19th
Missing the point
Ever since I first read e360’s press release about the not-that-surprising ruling from Judge Zagel I have been mentally counting down the ways that the press release demonstrates their foolish belief that ISPs are around only to make money for spammers. Over and over again, I read a phrase and just mentally start screaming NOOOO! that’s not how it works!
Let’s count all the ways they climb aboard the fail boat.
For the past five years, e360 has been fighting for its right to send legitimate email messages to its customers and online registrants.
♫ You’ve got to fight! ♫ For the Right! ♫ To Spaaammm! ♫
During this time, we have committed ourselves to operating responsibly and above legal standards and requirements.
Hint: there are other standards besides legal ones involved. It Does Not Matter that you are not breaking the law. Meeting the requirements of CAN SPAM is not impressive. That’s like announcing that you don’t kill people and therefore want a pony.
Our industry is extremely competitive and we are constantly challenged to offer products and services that meet the needs of consumers and our clients. Because we only get paid when a consumer registers for information or purchases products, we have no interest in sending email to anyone who does not want to receive it.
A simple, trivial, minor change to your mail will stop you from sending any email to anyone who doesn’t want it. Making the change will have the added bonus of upping your per address ROI.
Ready? Want to hear what it is?
Drop everyone off your list who has never purchased from you.
Now, now, before you start screaming how that won’t work think about it for a minute. Really. It will solve all of your problems, without hurting your bottom line.
What is missing in this ongoing debate is the simple fact that e360’s customers want to receive email from us.
What’s really missing is your ability to figure out that the reason your delivery stinks is because you smell like a spammer. Stop spamming people who are not your customers and your delivery problems will melt away.
Honest! Those people who aren’t purchasing are the root of all your delivery problems. The people who purchase from e360 may want the mail, but in order to get to those “thousands” of people you are mailing to “millions”. Those people who aren’t purchasing, they don’t want your mail. And they’re loudly telling their ISPs they don’t want your mail. And what sucks for you? The ISPs listen to them, not to you.
When they do, our revenue goes through the roof. In the instances when our messages are unimpeded, gross revenue and productivity per message increase dramactially[sic].
Who. Cares.
Seriously, no one cares about your revenue. Well, the IRS might, but that is between you, your accountant and the auditor.
This simply would not happen if our customers did not appreciate the value of our marketing messages. Given this empirical evidence, it is difficult to conclude our email messages are unwanted. The data suggest exactly the opposite is true.
Customers are people who purchase from you. What about the millions of people (and spamtraps!) that receive your spam and don’t want it? Do they get any say in this in your mind?
Actually, I’ll tell you a secret, they do get a say in this. They’re telling the ISPs that your mail is spam and the ISPs are listening to them and given they outnumber the actual customers on your list by more than 20 to 1 (your own numbers, but we’ll get there) their voices are louder. That’s your problem. The people who don’t want your mail are much more numerous than the people who want your mail and so they’re the ones being listened to.
Quit spamming them and your delivery problems will Go Away.
As a for-profit enterprise, e360 is heavily incentivized to send messages that are desirable, relevant and of great value to its customers. When we are successful in doing so, our customers reward us by voting with their pocketbooks.
Again with the customers! “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Similarly, it is not in e360’s interest to harass our customers with objectionable email messages.
But you are harassing millions of people who are not purchasing anything from you and who are not your customers. You’re sending out millions of emails, in order to sell to a a few tens of thousands of purchasers. Why don’t you stop harassing millions of people in order to make money off tens of thousands? Why don’t you set yourself up as a real permission-based marketing system and get rid of your non-purchasers.
Simple. Honest. Will not hurt your bottom line. Cheaper than suing every ISP to force them to accept your mail.
In our e-commerce business, our customers frequently tell us they love our products and want to receive MORE of our promotional messages so they can benefit from some of the best deals on the Internet.
By your own admission, your customers are less than 5% of your email address list. Ok, I confess, I jumped to the end and peeked. You claim millions of recipients and tens of thousands of purchasers. We’ll be generous: 2 million recipients and 100,000 purchasers on your list. That’s 5% of your list. Take that 5%, build your business around them. Leave the other 1,900,000 people alone.
Unfortunately for these customers, nearly 90% of them are unable to receive the messages they have requested due to interference by third parties.
Set yourself up as your own ISP. You buy the hardware, you buy the bandwidth, you provide the customer support. Or! Stop mailing the people who don’t want your mail and are the ones actually responsible for your blocking.
In spite of this evidence, some blacklist operators and anti-spam vigilantes continue to assert e360 is a spammer.
To 95% of your recipients you are a spammer. Your own recipients! SRSLY! If you’d never mailed the blacklist operators or anti-spam vigilantes they would have no mail to assert you were spamming.
As any email marketer knows, being called a spammer, of any kind, is the kiss of death.
Know how you stop people from calling you a spammer? Don’t send spam!
Anti-spam vigilantes, both foreign and domestic, are fully aware of the devastating impact of these assertions.
If an anti-spam vigilante shouts “spam: in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it block any email?
What happened to you is that the spam equivalent of E.F. Hutton has made the statement that e360 sends spam and people listened. They didn’t just listen… they actually looked at their own stats and see the mail from your IPs meets their criteria for blocking and *poof* your mail has been blocked.
Your own mail. Your own recipients. Traitors! How dare they not shut up and eat their spam.
That is precisely why unfounded allegations are made - to destroy any business they do not like, for any reason, justified or not.
Unfounded.
95% of your recipients do not purchase from your email. Let’s say half of them actively don’t want your mail. That’s (remember, we’re being generous) 950,000 people who think you send them spam.
“I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
Commonly-used email blocking tools like www.spamhaus.org, the NANAE usenet group and lone vigilantes are not operating in a fair or impartial manner in our experience.
My favorite paragraph. www.spamhaus.org is a website. NANAE is a newsgroup, and many have commented that some posters are tools, but, really, any coordinated blocking effort is by accident not design. Lone vigilantes operating in a fair and impartial manner, based on the high standards of sanity set by Ted Kaczynski, I’m sure.
Do you actually pay any attention to what you’re saying?
Many have falsely accused us of sending Viagra ads, letters from the Nigerian President and using ip’s that have never been in our control or in the control of those with whom we do business.
A strawman of epic proportions!
In our opinion, none of these groups or organizations provide due process, transparency or any evidentiary standards whatsoever.
Who? The shadowy groups that you define as “Many” or Spamhaus and the INDIVIDUALS who post in NANAE or the INDIVIDUAL lone vigilantes?
If you are a spammer, it is because they say so and often times for no other reason.
If they say you are a spammer it is because you sent them mail they did not ask for. Period. When people in NANAE or Spamhaus say “I received spam from” you can be assured that they did actually receive mail they didn’t ask for.
We believe it is not in the interests of consumers, businesses or the government to allow clandestine, underground organizations to wield so much power over the U.S. economy.
Uh… You sued Comcast for violations of the First Amendment and claim they were acting as the agent for the US government.
Let’s see… a clandestine, underground organization that is an agent of the US government. Pick an argument. Might keep the judge from laughing you out of the courtroom. Personally, I’d recommend you just stop digging now that your head is below the top of the hole, but I don’t think that will happen.
Over the past few years, e360 has become aware of the intimate connection between improper blacklisters, fanatical anti-spammers and U.S.-based internet service providers (ISP’s).
OMG! If some people who receive your email think your email is spam, then people who block mail might think so too.
ISP’s, many of whom have previously employed or worked with e360 and its founder, provide blacklist organizations with financing and data and encourage nefarious behavior in the name of fighting spam.
Did your old friends find new friends? Is that what your problem is?
Oh, and a teeny, tiny hint: if there is *data* involved, then you have just demonstrated that one of your own claims is bullshit. See, a few sentences ago you claimed Spamhaus was arbitrary and “because they said so”. Now you’re saying they have data. Not good. Knocking your own argument down? Not the way to convince people you have any clue.
In our opinion, ISP’s who provide email services have strong incentives to block email, but little incentive to deliver it.
This is, in fact, the closest you get to discovering reality.
These companies operate under a cloak of invincibility and without the knowledge and consent of the consumers for which the email messages are intended. In our experience, we believe this power is regularly abused to the detriment of legitimate marketers, the U.S. economy, and American consumers.
Wonder Twin Powers! ACTIVATE! Form of! A cloak of invincibility!*
Yeah, the courts didn’t buy it, either.
To fulfill its responsibilities to its clients and customers, e360 pursued its legal options seeking a fair and impartial review of the issues at hand.
“Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.” — Judge Zagel
As previously stated, e360 has had difficulty delivering email messages to Comcast, a confirmed Spamhaus customer and user of at least five other email blocking and filtering technologies.
AAAH! It’s not just Spamhaus and some lone vigilantes that think you’re a spammer. It’s the folks at Comcast and multiple spam filtering technologies. Sucks to be you.
This issue came to our attention when one of our customers did not receive her back-order-notification message for the two Minnesota Vikings chairs she ordered on our website. Apparently, Comcast blocked this message because they thought it was spam. As a result, the customer did not receive her order in time for her son’s birthday. She called to complain and despite our reassurances concluded, “It must be your fault, I’m getting email from other people.”
Yes, it is your fault. Any marketer, ANY non-spamming marketer, knows that you keep your mail streams separate. That’s like the Sending 101 chapter in Email Marketing for Dummies.
Whatever your definition of spam, we are unaware of anyone who believes a back-order-notification message would qualify. This is precisely the reason we started investigating Comcast and eventually filed our claim against them.
This woman was why you started the legal proceedings, but you never bothered to mention that during the case? Really? You need a better lawyer.
On April 10, Judge Zagel issued his ruling on Comcast’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling. We are appealing the decision and more information will follow in the appeal.
Oh, goody! more trainwreck filings coming from your legal staff.
For the millions of consumers who have signed up to receive our messages and the tens of thousands who have purchased our products, we believe the email messages they have requested should be delivered for as long as they want to receive them.
“Millions” of consumers signed up to receive your mail, huh? Really? That would be why many people have documented, over and over and over again, that e360 mail is being delivered to addresses that never existed, why e360 mail is being delivered to people who didn’t ask for it, who don’t want it, who have never heard of you, and why e360 mail generates complaint after complaint after complaint.
Get rid of the people who don’t want your mail and your delivery problems will disappear.
*It’s a cloak of invincibility made of water. Just for you pedants out there.
