Questions we’ll answer today• Why am I getting blacklisted and sued? I

didn’t even send any email!

• How do suppression lists get abused? Has my list been stolen and spammed?

• How do I protect my suppression list?

• How do I monitor my suppression list?

• How do I monitor my affiliates?

• How do I monitor my reputation?2

Why am I blacklisted?• I don’t send any email on my own, so why

is my domain and mail server blacklisted?– Anti-spam advocates "follow the money"– If links in a spammy email go to your site, you

can easily be blacklisted– Your images, domain name, URL links, and

content can be "fingerprinted" affecting delivery by all of your affiliates

– You will be held responsible by the industry and ISPs for emails sent by your affiliates

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Why am I getting sued?• I didn’t send the email and my contract

says its not my responsibility!– CAN-SPAM holds the advertiser responsible– FTC and state AG’s cracking down– By the time you get sued, the company that

sent the email might not be around anymore– A serious storm is brewing!

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Affiliate Lawsuits• 2003 MSFT/NYAG vs. OptinRealBig

– $38m in lawsuits– Synergy6 goes out of business– OptinRealBig settles out of court

• 2004 Hypertouch vs. BobVila.com• 2005 Hypertouch vs. Kraft / Gevalia• 2005 DirectTV DNC Violation - $4.5m• 2005 FTC vs. Global Net Solutions - $621,000• 2006 New York Times vs. Click2Boost

– $2m awarded for fraudulent signups– Of 41,000 leads, 187 actually converted– 41% said they never signed up

• 2006 FTC vs. Your Company Name Here 5

Types of suppression abuse• No advertiser unsubscribe link

– Third party emails should have 2 unsub links, one for the list owner, one for the advertiser

– Advertiser is liable for failure to include• Failure to honor an unsubscribe request

– CAN-SPAM says to honor within 10 days– Advertiser is liable for failure to honor

• Sending spam to a stolen suppression list– Affiliate is told to suppress, but sends instead– Advertiser is liable for failure to protect 6

Has my list been stolen?• If you have it posted on an affiliate network

that doesn’t use UnsubCentral, your list definitely has been stolen and spammed.

• If you don’t use UnsubMonitor, you probably have no idea its happening.

• If you don’t pay close attention, your results will go down from fingerprinting.

• The way you’re going to find out is when a lawsuit gets filed against you or your corporate email server gets blacklisted.

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Affiliate Networks are Worst• Some of the largest networks are havens

for suppression list abuse and spammers• Contrary to claims, anyone can sign up

and become an affiliate• Once logged in, spammers can download

tens of millions of email addresses with no auditing or accountability

• Then they can send spam or sell the list with little chance of being caught

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Just last week...• Created bogus affiliate account at MAJOR

affiliate network you all know and use• They called to confirm the account and

approved it within 10 minutes• Instantly had access to download over 16

million email address from major advertisers that are in this room today

• Yup - I have your suppression list :-)• Who will have it tomorrow?

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How do I protect my list?• Don’t ever post on FTP site or network• Insert unique "seeds" into the list for each

affiliate that downloads it• Encrypt the list with MD5 so the

addresses are protected• Let a neutral third party manage both lists,

protecting the advertiser and the affiliate• Terminate bad affiliates immediately

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UnsubCentral• Hosted suppression list management

– Know who downloads suppression list– Audit trail for all unsubscribes– Prevent and detect abuse– Integrated with major ESPs and networks

• Hosted unsub page for third party emails– Prevent blacklisting– Reduce complaints– Improve deliverability with custom domains

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UnsubCentral

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A secure, centralized repository for managing and sharing suppression lists across all of your commercial email channels.

The Market Leader

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How do I monitor my list?• Sign up with a unique seed address, then

unsubscribe and make sure you don’t receive email at that address after 10 days.

• Unsubscribe a unique seed address that was never on the list to begin with. Make sure it doesn’t receive any email ever.

• Continuously add new seeds each week

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UnsubMonitor by LashBackWith UnsubMonitor You Can:

• Monitor the reputation of IPs or URL domains

• Insure emails have working unsubscribe

• Insure Unsubscribes are honored within 10 days

• Monitor for suppression list abuse (harvesting)

• See how partners are affecting your reputation

• Qualify new affiliate/partner applications

UnsubMonitor Customers Include:

TechnologyHow it works: Consumer Unsubscribe Requests Received Identify the Advertiser/Sender and check Reputation

If Safe – Unsubscribe Request is ProcessedIf Not Safe – Unsubscribe Request is SuppressedIf Unknown – Unsubscribe is paused while Advertiser/Sender is tested

Unknown

Unsubscribe Reputation(UnsubScore) Extracted

Good ReputationLashBack safely automates the unsubscribeprocess on the consumers behalf.

Bad Reputation

Unsubscribe is suppressed, the receiver isnotified and future messages are blocked.

No Reputation

The unsubscribe is paused while LashBackdeploys a series of probes and tests.

Email forwardedto LashBack

How do I monitor affiliates?• Must track statistics on a per affiliate basis

– Revenue generated– Unsubscribes generated– Complaints generated– Spamtraps hit– Volume sent

• Don’t take their word for it! Check yourself!– Sign up seed addresses to your affiliate’s lists– See actual emails your affiliates are sending– Identify rogue and sub-affiliates 17

UnsubCentral

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EmailAnalyst

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Affiliate Reputation• Ask for the IP addresses that will be used

– Check if they are blacklisted or whitelisted at www.senderbase.org

– Check if they honor unsubscribes at www.lashback.com

– Review the email they send at www.emailanalyst.com

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Sign up for LashBackhttp://lashback.com/unsubmonitor.htm

Sign up for UnsubCentralhttp://www.unsubcentral.com/summit2006

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What is your reputation?