For the second time in four weeks, a meeting held last night brought together dozens of stake holders in the e-mail marketing arena who have been working to develop voluntary, industry-wide standards for e-mail marketers. The effort is an attempt to quell government regulation and intense action from privacy groups that has crippled marketing efforts and financially damaged an untold number of businesses.
While details of the meeting were sketchy and participants were reluctant to comment due to the preliminary nature of the discussions, the focus of the meeting was to combine the efforts of a number of groups that have formed individually with similar agendas.
The most structured group, called Responsible Electronic Communications Alliance, has a logo and a registered Web site that is not yet active. The group has retained a lawyer, is incorporated and reportedly collects annual dues of $10,000, sources said.
Another loosely structured group, called together by Rosalyn Resnick, CEO of Netcreations in New York, had held its initial meeting July 23. That meeting was attended by 12 industry representatives.
Last nights meeting was attended by 40 representatives from all walks of the industry. Attendees included: Jason Catlett, CEO of Junkbusters; Rodney Joffee, CEO of White Hat; Richard Baumer, president of VentureDirect; Peter Arnold of DCI in Washington, DC; David Tolmie, CEO of Yesmail.com, Jeff Smith, e-mail relationship management at ClickAction; Regina Brady, vice president of strategy and partnerships at FloNetwork; and Rosalyn Resnick, CEO of NetCreations. In addition representatives were also in attendance from Bigfoot Interactive, 24/7 Media Inc., DoubleClick Inc., Mail Abuse Prevention Services (MAPS) and Harris Interactive. Harris had recently been listed on MAPS Realtime Blackhole List of alleged spammers. The company filed a lawsuit in July naming MAPS and several Internet service providers that blocked Harris’ Internet communications. The meeting was held at Netcreations offices in New York.
The initial July meeting was hastily called following e-mail marketing company Yesmail.com’s legal action against Internet Redwood City, CA-based MAPS, an Internet watchdog group. The lawsuit was dropped after Yesmail and MAPS agreed to settle.
“That’s a lot of progress,”one attendee said. “Three months ago MAPS and Yesmail were at each others throats. It’s a significant development that the stakeholders have come together at the same table to establish best practices.”
The next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 11 at NetCreations.
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