The article looks at opens, clicks and click through rates over 7 quarters (Q1 – Q4 2010; Q1 – Q3 2011) covering 330 million emails. I strongly suggest anyone interested go read the whole article.

The short version, though, is that the opt-in lists had more opens and more clicks than the opt-out lists. In some quarters it was double the number of opens and clicks.

This data is a strong indication that opt-in lists perform much better than even the best opt-out lists.

List sellers are the internet version of used car salesmen. Everyone knows they are slimy sales guys who will do anything to close the sale. They don’t have a real web presence, just visit appendleads.com and see what I mean.

And yet, people still buy lists from them! I have no doubt that my spammer friend has a nice little business selling email addresses. He sends out spam, he gets a few responses, makes a tidy profit and then sends out another spam, hooks a few more people and makes more money.

OK, so not all list sellers are like appendleads. Some of them go so far to build a website. But at the core they’re the same. They are selling data that isn’t clean, it’s not opt-in, it’s not been verified.

This is why so many of us harp on not buying lists. The sales guys talk a great game, but they aren’t selling what purchasers think they’re getting. They also don’t care. They have no incentive to clean up their data. They have no incentive to accurately represent what they’re selling. All of the risk is on the person that sends the email. Once they have their money, the buyer is on their own.

Can you ever successfully purchase a list? I’m sure some senders have. But that experience is closer to winning more than a thousand dollars in the lottery than an actual good business decision.

As I often do, I plugged his phone number into google, only to discover that my blog post from March about this spammer was the 2nd hit for that number. Well, go me.

I can report nothing has changed. He’s still violating CAN SPAM. He’s still claiming I have no right to post, share, spindle, mutilate or fold his spam. Well, in the interest in something, I thought I’d share the whole post this time. Just to warn folks from attempting to purchase services from appendleads.com (nice website, by the way).

From: David Williams <davidw@appendleads.com>
Subject: Targeted Email Lists
Date: July 8, 2010 11:17:36 AM PDT
To: Me@client.example.com

Hi Laura,

Would you like to reach your specific target audience in a cost effective, hassle free way? Have you grown tired of dialing the phone only to get another voicemail, an aggressive gatekeeper or “can you call back in 10 minutes” only to find they’re gone for the day? We make it easy to reach your specific target audience, whether you need to reach sales and marketing executives, CEO’s, director’s of HR or anyone in between.

Also, we offer email append services. If you use an in-house database but it does not include emails or the emails are out of date, we will append the emails in less than 1 weeks time. Out of site is out of mind, never let your client’s lose sight of you. To know how it works we offer email append test at no cost, so send us 50 to 100 contacts with just contact & company names in a spread sheet and we will provide the emails within 24 hours.

Reach out to hundreds of thousands of contacts with our ready to use email list or we can custom build a list based on your specific requirements. Our lists include contact name, title and email address, plus company name, postal address, phone, fax, SIC code, NAICS, employees, revenue and more. Let me know your specific target audience and a few free samples will be sent for your review.

Our objective is to help you to reach your target audience more effectively and economically. Let me know if you or someone else in your organization is responsible for such a decision.Your time and effort in referring me to someone will be appreciated.

Warm Regards,

David Williams
Lead Generation Specialist
Phone: +1 800-961-5127
NOTE: If you feel you have received this message by accident, or if you want to be deleted from further communications from me, please reply in the subject remove or opt-out.

This communication (including any attachments) may contain legally privileged and confidential information and is intended for a specific individual and purpose. If you are not the intended recipient, disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action based on this message is strictly prohibited.

The overall theme of the article is that there is nothing wrong with spam and that if a sender follows a few simple rules spamming will drive business to new heights. Understandably, there are a few people who disagree with the article and the value of the Netprospex lists.

I’ve stayed out of the discussion, mostly because it’s pretty clear to me that article was published solely to promote the Netprospex business, and their point of view is that they make more money when they can convince people to purchase lists from them. Dog bites man isn’t a very compelling news story. Data selling company wants you to buy data from them isn’t either.

They are right, there is nothing illegal about spam. Any sender can purchase a list and then send mail to the addresses on that list and as long as that sender meets the rock bottom standards set out in CAN SPAM. As long as your mail has an opt-out link, a physical postal address and unforged headers that mail is legal. The only other obligation on the sender is to honor any unsubscribe requests within ten days. So, yes, it is legal to send spam.

But legal action isn’t the only consequence of spamming. Today I received the following in an email from a colleague.

I work for an email service provider with many hundreds of clients. I knew when I read that article that this company Netprospex was going to be bad news, and it turns out that I am right.

Today we got a spam complaint from our domain registrar, threatening to take away our domain. We investigated and found that the client responsible had bought a list from Netprospex. At least one person on that list found the mail to be spam and sent a spam complaint that percolated all the way up the food chain to our upstream provider and domain registrar. Now we have to go to the domain registrar with our hat in our hand and beg them not to terminate our primary domain which we have used in hundreds of email campaigns.

Needless to say, we are terminating this client, but the damage is already done and I am dreading that discussion that I have to have about how we allowed somebody to spam through our network.

Unfortunately, the cost related to cleaning up the mess created by Netprospex is not being borne by Netprospex. They make money when their customers buy lists. The customers, and the customers’ ESPs bear all the cost and consequences of the spam that’s being sent.

UPDATE: It seems everyone is getting their 2 cents in on this:
Another Reason Not to Buy Mailing Lists: John Levine
Permission Is the Power Behind Email Marketing: Scott Cohen
Targeted Opt-Out Email: Busting Some Myths: Mark Brownlow
More on Netprospex: Al Iverson

Yesterday, I received and email from e-fense.com thanking me for my interest in their new product. The mail came to a tagged address, but not a tag that I would have given to e-fense.com. Their opening paragraph said:

First of all, thank you for your interest regarding e-fense and our family of products…

The family of products in question appears to be security and forensics tools. Not something I would sign up to receive information about. The tagged email address points to the eventbee.com website. I don’t have any other email to the address I gave to eventbee. So I’m not sure who this company is or why they think I signed up to receive mail from them.

In all likelihood  this is just some marketer being stupid. I vaguely remember signing up for something at eventbee recently, although I don’t remember what it is, or if e-fense was related to it. After a little investigation, I come to the conclusion this is a stupid marketer that has access to event signup data and added all those email addresses to their mailing list.

I’m willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt so instead of sending a complaint or anything I decide to send them email. I notice the first problem: the visible email address in the footer has a different email address in the mailto: link. I decide to send my question to both addresses, just to be sure it gets to someone who can answer my question. I sent:

Can you tell me what your connection to eventbee is and where you got the email address laura-eventbeeCF at mydomain.com

I discover a second problem. The address in the mailto: link doesn’t exist. The other address seems to have delivered, but I have yet to receive a response from Mr. Vinall. That’s OK, I wasn’t necessarily expecting a response right away.

Then today, I discovered a third problem. They’ve moved to an ESP and are sending out more marketing mail. Daily mail from a sender I never subscribed to? Not good. Daily mail from a sender I never requested email from claiming I signed up to their list? Even worse. I’ve dropped an email to abuse@ the ESP and already gotten a reply. If they are enforcing their policies as their response to me says, then I expect not to hear from them again.

I’ve been around long enough, and I’m willing to cut both the company and the ESP a little slack. But, most normal people would have hit “this is spam” when receiving this mail. In fact, I say email that starts with “thank you for your interest” in a product I’ve never heard of from a company I don’t recognize is clearly spam.

Could this have been handled better? Absolutely.

How would I advise a client to do this better?

Send a shorter email introducing your company to the recipient, tell them why they’re receiving this email and offer them the opportunity to subscribe to your newsletters.

Hi, this is e-fense. You recently signed up for an event at the santa clara convention center. We’d like the opportunity to introduce our products and our company to you. We offer product that does insert product functionality here. If you’d like more information about our company, please visit our website at URL here. If you would like to receive our newsletters in the future please click here to subscribe.

See? Now I know why you’re emailing me. I can look at your product, I can visit your website. I can subscribe to receive your newsletter. Sure, some people might still report the mail as spam, but a lot fewer people will do it now than when you started off unexpected, unwanted and unasked for email with “thank you for your interest in our product…”

One example of this is Ken Magill’s ongoing series of reports about EmailAppenders.

Aug 5, 2008 Ouch: A List-Purchase Nighmare

Sept 9, 2008 Umm… About EmailAppenders’ NYC Office

Sept 15, 2008 E-mail Appending Plot Thickens

Nov 11, 2008 EmailAppenders Hawking Bogus List, Claims Publisher

Dec 23, 2008 Internet Retailer Sues EmailAppenders

Feb 1, 2009 EmailAppenders Update

Mar 10, 2009 Another Bogus E-mail List Claimed

April 14, 2009 EmailAppenders a Court No-Show, Says Internet Retailer

April 21, 2009 EmailAppenders Gone? New Firm Surfaces

May 5, 2009 EmailAppenders Back with New Web Site, New Name

Their actions, chronicled in his posts, are exactly what I see list providers, list brokers and “affiliate marketers” do every day. They hide, they lie, they cheat and they obfuscate. When someone finally decides to sue, they dissolve one company and start another. Every new article demonstrates what spammers do in order to stay one step ahead of their victims.

While Ken has chronicled one example of this, there are dozens of similar scammers. Many of them don’t have a persistent reporter documenting all the company changes, so normal due diligence searches fail to turn up any of the truth. Companies looking for affiliates or list sources often fall victim to scammers and spammers, and suffer delivery and reputation problems as a result.

Companies that insist on using list sellers, lead generation companies and affilates must protect themselves from these sorts of scammers. Due diligence can be a challenge, because of the many names, domains and businesses these companies hide behind. Those tasked with investigating affiliates, address sources or or mailing partners can use some of the same investigative techniques Ken did to identify potential problems.

1. Whois records. Any company should have valid contact information in whois. Business addresses should never be hidden behind “privacy protection services.” Free email addresses and low cost DNS providers are also a warning sign.
2. Phone numbers. Phone numbers can be a bit trickier to change than domain names or IP addresses, so look up phone numbers of potential partners. Make sure you check what’s on the callerID as well as any call back numbers.
3. Website inconsistencies. Referring to multiple company names on the website can be a sign of hasty changes to move from one identity to another. Also look for recently registered domains, a company that claims to have been on the Internet for years, but has only a 3 month history on that domain is probably hiding something. Yes, domains change and rebrandings happen but often that will be documented somewhere on the website.
4. Website incompleteness. “Coming soon” links should always raise a red flag. One of the most famous example of this is McColo’s “website coming soon” which was up for years with no actual content.

Probably the most important investigative technique, though, signing up for the list. This will let you see how much mail the recipients get, what kind of mail is being sent, the source IPs and what domains are used in the email. You can also evaluate if the other companies using this vendor are the type of companies you want to be associated with. When doing this, use unique addresses so you can clearly track what happens to that address. Do you get mail you expected? Is it a clean subscription process? All of this data is invaluable in deciding if this is a vendor you should be associated with.

Spammers lie is a maxim among some anti-spammers. They also run, hide and obfuscate, making it hard to tell the legitimate from the illegitimate.

This may actually be an interesting case. On the surface it is a contractual dispute. Choicepoint sold e360 40,000,000 data records containing contact information including email addresses, snail mail addresses and phone numbers. Some of the records were marked “I” meaning they could be used for email. Some of the records were marked “O” meaning they could not be used for email.

Despite these terms being reasonably well defined in the contract, e360 sent email to addresses in records marked “O.” Some of those addresses resulted in e360 being sued by recipients. During the course of the suit, e360 contacted Choicepoint and asked for indemnification. Choicepoint refused for a number of reasons, including the fact that Choicepoint told e360 the addresses were not for mailing. In response, e360 filed suit.

The interesting and relevant part of this case is the CAN SPAM violation that e360 alleges.

9. In her September 10, 2008, letter, Ms. Meredith Sidewater on behalf of ChoicePoint declined to indemnify e360 for the expenses and damages incurred by e360 in the three (3) disputes. See Letter attached hereto as Exhibit B. She claimed four (4) of the six (6) emails at issue in the disputes were “Optin Status of O,” which she contended means that the records were approved only for direct mail and not email.

10. If Ms. Sidewater’s assertion is true, this assertion constitutes an admission of violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which provides that if a recipient requests not to receive commercial email, then it is unlawful for the sender to release, sell, or transfer such person’s email address to a third party. Thus, ChoicePoint admits that it breached ¶ 12(a)(ii) of the Agreement. But for this breach, e360 would not have sent any emails to the complainants and would not have been sued.

CAN SPAM does indeed state that once someone has opted out from email that the address cannot be sold, transferred, leased for any purpose. If e360 prevails in this case it will have far reaching implications for a lot of senders and data brokers. I’ll be watching this one closely.

The second is an article about Zoominfo, a new group in the list selling business. Zoominfo has long been harvesting information from other sites. Now, they are offering to sell their scraped and harvested list. Their only requirement is that the buyer sign an agreement to comply with CAN SPAM. And, yes, if someone is dumb enough to buy this harvested list, they should comply with CAN SPAM as sending mail to a harvested list triggers additional penalties if or when the FTC decides to go after the sender.

Not only are Zoominfo harvesting data, they are harvesting from ancient and obscure sources. They have no current information for me, but they managed to find an email address for a job I left in 1993. They have Steve listed as an employee of “postgreSQL INC” because they harvested the postgres mailing list archives. Mickey pointed out one of Zoominfo’s sources is http://free-personal-ads-wanted-sex-partner-near-hays-kansas.themasterwithin.ca/arch/4/. You do not even need to visit that site, just look at the URL!

Zoominfo’s VP and general manager claims they send emails to people regularly, offering them the chance to opt-out. First of all, I have never received one of these, have any of you? Secondly, some of the addresses are so old opt-outs are not relevant. Finally, unless they are monitoring their delivery, which I strongly doubt given their business model, anyone buying addresses from them is going to buy lots of dead addresses. And spamtraps. Lots of spamtraps.

I am sure that people who buy and sell lists regularly will tell me that these are outliers and that most companies who sell lists have higher data collection standards. My experience suggests that these are middle of the road list brokers. They are companies who are willing to sell anything with an @ sign in it and do not care about how sending to that data affects their customers.