Is Co-Reg Data Spam?

Co-registration is Implicit single opt-in & occurs when a consumer fills out a form, e.g. in order to download content or register for an event. Sometimes this happens when a consumer registers for something on a third-party site, and the site shares the email addresses with sponsors. In either case, the website’s privacy policy must state that performing this action automatically opts the user into email marketing.  This is a commonly used method in the B2B marketing sector – It has some advantages, including:

• Requires the least amount of effort on the part of both the company and the customer.
• There’s no place for a subscriber to drop the ball, which can happen when the customer is required to “confirm” their opt-in.
• Quickly leads to a big list.

The problem is that the subscriber doesn’t connect registering for something to your subsequent email. If a subscriber forgets that he opted in, or doesn’t realize he has opted in, the risk is high that he’ll mark your email as spam. This is particularly true when too much time has elapsed between subscriber sign up and your first communication.

How to Engage

• Welcome Emails. When a new subscriber enters his information, an immediate auto-response email thanks and welcomes the subscriber. This email includes a customized message that tells him what to expect in future emails, and when to expect them. It’s courteous, and it also serves as a good way to begin earning the trust of your subscribers while setting proactive expectations.

• Explicit Opt-In. Requires the user to voluntarily (and explicitly) sign up for email marketing. Often, this takes the form an explicit sign-up for updates, or a checkbox on a registration page that reads something like, “I want to receive news and updates.”

• Confirmed or Double Opt-In. After the subscriber enters their email, the post-subscribe thank-you page may alert him to look for an email. Once he receives that email, he needs to click on a link or button to confirm the subscription. This separates the committed from the simply impulsive; those who click on the link really want to receive your emails – though there is always a risk that an interested subscriber will get distracted before she can click “confirm” in the follow-up email, or, worse, that your email will get lost or filtered.  As a result, you may lose interested subscribers.

Ugh... Spam Traps

Poor list aquisition practices will undoubtly produce a bad online reputation for your brand and could potentially lead you down the path of hitting spam traps.

Three Types of Spam Traps:

•     Typo Traps
•     Grey or Recycled Traps
•     Pristine Traps

The best advice we can offer is using double opt-in confirmation for list signup. It’s the only way to ensure the correct email address is added to the list, and the subscriber genuinely wants to receive emails from you.

Segmentation Works

Segmenting your email-marketing lists helps you get better open and click rates. By narrowing your focus and sending messages to targeted groups within your lists, your recipients will find your campaigns more relevant—and relevant campaigns get better results.

Segmentation can help increase email marketing metrics and conversion rates for marketing campaigns—and to boosting prospect engagement. With email volumes on the rise and the serious potential for emails to be lost or buried, you can improve your marketing effectiveness by targeting your campaigns to appropriate segments, rather than blasting the same campaign out to all your prospects.

Whois Data – A Google Trust Factor

SEO (search engine optimization) is important to modern marketing tactics. Frequently, the term SEO is thrown around in reference to your actual search rankings with the focus being better SEO = better rankings. While SEO, SERPS (search engine results page), and SEM (search engine marketing) oriented techniques aren’t always simple, we always encourage best practices. For more information related to SEO check out this extensive guide from SearchEngineLand.

We know that Google cares a lot about a sites trustworthiness and will factor it in when ranking your website in the SERPs. For Google, having a private or inaccurate WhoIS is seen as a negative trust indicator. A public WhoIS is a good first indicator to Google that you are a legitimate business.

MAAWG Provides an Update to their Best Practices

MAAWG has recently published a rewrite of 2 key documents to create their new “Sender Best Common Practices”.  MAAWG consist of the top ISPs in which we like to send email to and they want to bring the messaging community together in an effort to prevent messaging abuse such as spam, viruses, and denial-of-service attacks.

This is the first major rewrite on this topic in about 4 years.  This is great for those of us who send email and MAAWG has carefully listed the things that we should do if we are sending commercial messages.  In a sense they set the standard or rules that we need to adhere to.  Failure to follow the best practices is not in the best interest of the sender and can have long standing consequences that can cripple or destroy a business.   In this post I will highlight their document that you can consume later at your leisure.

In the write-up MAAWG states the various methods that we should implore to collect said addresses and they have graciously ranked them.

• Single-Opt-in (Good)
• Single-Opt-in with Notification (Better)
• Confirmed-Opt-in (Best)
• Implied (implicit) Consent

Now that we know the rights & wrongs of address collection lets dive into transparency of data.  I will admit that the phrase “transparency of data” sounds a bit ominous but it is a really cool way to be a top notch sender.  Being transparent with your data allows you to show ISPs and mail servers around the world that you are a trustworthy sender.

So how do we become transparent?  Fortunately for us the MAAWG brain trust has provided yet again.  Being transparent implores the proper use of some technologies that are already in place. This is a short list of what I feel are some of the essentials.

• WHOIS Information
• Email Authentication
• Feedback Loops
• Defining IP Environment
• Shared
• Dedicated

This is a short list of the key factors that create the transparency of data.  The “Sender Best Common Practices” document goes in to great detail about each one and they also provide a few that are not listed here.

Remember being transparent in the messaging community gives you major street cred so don’t be afraid to show what you got!

In closing I would like to thank MAAWG for providing such an awesome document.  As an organization they want us to be successful and they are telling us how to do it.  Please take a moment to read over the document and happy sending.