Unspam Technologies, arguably the most despised company in e-mail marketing circles, has joined the Direct Marketing Association. And apparently there's nothing the DMA can do about it.
Some e-mail marketing executives are outraged that the company behind so-called child-protection registries in Michigan and Utah had the audacity to join the DM industry's national organization.
“It's almost like they're doing it to make a mockery of the DMA,” said Tricia Robinson, former senior vice president of marketing at Premiere Global Services in Atlanta.
Unspam has lobbied for bills establishing kids' do-not-e-mail registries in state legislatures across the United States and so far has been successful in getting them enacted in two.
When asked in an e-mail why his firm would join the DMA, an organization that's lobbying against its business model, Unspam's president Matthew Prince responded: “We're always looking for ways in which we can be more engaged with the marketing community and responsive to its concerns.”
When told of Prince's response, Robinson said: “Marketers didn't need or want Unspam, and children sure as hell don't need Unspam.”
Matt Blumberg, chief executive of deliverability firm Return Path, wrote in an e-mail: “If Unspam is really interested in engaging with the interactive marketing community and being responsive to its concerns, then they should do just that: leverage their membership in the DMA to hear from others in the space about how they could alter their child registries to make them more palatable — if, in fact, such a ‘zone of agreement’ is possible.”
Earlier this year, Unspam representatives approached the E-mail Sender and Provider Coalition to explore the possibility of joining and were rebuffed.
Ramesh Lakshmi Ratan, the DMA's chief operating officer, said the association considered its options and essentially is stuck with Unspam as a member. “Because of our approach, we wind up with a very diverse membership,” he said.
Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's senior vice president for government affairs, added that an antitrust exemption granted the DMA by the FTC specifically delineates when the association can expel a member. “Having a legislative policy that's antithetical to part of our membership is not one of the things [described] in that exemption,” Cerasale said.
Though Unspam's Prince touts the registries as a means to protect children from online pornography, the two laws enacted include everything illegal for minors to view or buy — a newsletter touting a wine-of-the-month club, for example.
Therefore, marketers argue, e-mailers everywhere may get cited for any mistaken message containing relatively innocuous content. Moreover, they say, Utah and Michigan's registry laws are costing legitimate firms inside and outside the state money while doing nothing to stop unsolicited e-mail from companies beyond their borders that choose to ignore the laws.
So far, all the firms cited by Utah and Michigan have been outside the two states' borders. Utah has gone so far as to cite porn marketers in Canada and Singapore, and a beer Web site in the United Kingdom.
Several groups, including the American Advertising Federation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed court papers in January supporting pornography trade group Free Speech Coalition in an attempt to get Utah's registry law overturned.
Though the DMA was absent from that effort, Ratan and Cerasale claimed the DMA has been lobbying against Unspam at the state and federal levels.
“The DMA is for protecting children and we believe Unspam's approach to building a registry puts children at harm,” Ratan said. “It's relatively [simple] for anyone to actually use Unspam to generate children's e-mail addresses.”
Added Cerasale: “Unspam has not changed our position. We've even tried the Federal Trade Commission to see if we can get something that says [Unspam's registries] are pre-empted by the Can Spam Act. Unspam is paying its dues and the DMA's money is going against Unspam's position.”
