| External links: Sourced articles of interest |
|  |
|
|
Welcome to the business of e-mail. We've done a little spring cleaning - a buff here, a polish there - changing the layout to give you optimum at-a-glance reading. Subscribers now have the option of receiving EU, US news, or both. If you would like to change your preference, just click the UPDATE link at the end of this e-zine and then tick your choices in the presented subscribe box.
|
|
|
Required fields in your Subscribe Form: How much can you ask for? - When launching a newsletter, marketers want to know how much information they can collect from subscribers. Ask for too much and you will lose them before you even begin. But, ask for just an e-mail address and you could be on your way to building a readership profile. How, you ask?
[FULL STORY]
|
|
|
 UK DEPT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY SIGNALS RED LIGHT FOR SPAM - The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-led consultation has begun a review and consultation period, with the aim to write measures into British law which have been outlined in the European Union's Electronic Communication Data Protection Directive. The deadline for responses on proposals to crack down on unwanted e-mails and strengthen privacy rights for electronic communications is 19th June. DTI's Press release.
 IN IRELAND the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources is preparing to implement the European Commission's Regulatory Framework for electronic communications (website). This is a package of five Directives, one of which is Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector: Four of the Directives are due to be implemented by 25 July 2003 and the Data Protection Directive by 31 October 2003. The Department's web site will be updated as the transposition process progresses.
 IT EXECS WORLDWIDE SEE SPAM PROBLEM AS 'MODERATE' - BizReport.com reports that "whether they do not want to admit that they don't have a handle on spam issues, or whether spam as a problem has truly been corralled," Aladdin Knowledge Systems found that 46% of IT executives worldwide qualified their company's problems with spam as "moderate", and just 28% qualified them as "severe".
[Ed.: These are among the 'gatekeepers' who will decide - should the problem of spam get out of control in their view - what does and does not get through to company personnel. This will be of significance to B2B permission marketers.]
REPORT PROFILES EU CONSUMER ATTITUDES TOWARD E-MAIL - DoubleClick and Claritas Interactive recently published a useful snapshot of European consumer attitudes towards e-mail. Amongst the research findings: 77% of the participants have given permission to receive commercial e-mails; most are interested in receiving permission e-mails with entertainment and travel content (43%), followed by news (33%) and business information (24%). While few actually subscribe to 'special offer' e-mails, this is high on the list of preferred content. The primary motivation behind subscribing is 'rapid access to information' (77%). Of the survey takers, 55% are willing to give more personal information to companies they are already subscribed to, 43% of the 'unwilling' ones would part with more information if they were enticed with a special offer. Executive Summary PDF.
[Ed.: It appears that European consumers are willing to give you permission, IF you don't waste their time, abuse their privacy or permission, and give them the information they want - along with special offers in your regular communication. (Separate special offer mailings or third party mailings are unpopular.)]
|
 "We face two incompatible demands. Our customers want no spam, but they also want no censorship."
[Ed.: A quote by one of the ISPs at the recently-held 19th annual ISPCON - this nicely sums up the conundrum of dealing with junk e-mail. Read how the ISP owners and workers debated handling the issue of SPAM at the gatekeeper level.]
LAWSUITS BY AOL RAISE THE STAKES IN FIGHT AGAINST JUNK E-MAIL - America Online Inc. recently filed five lawsuits against more than a dozen individuals and companies accused of sending AOL subscriber members an estimated 1 billion pieces of spam that resulted in more than 8 million complaints.
E-MAIL COALITION DEBUTS 'PROJECT LUMOS' TO ERADICATE SPAM - OptInNews reports the Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC), formed by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) has made public a 'technical architecture to eradicate spam'. Codenamed 'Project Lumos', they say it is a registry-based model developed to eliminate spam by holding bulk senders accountable for the mail they send. Project Lumos employs a certification process that stops spammers by making it impossible for high-volume mailers to conceal their identities.
[Ed.: As the international Internet business community and goverments begin to tackle the thorny issues surrounding legislating spam, individual companies are taking matters into their own hands. AOL's actions are similar to those of the recording industry, who have been tackling Napster type organisations AND individuals. We'll have to watch this space to see what impact the AOL court cases have.]
On Monday, April 28th, AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced jointly that they plan to launch an industry-wide initiative to find "technical solutions and set industry guidelines in the fight against unwanted commercial e-mail".
[Ed.: No details other than an announcement of a plan to launch the initiative - it's no coincidence the press release was issued prior to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's three-day Spam Forum.]
FTC HOLDS PUBLIC SPAM FORUM - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has just wrapped three days of public hearings in Washington DC on spam and the future of e-mail. Full details, with follow-up to be posted, at the FTC's site.
[Ed.: A recent survey found that just over 50% of spam appears to come from the US (Source: MessageLabs), so it will be interesting to see what emerges from this forum. One overriding issue is sure to be the international nature of junk e-mail, and how to legally handle it when it crosses US state lines as well as international borders.]
|
|
| |
|
|
|
