Message to Readers: About Our E-mail Practices

Open letter to readers:

There has been some chatter in the marketplace about my publisher, Penton Media’s, e-mail marketing practices.

Last week I attended a meeting where I was able to get some answers.

In the interest of transparency, I decided to share them here.

A couple answers weren’t pretty. For one thing, I found out we don’t have a permission box asking people if they want to receive third party ads. We simply start sending the ads. Not good.

But I also found out that our e-mail file is the heart of our business. Among other things, it drives ad revenue outside the newsletters and Webinar traffic. Space ads in the newsletters and on the Web sites don’t drive enough revenue to keep our business afloat.

However, I also found out readers can opt out of the third party ads—though I hope they won’t—and still receive the newsletters to which they are subscribed.

One result of the meeting is that we’re going to ad copy to our registration forms making it explicitly clear what happens as a result of the sign up.

“We’re glad you like our products. We like paying the bills,” begins the copy in its current draft form.

On another note, during the past few months, readers have been met by a maddening pop-up registration form. I finally got some answers about that, as well.

As a trade publisher, Penton’s goal is not simply to build as massive an audience as possible. Its goal is to create as massive a qualified an audience as possible.

Apparently, we were getting a lot of unqualified traffic from Google. These visitors would come in, read a page or two and leave.

The idea behind the registration wall is that qualified readers will take the time to register their e-mail addresses and a password. Unqualified readers will not. The registration wall was set to appear after five page views for previously unregistered readers.

Unfortunately, readers were getting these damnable things seemingly on a weekly basis. Apparently, this was a technical glitch that’s been taken care of. Readers who have registered should now get the registration wall just once a year for requalification purposes.

Also, I’ve been assured that newsletter subscribers will not receive any more e-mail than they already get as a result of registering for one or more of our sites.

However, those who register but who are not newsletter subscribers will begin to get promotional e-mail as a result of the sign-up. Currently, we don’t explain any of this. Not good.

But we’re going to fix it. We’re going to add explanatory copy in the “thank you” e-mail that is sent as a result of registration.

The bad news here is since I was the one making the stink about our lack of transparency, I get to write the copy. I’ll get to it as soon as I finish hitting this week’s deadlines.

Sincerely:

Ken Magill