Back to basics
The most basic step companies should take to avoid being lumped in with spammers is to make sure they have a working process by which recipients can request to be taken off an e-mail list. It's one standard upon which few people disagree, be they anti-spam advocates or e-mail marketing associations. It's also one of the most common requirements of current state anti-spam laws.
The easiest approach for enabling recipients to opt out is the best, experts say. That would include offering a link to click to immediately be taken off the list, said Michele Frost, vice president of customer relationship management and strategic services at YesMail.com, which provides e-mail marketing lists and services in Chicago. But marketers can't stop there. They must be prepared to respond when consumers use other methods, such as calling customer service or simply replying to the e-mail to request to opt out, Frost said.
While that may seem obvious and easy, problems handling opt-out requests remain common. In many cases, the culprit is poor communication between an enterprise and its e-mail marketing service providers. eWEEK and its publisher, Ziff Davis Media, in fact, faced complaints starting in January from angry readers who continued to receive e-mail newsletters even after requesting to be taken off the distribution lists.
The problem stemmed from the fact that Ziff Davis officials received the unsubscribe requests rather than the outsourcer used for delivering the e-mail, said John MacKenna, managing editor of newsletters for eWEEK and Ziff Davis. That caused lag time and human error. eWEEK alone received about 100 complaints after launching three e-mail newsletters sent to 150,000 readers. The company now is moving to an automated opt-out process directly linked with the outsourcer, Double Click, said MacKenna.
