me? Carl Hutzler ran the AOL postmaster team and blogged about it at the time. His blog is gone, but archive.org has the full text.

Bad data drives delivery problems

It’s a wild election season here in the US. In the past few presidential elections, email has played a bigger and bigger role in messaging and fundraising. President Obama’s campaign used email effectively, but sent huge volumes. In fact, the volume was so heavy, it led to a joke on the Daily Show.

More on Newsmax and spam to political lists

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.

Update on Herman Cain advertising male enhancement drugs

Shawn Studer from newsmax.com contacted me today with a statement about the Herman Cain mailing list.

Repurposing addresses

Multiple news sources are reporting that Herman Cain, republican presidential hopeful from 2012. Maddow on Herman Cain’s new business model. Apparently, his email address list is for rent by just about anyone, including companies selling cures for erectile dysfunction.

Michele Bachmann Announces She's Done

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) announced today that she’s not going to seek re-election in 2014.
Last time around, the race between her and Minnesota businessman Jim Graves was very close. Mr. Graves lost by a very narrow margin. Graves had already announced his intention to take on Ms. Bachmann again next year. As the news came out on Bachmann’s decision, both camps made it clear that they think their person would have won the rematch. Just yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio explained that Graves seemed to be facing “an uphill battle vs. Bachmann.” At the same time, recent polling by the Graves campaign showed him slightly ahead of Bachmann. The race certainly would have been very close, but it was looking to be a scenario much like last time around, which, at the end of the day, Ms. Bachmann did end up winning.
So if she’s got at least a fair shake at winning, why wouldn’t she take it all the way? Well, that’s what brings us to why I’m writing about this here. It seems that Bachmann’s failed 2012 presidential campaign was accused of stealing the email list of Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators (NICHE) back in 2011. In a bit of an attempt to re-write history, they later came to an after-the-fact settlement to label the action a “rental” and NICHE received a $2,000 payment from the Bachmann campaign.
And that’s just one of multiple ethics issues Minnesota’s face of the Tea Party is facing. In March, her attorney confirmed that Bachmann is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for alleged misuse of campaign funds. One of her own 2012 presidential campaign staffers, Peter Waldron, filed a complaint that Ms. Bachmann’s campaign improperly used leadership PAC funds to pay campaign staff. There were further allegations regarding payment of staffers and attempting to require exiting staffers to sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from talking to police or attorneys. And the FBI is now said to be involved.
I’ve consulted for multiple email service providers who have told me how challenging it can be to work with political senders. At least one ESP prohibits this kind of mail outright, out of frustration with candidates regularly playing fast and loose with permission. PACs, parties, candidates and other groups seem to buy, sell or trade lists constantly, and as a result, spam complaints and blocking would often follow. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me to see Ms. Bachmann’s campaign engaging in something email list-related that they probably thought was just common usage, when the rest of us in the email community would find that use unwelcome and unethical. (And it’s not just her party guilty of this kind of thing.)

Fast and loose

Politicians often play fast and loose with permission and data. This can cause them all sorts of problems with email delivery at major ISPs. I really expect that politicians buy, sell, transfer, spindle, mutilate and fold data. If they can use it to further their goals, they will. And, many of the consumer protection and privacy laws don’t apply to political groups.
The news that Representative Bachman may have known that some of her mailing list was taken and used by others is a surprise even to me. I talked with a few ESP reps, though, and they told me that this was mostly par for the course and that they often have a lot of delivery and compliance issues with their political clients. Many have had to suspend or terminate political clients, and a couple people mentioned SBL listings.
This isn’t a problem with just one side of the political spectrum, it seems endemic in how the game is played.

Political insanity with email

In one of the more boneheaded email related moves I’ve seen from a political group ever the Obama / Biden campaign has announced that people can go to their website, enter in the email address of a Republican friend, pay some money, and the campaign will send an email to your (soon to be ex-) friend on your behalf.

Email as a PR problem

Email is a great way to connect to and engage with people. It is also a medium where the sender doesn’t get to control the message as well as they might in other media. This means that sometimes email campaigns go wrong in a way that drives a national news story about how you are a spammer.
In the stress and flurry of dealing with public accusations of spamming many companies overlook the fact that the underlying issue is they are sending mail that the recipients don’t want or don’t expect. If there is a public uproar about your mail as spam, then there is a good chance something in your email strategy isn’t working.
Even in the recent White House as spammers strategy, there is a strong chance that they are actually using reasonable and industry standard methods to collect email addresses. However, in their case, they are a large target for people to forge email addresses in forms. “Bob doesn’t like the president, but I’ll sign him up for this list so he can learn how things really are.” or “Joe doesn’t like the democrats so I’ll sign him up for their mailings just to piss him off.”

When you are confronted with an email campaign that upsets a large number of people there are a number of steps you should take.
Step 1: Gather information
This includes information internally about what actually happened with the campaign and information from the people who are complaining.
Externally: Get copies of the emails with full headers. If you’re working with people who do not want to reveal any details of the mail they received then you may not be able to fully investigate it, but if they do you will have everything you need right there. Figure out where their address came from (you do have good audit trails for all your email addresses, right?).
Internally: Talk to everyone who worked on that particular campaign. This includes the geek down in the IT department who manages the database. Figure out if anything internally went wrong and mail was sent to people it wasn’t intended for. I know of at least 2 cases where a SQL query was incorrectly set up and the unsubscribe list was mailed by accident.
Step 2: Identify the underlying problem
Look at all the available information and identify what happened. Was there a bad source of email addresses? Did someone submit addresses of spamtraps to a webform? Was there a technical problem? Again, talk to your people internally. In many companies I have noticed a tendency to try and troubleshoot problems like this at very high levels (VP or C-level executives) without involving the employees who probably know exactly what happened. This sometimes leads to mis-identifying the problem. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it.
Step 3: Identify the solution
Once you know what the problem was, you can work out a solution. Sometimes these are fairly simple, sometimes not so much. On the simple end you may have to implement some data hygiene. On the more complex end, you may need to change how data is handled completely.
Step 4: Inform the relevant parties of the solution
Make a statement about the problem, that you’ve identified it and that you’ve taken steps to fix it. How you do this is a little outside my area of expertise, although I have participated in crafting the message, rely on your PR folks on how to communicate this. In the Internet space, honesty is prized over spin, so do remember that.
Every company is going to have the occasional problem. In the email space, that tends to result in the company being labeled a spammer. Instead of being defensive about the label, use the accusation to drive internal change to stop your mail from being labeled spam by the recipients.

White House spamming: update

There’s quite a discussion about the White House spam going on over at Bronto Blog.
Ken Magill wrote about the controversy today in Magilla Marketing. Anyone who’s followed his newsletter for a while knows he’s been reporting on politicians buying and sharing lists for the last few months. He has some data that may help clarify where the addresses aren’t coming from.

White House sending spam?

There has been some press about political spam recently. People are receiving email from the White House that they have not opted into. At a recent press conference a reporter challenged the press secretary to defend the practice.
Chris Wheeler over at Bronto blog points out that CAN SPAM doesn’t apply as this is political mail, and CAN SPAM only covers commercial email. He also notes that most of the mail came from “forward to a friend” links which the sender has little to no control over.
Gawker has a post up “Everything you need to know about Obama’s Spam-Gate.”
There are a lot of issues here. Chris asks a number of questions on his blog, that I encourage people to think about.

McCain Campaign Spamming

As I mentioned in my post on spam from the Obama campaign, there have been reports of spam coming from the McCain campaign. However, the McCain campaign does not seem to be sending the volume of mail that the Obama campaign is, and so they are not as visible.
A recent post over at Denialism Blog shows that the McCain campaign has some of the same problems as the Obama campaign. Chris talks about the unsubscribe options he is presented when trying to stop the spam he is receiving. He suggests the campaign adds another option: