E-mail List Auditing Service Planned

Efforts are under way to launch an e-mail list auditing service to ensure addresses released for rental comply with the Can Spam Act.

Media auditing giant BPA Worldwide and San Francisco-based online auditor I/Pro Inc. are working together to establish auditing standards they hope will expand the e-mail list rental market. I/Pro's research indicates that Can Spam, the federal law regulating unsolicited commercial e-mail messages, has created doubts for potential buyers and sellers about which list vendors are reputable and follow legal and industry best practices.

“We think this would have a tremendous impact on the market, with people trusting and buying e-mail media, the same as they are doing now through print media,” says I/Pro vice president of marketing David Barlin.

Several variables are being evaluated for audits. These include but are not limited to information concerning e-mail address authentication, data that's been encrypted for privacy and security, identification of the data source, information about e-mail servers used for deployment, and validity of the opt-in process.

Deliverability also may be audited with respect to how well opt-in records penetrate spam filters and reach targeted e-mail inboxes. Data on open and clickthrough rates for e-mail lists also might be included in audits.

Barlin says I/Pro has been holding discussions with data management and brokerage firms, as well as list owners and list users who are seeking input and offering suggestions for the auditing service's design.

“We're still looking for more feedback from e-mail list vendors and advertisers,” he adds. “We don't have a launch timetable yet, but we do expect to offer a service. At this point, I don't want to over- or under-promise anything to the market.”

There are expectations that list auditing would encourage more response-list owners to release e-mail records. List managers and brokers primarily offer postal records with e-mail addresses appended and vice versa. Access to lists of actual e-mail buyers is rare compared with the vast number of postal buyer lists available.

As the market matures, e-mail lists likely will become more segmented with information on the e-mail domain level, product interests, age and geography, says Sam Young, interactive services manager at Millard Group Inc. in Peterborough, NH.

Most current e-mail lists are derived from self-reported interest profiles, like an online version of the reader service or “bingo” cards that have long been used to generate postal lists of inquirers in the publishing sector.

The main sources for consumer e-mail lists are Web sites that gather e-mail addresses through co-registration and affinity marketing programs, says Miles Olson, product manager for UnsubCentral Inc., an e-mail list suppression service in Austin, TX.

Can Spam has had a less adverse impact on business-to-business lists. Analysts say it's not difficult to obtain opt-in, responsive e-mail addresses from people at work who subscribe to e-mail alerts or consent to receive offers by e-mail.

Most e-mail list processing has been limited to suppressing names, with little data appended except for postal address, job function, type of business and gender on business-to-business files, notes Larry Karipides, director of interactive media at American List Counsel Inc., Tarrytown, NY.

Much of the innovation in e-mail list strategy and data analysis involves keeping house files off the rental market. When e-mail lists are rented, owners typically control the deployment and refuse to send data to service bureaus for list hygiene or enhancement, a common practice with postal files.

Even ordinary merge/purge is difficult because data owners almost never release e-mail files for service bureau work. To get around this problem, UnsubCentral matches postal records that have appended, encrypted e-mail records to identify and eliminate e-mail lists with duplicate encryptions, says Olson.

“There are no viable e-mail lists for catalog prospecting like in the offline world. Paid search engine marketing works better than e-mail lists for consumer prospecting. I'd sooner spend money on paid search than on e-mail list prospecting,” says a vice president at another list firm.

House e-mail files primarily are being used for customer retention offers, retail traffic building and to boost catalog response, according to Michelle Volpe, vice president of Media Source Solutions in Novato, CA. She expects e-mail lists will become more widely used in tandem with postal files as companies seek innovative ways to expand their available universe of customers.