letter word on the Internet isn't one of the ones your NetNanny blots out of your screening view. To millions of even the most prudish surfers, it's probably spam - and a new batch of e-vendors is trying out a way to get around both the image of junk e-mail and anti-spam retaliation by going e-direct marketing. \nREP. BILLY TAUZIN...Spam's man on Capitol Hill?
And some very high profile companies are probably looking for their help to avoid being lumped in what the e-industry calls "bottom feeders" notorious for spam - including porn, get-rich-quick schemes, and multilevel marketing solicitors. Not to mention the impact of the spammers actually having a friend or three on Capitol Hill.
E-mail outsourcers include MessageMedia, Digital Impact, YesMail.com, Exactis.com, Media Synergy, and numerous others, with MessageMedia being both the best known and only one of the group traded publicly (their stock is listed on the high-tech NASDAQ composite). And Connectify provides software for the e-direct marketers.
These outsourcers are in what is known as the "opt-in" e-mail business. That means they aim at e-mail recipients who want to know about specific product promotions, with campaigns aiming products at people most likely to want them.
"If one in a thousand people gets furious (at spam), it can mess you up," says IMT Strategies analyst Rick Bruner. "They can send messages to your Internet service provider and anti-spam groups will send mail bombs with 10MB attachments to bring down your servers."
Bruner is now surveying high-profile companies, including Hilton Hotels and Office Depot. He says they don't want to be seen "even slightly" as spammers.
"Until a few months ago, everybody was keeping low profile because of concerns about spam," says advertising analyst Kent Allen."
The new outsourcers, though, take the burden of e-mail soliciting off the companies' hands. That relieves them of problems like mailings sent to the wrong people and overcoming differences in e-mail software that can cause one man's sleek text and graphics to translate into another user's graphic gobbledegook.
And there's another advantage. "People want an arm's length distance in case something goes wrong," Allen says. "If an e-mail campaign goes awry and customers perceive it as spam, the retailer can point to the middleman as the culprit."
One of the newest players in the outsourcing game is Whitehat.com. "It's okay to send e-mail to people if they invite you to send it to them," says Whitehat.com founder and chief Rodney Joffe. "What we're looking to do is do things the right way for our clients."
In the last year, more and more Internet-based businesses - including a search portal or three such as Yahoo! - are asking computer users outright if they want to be tipped to new or future offerings, bargains, sales, and similar doings, granting the user's right to decide what he does or does not receive in his e-mail. And just about all Web portals which offer free e-mail have tightened their rules against spam.
It isn't foolproof, of course, with spammers going, among other places, to message board areas and getting away with it by simply phrasing their messages with certain key lines or disclaimers that get past pre-set spam catchers such as some use. But it may well put a major dent in the spam traffic.
In fact, Whitehat.com may have one of the most unique staffing in the opt-in business - their founding staff is composed almost entirely of active anti-spam advocates.
Joffe himself was a founder of Whitehat's predecessor, SAFEeps, which sought to build a data base of names and e-mail addresses for marketers, listing people who wanted to be excluded from existing e-mailing lists. The difference, though, was that SAFEeps was an opt-out system, with recipients having to ask outright to be taken off a list.
None of this is to say that opt-in does not or will not have certain flaws. Spammers, conceivably, could interpret the customer's permission broadly enough to obscure the distinctions between what the customer requested and spam. The customer's e-mail address could still be sold to other marketers - and there's less legal protection against that kind of selling for now.
At least, as far as AT&T is concerned. A three-member panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld AT&T's right to sell information about customers. The Federal Communications Commission plans to appeal that ruling, but some may fear that the appeals ruling will give the spammers another free speech defense. The FCC adopted rules last year requiring customer permission, but the appeals court ruled that violated AT&T's free speech rights.
Exactis president E. Thomas Detner, Jr. says most established companies are well in tune with the need for opt-in marketing, but only a very few have now developed their e-mail strategies fully. And he says spam isn't necessarily the major reason why so few have an opt-in marketing presence.
"Remember how young this business is," Detner says. He says only a third of direct marketing companies had worked e-mail into their strategies, compared to about 50 percent now. His own company has helped the likes of American Express, MSNBC, The Economist (the British-based news weekly), Sony, Forbes and others with their direct e-marketing, but he doesn't see the value of them letting an outside company manage their lists.
For the most part, it is likely that the lesser known players will be the field for the new opt-in marketing outsourcers. "The Yahoos of the world," says Whitehat.com's Ray Everett-Church, "won't sign up because they're doing it well in-house."
The better-recognized among the e-commerce retailers are said to prefer the outsourcers dealing directly with those companies who ask consumers if they want to receive e-mail for specific products, services, or other interests.
It could well be that either doing it in-house or going to the outsourcers will be one of the final oases of defense against spam. The spammers have at least one friend on Capitol Hill, though his efforts on their behalf got a setback at July's end - thanks, ironically enough, to a mass spamming campaign by anti-spammers who think making any kind of spam legal is counterproductive.
As Wired put it, the anti-spam mass spam "caused a House of Representatives subcommittee…to postpone a hearing on a pro-spam measure." The measure was pushed by Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, who chairs the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications.
When the subcommittee threatened to ramrod it through, thousands of e-mails flooded Louisiana and federal government offices. Many of the complaints came from those spammers claiming legality under the section in. Other complaints came from Internet service providers worried that the bill would cripple their own anti-spam enforcement and give the spammers a legal base from which to challenge their service terms, Wired says.
The bill was ultimately pulled back to remove the spam clauses, likely guaranteeing a smooth run through the House. But Everett-Church, who is also a key member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE), said the clauses would make it possible "to harass millions of people on a daily basis with uninvited and unwelcome solicitations."
That kind of spam harassment is a key reason why consumer goods companies will likely go more to the outsourcers for their e-mail campaigns. And why more than just consumer goods companies could end up taking the same path in due course.
Not that the spammers could care less, necessarily. The way they see it, they're doing a legitimate business and, like any legitimate business, you will see "fly-by-nights", as one spammer puts it.
Spam itself is semi-underground enough that actual revenue figures cannot be found, according to The Industry Standard. One consulting group believes 84 percent of Net users have received spam, with 64 percent saying they dislike it, 20 percent saying they dislike it somewhat, 14 percent saying they're neutral on it, and only 3 percent liking it in any way, shape, or form.
And the publication calls it a tacky marketing tool used effectively by tacky businesses. Moreover, you won't always get right to the source if you try calling the company in question - assuming you can identify it. The Standard tried calling a Junction City, Kansas firm, the International License Bureau, but the number listed in their e-mail reached a Los Angeles telemarketer. That telemarketer told the publication the company not only spams but also advertises on the rear of the National Enquirer.
The House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications may not be the only place where lawmakers tangle over the spam issue. Washington, California, Virginia and Nevada have now passed laws regarding commercial e-mail, and other legislation is pending in 18 states, the Standard says. And while the Tauzin pro-spam measure may have died a death after all, observers think it may be only a matter of time before a federal law is passed.
Tell that to Brian Rasmus, president of Timely Products, which specializes in mass e-mail. He tells the Standard he and his fellow spam dispensers are "not cockroaches crawling under the four corners of the carpet…" On the other hand, he will not disclose where his company is headquartered
