If you are, there are some questions you’ll need to ask.
First of all, learn about their understanding and compliance with Can-Spam and applicable state and federal laws. Since database marketing has grown from its, somewhat modest, roots of the basis of the most direct marketing itself, advances in digital technologies have helped make savvy marketers perform even better while also complying with Can-Spam.
According to a recent study commissioned by Shop.org, US eCommerce general merchandise sales will outpace offline catalog sales by 2007. This is obviously attributable mostly to successful online database marketing. What began 20+ years ago as a way for credit card companies to extract revenue from existing subscriber lists has become a multi-billion dollar industry that features some high-quality players….and some bad guys too.
This is why marketers who want to specifically target any audience based on demographics, context, and increasingly, response within any substantial database – theirs or another – need to learn some basics when choosing a third party to be their DB marketing partner.
How CAN SPAM May Have Helped the Good Guys?
As you obviously should know, CAN SPAM is the first national anti-spam legislation, which went into effect on January 1, 2004. Many DB marketers were concerned about what its effects would be, and plenty of companies left the email and performance marketing space entirely upon its passage. But, the fact is that CAN SPAM helped many legitimate email and performance marketing businesses grow.
How could CAN SPAM possibly aid any email marketing business? This brings us to one of the first questions any marketer should ask their prospective DB marketing partner. It’s not just about whether or not their practices or technology is CAN SPAM compliant. It’s important for them to understand how compliance with the statute can work for your campaigns.
At Datran Media, our revenue has increased far beyond our most aggressive projections since the passage of CAN SPAM. This has a lot to do with how CAN SPAM fosters brand protection for DB managers. And we’re not talking about a small amount of growth. Our business has more than tripled since CAN SPAM went into effect.
What does this mean in terms of hard data? Our emails generated more than 13 million transactions for our clients through August of this year, along with more than 100 million clicks, projected conservatively. This isn’t a small set of data that we’re making projections from. Here are some reasons why ours, and other legitimate performance marketers’ businesses, has benefited – and why your campaigns can as well.
Was Brand Protection Enhanced By the Legislation?
Many of the US Spammers who left the business in the wake of CAN SPAM had taken advantage of illegal open relays. These companies had been essentially taking over users’ hard drives and hijacking their bandwidth to send spam and fraudulent messages with no consent, usually with come-ons for pornography, illegally imported prescription drugs, and body part enlargements. These aren’t gone now, but there are far fewer of them.
CAN SPAM effectively made any unsolicited email that came from an unfamiliar brand suddenly become suspect in a user’s inbox. The same idiom that holds true for brand protection in any other kind of advertising or marketing is even more important in email marketing. Think about it – of course users are more likely to open an email from a name they have a relationship with. Brands matter now more in email than ever. And CAN SPAM helped make this separation even more apparent – and transparent - for both marketers and users.
Ask your would-be DB marketing partners where they stand on this, and how they send their mails. Which brand appears in the “from” line? And how strong are the brands they already work with? If your would-be DB marketing partner can’t provide references from among brands you recognize, don’t bother thinking that they’ll be good to work with, no matter what they promise.
CAN SPAM brought considerations of risk management into business decisions for many legitimate marketers, forcing some email marketers to leave the space entirely. Companies that weren’t true spammers but who hadn’t invested in meaningful compliance suddenly had to make a business decision. They had to either get out of email marketing altogether, or work with a vendor that knew how to make email work the right way, both for them, and for the users. This is why some of the vendors who had been working together in various network configurations suddenly had to stop. For example, a company as large as Naviant, which had been acquired two years ago, was essentially dropped altogether by their new parent, Equifax. CAN SPAM should protect marketers from making the wrong decision when selecting their DB marketing partner. But, this remains a “buyer beware” proposition.
Therefore, when choosing an email vendor, or a company to manage your lists or media database, ask around – check their references and find others that they didn’t provide. Email can still provide tremendous ROI when executed properly, especially when it is combined with well-executed strategic performance campaigns in SEM and other tactics. Well-executed, of course means that it’s done within the recommendations outlined in the DMA’s best practices, and also within the prescribed guidelines of the law.
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