I want to share a personal situation we've just dealt with --
call it a lesson learned about the need to have an appropriate
verification system in place for existing lists coming to
our list hosting service.
History: Client publishes a monthly financial newsletter that
was started a a few years ago with over 200,000 "subscribers."
They used a competitor's service last year. Bounces were supposed
to be removed and when the list was set-up there (it had been emailed
inhouse before that) and required all subscribers to re-opt-in at
the time of transfer and all new subscribers to confirm their
subscription. I was actually sent a copy of the messages that were
sent.
The publisher had doubts that all of the subscribers were actually
getting their emails, so they decided to look for a new service.
The former list hosting provider gave them their subscriber list
in December (when the last issue was mailed). Supposedly clean and
opt-in. Client signed on all responsibility for the email addresses
and that these were opt-in to the best of their knowledge.
In the interim time between when we started to talk to this new
client and when we starterd the test outlined below, their former
hosting company's web site disappeared. Doing a whois showed
they had their own name server. I've tried calling the number
listed, but it's continually busy.
We did a test "welcome" message to approx 4,000 subscribers. We
wanted to check this out for two reasons: 1. To see the number of
bounces on the list and 2. to verify that the list was in fact
opt-in.
The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%. We
received one complaint direct to us from someone who, when we
questioned it, said they didn't recognize the list address.
(Given that the list was moved to our service, the list address
would have obviously changed.)
The welcome message provided removal information and about 2%
unsubscribed.
Because of the high unsubscribe rate and the complaint, we went
back to the client and said the only way we could handle their
list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again. Client
agreed - saying that they want to make sure that the list is
clean and 100% opt-in.
We did the two step with 20000 additional subscribers. Each
person received one email telling them that the list was being
moved to our service and that we required people to confirm
their subscription... so in order to receive future messages,
they would need to hit reply to the verification message.
Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the
number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However,
we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours.
So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about
24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across
hundreds of new lists.
The problem is what do we do about this? Obviously, we don't
want to be involved in spamming. (Put it this way -
if you had spent a good deal of time and money building a
large subscriber base.) If the list were smaller, I'd
recommend that they entirely ditch it and write it off as
a loss. If the situation weren't so severe, I'd tell them
to handle the re-opt-in process themselves. But my gut won't
let me advise this because I really do think that the list
has been seeded with email addresses who haven't opted in.
I am going to advise the client we cannot complete the
opt-in process based on what has happened. But I know
that I am going to be asked what they should do. This is
where I am stuck.
FWIW, we had two other situations where lists provided
by other list hosting services had addresses on the list
that shouldn't have been there. With both situations, it
was a single email address that should have been removed
that wasn't.
Anyhow, to get to the REAL point of this post... recently,
there was talk on this list about verification of
subscriber lists. Now I'm starting to change my thinking.
Based on this experience, I know that in the future, we'll
be taking the following measure:
Randomly selecting email addresses from the list to be
transferred and confirming individually that they were
in fact subscribers to the list in question and that they
did opt-in.
I really don't see any other option. Having a new client
sign an agreement doesn't do a whole lot of good when
they didn't personally manage the list themselves.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sharon Tucci
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ListHost.net
Sling Shot Media, LLC 1-613-933-5133
E-Mail List Hosting and Marketing SpeciaLists
