The Messaging Times

For some time now, I have been practically duplicating posts on this blog and The Messaging Times Blog. To prevent any further duplication, I am going to invest future effort on only one of them. So, to keep up with e-marketing, email marketing and online communication news and events, please visit the mother ship at The Messaging Times Blog.

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Warm Regards

Tom O'Leary
Editor, The Messaging Times

FBI Email Scam

From: The FBI

NEW LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION IN PHISHING SCAMS

A typical phishing scam involves three steps:

• The phisher deploys a website that mimics portions of a legitimate financial institution or other e-commerce website.


• The phisher crafts an email message that appears to be from the organization represented on the phishing website. The email message notifies the potential victim of a problem with their account and instructs them to login to the phishing site where the account information will be "verified.


• Utilizing spam, the phisher sends this email to hundreds of thousands of potential victims. If the victim falls for the scam, they end up divulging their account, credit card, and other identity theft related information. This information is then collected by the phisher and used to commit credit card fraud and other identity theft related offenses.

A new phishing technique adds another step to the process. It utilizes the login credentials entered by the victim to connect to the authentic website and downloads unique identifying victim information such as first and last name. This data is then used to populate portions of the phishing website. By doing so, the phishing site appears more legitimate; therefore, the victim is more likely to divulge sensitive information.

If you have received a fraud, or similar email, please file a complaint at www.ic3.gov.

Can-Sham: Opt-in Email Best Practices

Legitimate email marketers are beginning to understand that the confusion with co-registration and opt-in lists needs to be clarified. When we send email to recipients that have registered to receive our message, and that email gets blocked by spam filters, there's something wrong. We're being made to feel like criminals, when all we are doing is sending email to legitmate lists of leads in the market, and giving them every opportunity to opt-out.

Via MarketingVox.com

As third-party email list response has begun to rise, a group of online marketing executives has formed a trade organization - Online Lead Generation Association, Inc. - to develop best practices for gathering the names on opt-in email lists that are sold to third parties, writes MediaPost (via MediaBuyerPlanner). According to one of the group's founders, Daniel Felter of Opt-Intelligence, the association is necessary because of the growing market in selling email names gained when consumers register for websites: Though many sites ask registrants whether they want to receive email from third parties, the process varies from site to site.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau said in September that revenue from referrals and lead generation came to $347 million in the first half of 2005.

"Advertisers are starting to hear this buzz about online lead generation and co-registration," Felter said. "But I don't think they really understand how to go about it and what processes they should focus on to make sure they get good, quality leads." - from Marketingvox.com

The Culture of Communication

I just visited Presentation Zen's blog and highly recommend that you read Gates, Jobs and the Zen Aesthetic post from November 5th. If you think about it, the [r]evolution of the Internet is being inspired by sociological shifts in our culture. We expect transparency today. We expect straight-forwardness. We expect openness. As communicators, we are changing the methods and language that we use to convey our message. Years ago, consumers accepted presentations full of jargon in bulleted format on PowerPoint slides. Today, we want the content. What's the bottom line, in our language? Talk to us – engage us! Online communication is no different. Consumers today want to be engaged. Think about how your email marketing campaigns have evolved with the times. Did last month's newsletter reflect the culture of today's audience? Did you engage them?

Google Googled

I must admit that this is a rare occurrence. For some reason today, I have been unable to access my Google RSS Reader. And that, my friends, is like starting the day without a strong cup of coffee! Or like watching television without a remote control. Do you mean I'll have to visit my favorite sites individually to find out what's new? This was a wake-up call for me about how reliant I have already become on having my selected content delivered to me rather than visiting it. I tried on Firefox and IE, but for the past couple of hours have been unsuccessful getting a response. Has anyone else had problems?

Email Marketing: 3 Lines of Success

Every email marketer strives to optimize her results from each campaign. There is nothing more frustrating than investing your time and effort to send a great message to a strategically relevant list and being met with open and click through rates below expectations. So how do successful email marketers get their customers to open the messge, click on the link and take action?

Stripping an email message down to the bare essentials, there are three main sections that can make or break an email marketing campaign; the email subject, the call-to-action and the unique proposition. These three lines, if written well, will improve open and click through rates of any email marketing campaign.

Read the full article at Email Marketing: 3 Lines of Success

State Email Registries Put Children at Risk

Via ClickZ News (Zachary Rodgers)

State laws that set up "Do Not E-mail" registries for children are actually putting those kids' contact info at risk, according to a letter penned by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The letter's ostensible purpose is to address proposed child protection legislation in Illinois; but it also appears designed to warn other states that have set up -- or are considering setting up -- such lists of their inherent dangers.

"Because such a registry cannot be effectively monitored for abuse, it may have the unintended consequence of providing spammers with a mechanism for verifying the validity of e-mail addresses," the letter states. "This consequence may actually increase the amount of spam sent to registered children's addresses in general, including spam containing adult content."

Utah and Michigan have already passed legislation to create such lists. The well-meaning laws are meant to protect children from commercial messages that promote adult content and other products prohibited to them. However, the FTC asserts such registries have the reverse effect. It says they let unscrupulous marketers quickly identify and sell to kids, since they offer an available database of verified e-mail addresses. Meanwhile, it asserts they hurt legitimate marketers, who must spend money and time comparing their lists against them.

These databases are vulnerable, the FTC notes, because they typically work by scrubbing existing lists and returning those lists with the contact information of registered children either highlighted or removed. Unethical parties can thereby deduce which individuals on its pre-scrubbed list are children, and then e-mail them. Finding and prosecuting spammers is notoriously difficult.

For the full article, go to FTC: State Registries Put Kids' Inboxes at Risk

Email Deliverability: Romancing ISP Spam Filters

I am not a pornographer. I do not push Viagra to harvested lists. I do not have nor do I want to give you 25 million dollars. I am a good guy with a legitimate business who wants to market my services via email. So why do my emails get caught in the ISP spam-filter net? Understandably, legitimate email marketers around the world are confused and angered by ISP spam filters dumping their messages before they arrive at their recipients' inbox. As a matter of fact, reports show that up to 25 percent of legitimate permission email doesn't get to recipients due to spam filters!

In response to my question, Why do legitimate, permission email marketers compliant with anti-spam legislation get caught in the ISP filter trap? Steve Linford, of the Spamhaus Project, replied:

One way, is because the email marketer is in fact sending spam, but the spam he's sending is "compliant" with some spam law (such as CAN SPAM). Many marketers get caught out by this. Mailing "in compliance" with an anti-spam law does not mean one is not sending spam, but merely that the spam being sent has no false information. If what's being sent is Unsolicited, and is being sent in Bulk, then it's spam regardless of what any law says.

Many mailers are sending to address lists they've bought from other mailers, some are mailing to address lists collected "from our partner websites" but when asked for proof of Opt-in they can not produce any. Others when asked for proof simply produce a list of IPs with dates when the user supposedly "opted in". So we have the mailer's word against the recipient's word, and whose will we believe? Many users saying "we did not opt in, we got spam" and the mailer saying "they opted in"... naturally we believe the users.

To understand what's going on, it is important to first take a look at how ISP spam filters work. When I asked several ISPs to enlighten me, explanations didn't rush into my inbox. As a matter of fact, I didn't receive any answers at all. Understandably, ISPs, like Search Engines, aren't overly willing to divulge their strategies publically. I suppose it would be like the police giving their radar detection technology information to speeders. Sure, the speeders will figure it out eventually, but the police don't want to help them. It would be counterproductive. But as understandable as this is, it is frustrating to those of us who want to get our legitimate email message delivered.

For the full article, read: Email Deliverability: 10 Steps to Romance ISP Filters