Target Practice

WITH SPAM AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH — about 1.3 billion e-mails a day, 62% of the estimated 2.1 billion e-mails sent each day in the U.S. — what are the chances that a loyalty club newsletter or sales flyer will get dumped before it’s even opened? The answer worries marketers.

It could get even dicier: The Federal Trade Commission will publish its recommendations for a Do Not E-mail List by July. That registry, under consideration as a mandate of the Can Spam law that took effect Jan. 1, likely would be embraced by consumers, who have registered 56 million names (and counting) on the FTC’s eight-month-old Do Not Call list.

Such measures raise the bar for database management and make online promotions a more valuable tool to first engage consumers in e-conversation.

“Can Spam created a unifying sense of what the rules are. Now we can do national marketing programs and know that it’s worth collecting e-mail addresses, because we can actually send e-mails to those addresses,” says Ken Florin, partner with law firm Loeb & Loeb, New York City.

Can Spam pre-empted state laws, eliminating a patchwork of legislation that would have hobbled marketers. California’s law, which would have taken effect on Jan. 1, required opt-in permission from consumers. “Collecting addresses would have been worthless, because you don’t know what state consumers are in,” Florin says.

Can Spam is tough to enforce — spammers are hard to trace and unlikely to comply with a Do Not E-mail list. Yet, in March, the four biggest Internet service providers — America Online, Earthlink, Microsoft and Yahoo — filed the first major industry lawsuits under the Act, citing hundreds of defendants, including large-scale spammers.

Legitimate marketers already comply with Can Spam provisions, which prohibits false and deceptive headers and subject lines and requires an opt out mechanism and a physical address. A national registry would limit marketers further and may not quell deceptive spam.

Targeting of key consumers is a natural solution to spam: Brands use e-mail to engage in a genuine two-way conversation with their best consumers. Consequently, in-house e-mail lists have become more effective while response to rented lists has waned. “In-house lists are getting stronger as people who want information stay on a list and those who don’t, opt out,” says Bill Carmody, CMO of agency Seismicom, San Francisco. He says 2003 response rates averaged 40% to 60% for in-house lists, while rented lists averaged only a 25% rate (the percentage of recipients who open the e-mail).

Marketers can still buy or rent lists, but must scrub each list against an in-house opt-out list to avoid contacting unwilling consumers. More attention (and money) may be needed to maintain opt-out lists. Marketers also should clean their own mailing database at least every six months. “E-mail addresses change so frequently that if you haven’t communicated with that consumer in six months, the connection is gone,” says Stephanie Brown, CEO of agency Blue Torch Interactive, St. Louis.

Promotions remain crucial to engage consumers. Then, follow up should be quick and relevant. Consider adding filters that let consumers choose content and frequency of e-mail messages. A few key pieces of opt-in information (gender, use of the brand, household size) help shape messages. “The key is mining the opt-in data you have and tailor messages more tightly,” Brown says.

Boeing Co. used an international online sweeps to stir consumer interest in the Boeing 7E7, launching in 2008. Consumers voted for their favorite of four names, and were automatically entered in sweeps awarding a one-hour flight in a Boeing 777 simulator and Boeing-branded apparel and goodies. Consumers also could opt-in to join the “Boeing World Design Team” to give input on plane design (now dubbed “Boeing Dreamliner,” the top vote-getter in the sweeps). Print ads, a slot on AOL’s Welcome screen and an overlay with Time for Kids magazine drove consumers to Boeing’s site to vote.

Half a million consumers in 176 countries voted; 150,000 of them opted into the Design Team, and the database is growing. Boeing brought its e-mail database in-house in December from Seismicom, which handled the spring 2003 sweeps and created the database.

“Getting consumer permission creates a tighter bond,” Carmody says. “But if you don’t know your consumer it’s spam, whether you have permission to send it or not.”