It’s controlled by ESPs by adding list unsubscribe xheader attribute.  And yes, if used correctly it’s supposed to look good in your FBLs – minimize complaints, aka clicks on the wonderful junk button.  But look what happens and tell me 1) how you feel or 2) whether it’s can spam compliant.

STEP 1:

STEP 2:

STEP 3:

So hotmail really tell the user they’ve notified the sender about the removal request, but it’s really in users hands – it requires further action on their part – unsubscribing through newly opened tab with advertisers unsubscribe page. Is it a 2 or 3 step process, is it confusing and if so is it can-spam compliant?

So here is the before picture:

After photo TBD:

There are many different appeals here – better customer service, more contextual targetting but the tricky part remains – permission.  You can do it however – just might need to redesign your legal and acquisition tactics, and as the chat in email becomes more prevalent you might start harvesting the fruit of your out-of-the-box thinking early into the game.

Isn’t that a better way to eliminate those unworthy marketers, who do not offer their audience what they want, or blindly market to the same not interested people over an over clogging isps bandwidth and people’s mailboxes?

And email marketers – learn from search. You’ll be amazed at results derived via dynamic segmentation of your static lists. Some call it ’saved search selects’ other ’smart lists’ and building your targetting model around them is a skill worth investment.

There are at least dozen companies that understand how to feed these channels off of each other through analytics. In the search/display scene it’s Google (watch what comes out of Doubleclick’s acquisition), Yahoo (’smart ads’) and 24/7 (search retargetting) to name a few … and in the email field? Well, we might put that one to the quiz – look for acquisitions in the email marketing industry as a clue .. any guesses?

As more marketers become knowledgeable in the subject, you’re going to notice the emergence of winners – those who don’t just profile their users based on historical responses, but those with extensive publisher and advertisers relationships, know how and technology allowing for data intelligence sharing.  It helps to own your media, affiliate networks, display, search agencies … since applying behavioral targeting to email and other channels involves heavy use of unique user tracking, website analytics and other marketing intelligence.

Client came to us about a year ago not happy with deliveribility of their inhouse mailteam. (Obviously we cannot refuse when clients want to outsource it to us) Maybe a week into a relationship, still in getting-to-know the list stage we communicated about some of the practices of the past. Wasn’t a past for us – actually, a new gray-hat technique we’ve heard of but never tried. Basically, the client suggested some prior ESPs recommended using a seed list of internally created email addresses in order to minimize complaint levels and bounce rates.

Simple? Simply mail the seed list of a specific size as it relates to the mailing list; from the same server/ip in order to dillute the number of people complaining/bouncing from your regular mail file. You’ve got to know the ISP thresholds and have feedback loops set up of course.

Shady? We’d say so. We were very hesitant at first. You have to kid yourself thinking it’s a long term solution. However (to our surprise) it works in a short term and buys you time when you try to incorporate true best practices and quality assurance processes for a newly acquired client. Which leads to a final comment – has it really gotten to the point that clients have to look for email marketing dark magic?

Who are isps to decide whether people hitting that spam filters are not competition trying to destroy marketers email reputation and deliverability? Should they look at the CTR rate in addition to the bounce or spam button CTRs? (a la google’s quality score) Are spam traps and spam filters less than perfect? Have you missed emails from friends from abroad due to spam inbox filtering just because SPF record was not published for the sender’s highly reputable corporate address? …

Questions, no matter how trivial and amusing go on. Tricks might too so keep an eye out.

Google’s answer to that? Penalize reciprocal linking (the kind of exchanges where I link to you and you link to me – usually from the ‘links page’ of 100s). But even before the idea surfaced, the 3way exchanges started.

Is it time to go back to basics? Has the concept of PR failed?

Unfortunately there is no way back. That is at least until Brin, Page, Schmidt and Co. rule the search planet – PR is what google was born out of. There is nothing like a link from the PR8, same vertical, high traffic site. What’s left is to be smart about it. Choose your partners carefully. Once you’re linked to and cached by robots, it’s hard to take it back. Focus on quality and common sense – if you did you’d have realized that deep inside you look down on reciprocal linking. Bet on good content, work with smart viral marketers and next time the linking specialist pitches you on his/her service – ask – how many partners do you have in your network now that can link to us tomorrow, out of content which simply begs to reference sources like us. (and that’s without asking for return link right away)

PS.

If you haven’t attended the latest SES conference – there was a very interesting discussion on the issue.  Seamoz has a great recap here.

As an advertiser you need a conversion tracking enabled and over 500 conversions last month in order to be considered. We welcome the news.

Some CPA/lead gen. networks are trembling at what it will do to their business, but as search marketers we have to be thrilled about an attempt by Google to minimize click fraud (which Google claims to be at .02% and we dare to think is at least 100 times that).

BTW, let’s track the development of this study – should be authoritative.

Maybe the times have changed and many ESPs won’t even take you on now without an autoresponder permission proof on every record. We believe in fundamentals however, and there is one constant in road to glory now and before – user experience counts. It always has. Just that in the past the complaints couldn’t be heard. They demonstrated themselves in falling opens, clickthrough and convertions – triggering marketers to mail out more volume and with higher frequency.

These days – the powerful ’spam button’ has forced those less knowledgeable marketers to sweat over complaint rates; but those of us who were always about mailing smarter by understanding the data feel rewarded. It feels good when comparing the numbers between RFM and behavioral/contextual/out-of-the-box targetting models you can’t avoid the one simple conclusion – quality wins over quantity.

HauteProspect does not currently have any clients in the entertainment vertical, but wonders if anyone planned any major viral or search campaign around an event of such magnitude? Anticipation is ‘what Tiggers like the most!’

Seriously though, the entire SEO industry is changing with the announcement of Universal Search by Google. What this really got us thinking about and preparring for here at HauteProspect is the effect of what we call ‘Google’s blending of the media’. Will the mention in tv, radio, a/v or print someday be affecting the online search algorithms? We mean after Google’s scans all the books in the world, broadcasts radio, cable ads, and buys a game development company.

We know it will and we love that new frontier of search engine optimization.