Monitoring service lets marketers create e-mail addresses and track what’s sent to each one
THE ABILITY to seed a file with decoy names has helped direct mailers prevent list abuse and theft and keep a check on mail delivery dates.
Phoenix-based DecoyMail Inc. now offers the same opportunity to e-mail marketers with a new online service.
The service was founded by Rodney Joffe, who is an anti-spam advocate and chairman of CenterGate Research Group LLC, a think tank based in Tempe, AZ. It lets direct marketers create, track and manage an unlimited number of unique e-mail addresses. The program launched last month at www.decoymail.com.
“This is the first time the direct marketing industry [can] say it has the same kinds of mechanisms to monitor what its customers and competitors are doing with e-mail lists as they have in the traditional DM world with postal names,” says Joffe, who is also chairman of database marketing company Whitehat Inc. in Tempe, AZ.
Here’s what DecoyMail offers:
– List managers can add decoys to specific orders to keep track of delivery problems or unauthorized use. They can also audit offers and verify service bureaus’ actions.
– List brokers can decoy lists they’re interested in to check that the correct selects were used and ensure that the right message was delivered to recipients.
– List owners are able to monitor mail dates, offers and other components of the mailing.
– Service bureaus can track deliveries for timing and quality and confirm selects.
– Marketers can keep an eye on the competition.
DecoyMail users are assigned a unique domain name – like Example.com – which allows them to create an unlimited number of e-mail addresses at that domain, such as [email protected]. Mail sent to those addresses arrives in one spot: the user’s personal e-mailbox.
DecoyMail provides a record of what aliases a user has set up and gives a summary of all mail received to each alias.
“If the customer is a list manager or list owner, this is extremely useful in ensuring that lists are used only once,” Joffe notes.
E-mail addresses that are inundated with spam can be easily deleted. The service can only receive e-mail, so it can’t send a message with a false identity and users can’t be identified or selectively removed from any list, he says.
DecoyMail is also available to consumers who want to protect their identities and mailboxes from unwanted mail. From a single assigned account, individuals can register for any number of e-mail lists, e-newsletters or Web sites with multiple decoy e-mail addresses.
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