Urgent Meeting Called to Standardize E-Mail Marketing Practices
As a direct result of yesmail’s legal action last week against a privacy group attempting to block its transmissions, an urgent meeting has been called in an effort to standardize best practices for e-mail marketing. (See “Yesmail Gets Restraining Order Against Privacy Group,” DIRECT Newsline, July 17).
The meeting, initiated by NetCreations’ CEO Rosalind Resnick, will be held tomorrow at the NetCreations’ offices in New York. The meeting was expected to include a handful of representatives from e-mail service bureaus including Chicago-based yesmail and New York firms DoubleClick and 24/7 Media Inc.
Resnick maintains the position of a 100% opt-in or double opt-in model as the best practice for e-mail prospecting. Her view, however, is not shared by others, including the Direct Marketing Association, which supports an opt-out model.
In addition to attempting to standardize practices, participants are also expected to discuss the creation of a board that would investigate spam complaints and determine disciplinary action if necessary.
There is speculation that such a meeting may lay the framework for the formation of a new trade group. Resnick said that it was premature to decide what form that the group–whether it would be an association, just a task force or continue working with the DMA.
She said that over the last three years there have been numerous failed attempts by various task forces, privacy groups and individuals to standardize practices.
“We’ve kind of all been circling each other over the last three years,” she said. “But because of our differences over data collection and other practices, we have just not be able to get it together as an industry and as a result something like this [yesmail] case has happened.”
Permission-based e-mail marketer, Yesmail, Chicago, won a temporary restraining order last week against Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC in the first legal challenge to the Redwood, CA-based group. The order prevents MAPS from listing yesmail on its Realtime Blackhole List of alleged spammers. The list is monitored by Internet Service Providers that block mail from those listed.
Tomorrow’s meeting, if successful in hammering out best practices, is expected to be followed by a larger meeting to include e-mail marketers, consumer advocates, privacy groups, list managers and brokers and others involved in e-mail marketing, Resnick said.
