This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate. (Don’t worry—we won’t hold on to any of their information.) Obama for America

To quote a friend of mine: “WHAT THE … I DON’T EVEN”

This is going to cause massive delivery nightmares. Do you really think recipients of these emails are not going to hit “This is spam” or complain or block the sender? I have no doubt this list is going to be full of spamtraps and IPs are going to get listed on numerous blocklists and blocked by a bunch of ISPs. And then, THEN we’re going to get the complaints from Obama for America about how evil and anti-American the ISPs and spam filtering companies are for blocking their mail.

If I were a real conspiracy theorist, I’d say that, somehow, the blocking would be turned into Yet Another Law trying to regulate the Internet. It would be named something catchy that has a “meaningful” acronym. Like the “Barring Online Networks from Hindering Elected Americans Deploying Email Dialog” (BONEHEADED act). Or the “Open Access to Political Dialog” (OAPD act).

This is so not going to end well.

In the stress and flurry of dealing with public accusations of spamming many companies overlook the fact that the underlying issue is they are sending mail that the recipients don’t want or don’t expect. If there is a public uproar about your mail as spam, then there is a good chance something in  your email strategy isn’t working.

Even in the recent White House as spammers strategy, there is a strong chance that they are actually using reasonable and industry standard methods to collect email addresses. However, in their case, they are a large target for people to forge email addresses in forms. “Bob doesn’t like the president, but I’ll sign him up for this list so he can learn how things really are.” or “Joe doesn’t like the democrats so I’ll sign him up for their mailings just to piss him off.”

When you are confronted with an email campaign that upsets a large number of people there are a number of steps you should take.

Step 1: Gather information

This includes information internally about what actually happened with the campaign and information from the people who are complaining.

Externally: Get copies of the emails with full headers. If you’re working with people who do not want to reveal any details of the mail they received then you may not be able to fully investigate it, but if they do you will have everything you need right there. Figure out where their address came from (you do have good audit trails for all your email addresses, right?).

Internally: Talk to everyone who worked on that particular campaign. This includes the geek down in the IT department who manages the database. Figure out if anything internally went wrong and mail was sent to people it wasn’t intended for. I know of at least 2 cases where a SQL query was incorrectly set up and the unsubscribe list was mailed by accident.

Step 2: Identify the underlying problem

Look at all the available information and identify what happened. Was there a bad source of email addresses? Did someone submit addresses of spamtraps to a webform? Was there a technical problem? Again, talk to your people internally. In many companies I have noticed a tendency to try and troubleshoot problems like this at very high levels (VP or C-level executives) without involving the employees who probably know exactly what happened. This sometimes leads to mis-identifying the problem. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it.

Step 3: Identify the solution

Once you know what the problem was, you can work out a solution. Sometimes these are fairly simple, sometimes not so much. On the simple end you may have to implement some data hygiene. On the more complex end, you may need to change how data is handled completely.

Step 4: Inform the relevant parties of the solution

Make a statement about the problem, that you’ve identified it and that you’ve taken steps to fix it. How you do this is a little outside my area of expertise, although I have participated in crafting the message, rely on your PR folks on how to communicate this. In the Internet space, honesty is prized over spin, so do remember that.

Every company is going to have the occasional problem. In the email space, that tends to result in the company being labeled a spammer. Instead of being defensive about the label, use the accusation to drive internal change to stop your mail from being labeled spam by the recipients.

Ken Magill wrote about the controversy today in Magilla Marketing. Anyone who’s followed his newsletter for a while knows he’s been reporting on politicians buying and sharing lists for the last few months. He has some data that may help clarify where the addresses aren’t coming from.

As for where the names did not come from, I can vouch for the likelihood the White House didn’t purchase, merge or upload any lists. [...]

I still receive e-mail as a result of signing up for President Obama’s list. I also signed up for Hillary Clinton’s list and have evidence it’s been shopped around. However, Axelrod’s healthcare message didn’t hit the address I registered with either Obama’s or Clinton’s campaign.

I received other healthcare related massages from Obama’s camp at that address, just not the message that resulted in this recent controversy.

The message also apparently did not go to e-mail addresses gathered at Flag@whitehouse.gov [...]

I haven’t received any communication as a result of that signup [sic].

I’ve seen other people commenting that the excuse “everyone does it” is not good enough. Of course it’s not, but the reality is that a lot of marketers have very, very sloppy permission practices. Practices that are similar to the White House stated practices.

The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House Web site. The White House doesn’t purchase, upload or merge from any other list. … [A]ll e-mails come from the White House Web site.

How many marketers say the same thing? I have had dozens of clients over the years come to me with a SBL listing telling me the exact same thing. They only mail to addresses that were signed up at their website. The problem is, that people put email addresses into websites that do not belong to them. Sometimes it’s an accident or a typo. Sometimes it is a deliberate attempt to harass the website or the recipient, or both.

Given the heated political debate surrounding health care, it seems likely the White House is telling the truth and that the addresses were not purchased, uploaded or merged. They did come from the White House website, they were just not entered by the actual email address owner. The White House’s failure is the same as many marketers who are collecting email addresses off websites without any verification or confirmation that the recipient actually wants mail.

Chris Wheeler over at Bronto blog points out that CAN SPAM doesn’t apply as this is political mail, and CAN SPAM only covers commercial email. He also notes that most of the mail came from “forward to a friend” links which the sender has little to no control over.

Gawker has a post up “Everything you need to know about Obama’s Spam-Gate.”

There are a lot of issues here. Chris asks a number of questions on his blog, that I encourage people to think about.

1. Do you think it’s fair that political emails are exempt from CAN-SPAM?
2. Should “Tell a Friend” be an option on a heated topic such as this that will inevitably land in some folks’ inboxes and peeve them?
3. Is it enough for the White House to say it only sent to recipients who opted in at the site or should they provide further evidence of this position?
4. Do you believe politicians, including but not limited to those in the White House, engage in using rented lists?

I have some other thoughts on the subject. Mostly centered around how difficult the complainers are making it for the White House to investigate this.

Refusing to turn over email addresses to abuse desks or senders is one of the things that can be a good idea or may not be a good idea. But if you don’t turn over the email address where you received spam, then you have to accept the fact that the sender may not be able to answer the question “Why did I get this mail?” (aka, why are you spamming me!?!?!).

It may be that the White House is buying lists and spamming. It’s just as likely that there are other explanations. People politically involved online do sometimes put email addresses of people they disagree with in signup forms, and then all of it sudden it looks like The Other Side is spamming. It could be a forward to a friend process where individuals are forwarding mails to friends (and enemies!). It could be any number of things.

The only way the truth is going to be known is if people who received the mail provide full copies of the mail, including headers, and if the White House ESP folks have the ability to audit the source of the addresses. Without both of those things, it can be impossible to determine why a particular recipient received spam.

A recent post over at Denialism Blog shows that the McCain campaign has some of the same problems as the Obama campaign. Chris talks about the unsubscribe options he is presented when trying to stop the spam he is receiving. He suggests the campaign adds another option:

I never signed up for your stupid email list. I never supported you, except when you passed McCain-Feingold, and I’d vote for Tina Fey before Sarah Palin. Please take me off your list.