Suspension Notification Recommendations for Addressing and Correcting Compliance Violations

COMPLAINTS | SPAM TRAPS | UNKNOWN USERS
UNSUBSCRIBE FUNCTIONALITY | WINDOWS LIVE SENDER REPUTATION DATA

 

COMPLAINTS

Complaints occur when a recipient takes an action to complain about the mail that they have received from you. The primary means of lodging a complaint are:

1. recipient hits the .report spam. button (or equivalent) in the user interface at an ISP;
2. the recipient sends a message complaining about a sender to the postmaster group at the ISP,
3. the recipient sends a complaint to a filtering application (like Cloudmark.s Spam Net) or a complaint-driven blacklist like Spam Cop.

Resolving your complaint problem is a two-step process. First, you have to be able identify and process all complaints against you, and be able to monitor the complaint rates that are generated by your email campaigns. If you are not already doing so, you should be signed up for the following receiver programs:

• AOL Feedback Loop
• AOL Whitelist
• Hotmail SNDS
• Hotmail JMR Feedback Loop
• United Online Feedback Loop
• Earthlink
  • The admin or owner of the domain should email fblrequest@abuse.earthlink.net and request to be added. Include the following information:
  • The IP(s) and mailing domain(s) you would like to set up on the feedback loop
  • The company contact information you want to use for the service including name, email address, and phone number
  • The email address you want feedback transactions sent to, which must be an active address that receives email
• Excite
  • The admin or owner of the domain should email emailadmin@cs.excite.com and request to be added. Include the following information:
  • The IP(s) and mailing domain(s) you would like to set up on the feedback loop
  • The company contact information you want to use for the service including name, email address, and phone number
  • The email address you want feedback transactions sent to, which must be an active address that receives email
• Road Runner
  • The admin or owner of the domain should email email-support@security.rr.com and request to be added. Include the following information:
  • The IP(s) and mailing domain(s) you would like to set up on the feedback loop
  • The company contact information you want to use for the service including name, email address, and phone number
  • The email address you want feedback transactions sent to, which must be an active address that receives email

Second, you should undertake the following exercises to understand the nature of your complaints, and identify where your recipients are dissatisfied with the email that you are sending them.

• Review your end-to-end interactions with your subscribers to find points of interaction that are likely to cause complaints. You should review both the address collection and permission phase, as well as your ongoing communication with your subscribers. Look specifically for areas where the expectation you set for the subscriber is not played out in the on-going communication with the subscriber. Where you find areas that do not live up to the expectation you.ve set or where expectations are not clearly set, change them.
• Perform a detailed quantitative analysis of your mailing program to determine where there is a disproportionate amount of complaints generated. Look for high rates associated with a data source, activity, response rates, customer segments, and content or campaigns. Where you find areas of high complaints, take the appropriate action to either remove the records permanently from your database or eliminate a poor data partner.

Once you have identified and corrected the problem areas in your mailing program and practices, your complaint rates should decrease over time. Continue to monitor volume and rate of complaints from ISP Feedback Loops and performance tools to ensure continued compliance.

SPAM TRAPS

Spam Traps are a common technique used by Receivers, ISPs and filtering companies to identify Senders with poor data collection practices. Maintaining an accurate subscriber database is a cornerstone of email best practices, and Receivers have a low tolerance level for Senders who mail to their spam trap addresses.

Spam Trap addresses are addresses that have been established for the sole reason of catching illegitimate email. There are two categories or types of Spam Traps. The first type is a new email account that has never before been used by any user. These accounts do not and will not subscribe to any email communication or be used to communicate in any way. The second type of spam traps are email addresses that were once active, valid users, and have been expired for a significant period of time. These addresses are reactivated and used similarly to new spam traps . they will not subscribe to any email communication or communicate in any way. It is important to note with the second type of spam trap that senders employing solid bounce management procedures should have deactivated any old addresses reported by the ISP as an unknown user. If a sender continues to send to an address that is so old that is was deactivated and then reactivated as a Spam Trap, it can be indicative of poor data management as well.

Resolving your spam trap problem is a two-step process. First, regularly monitor data that provides feedback about your spam trap activity. You should be monitoring the following sources, at minimum, to track your rate of hitting spam traps:

• Monitor for Spam Cop listings, and immediately research them to determine if they are a result of spam trap hits
• Monitor for Brightmail blocks, and contact Brightmail to determine if they are a result of spam trap hits
• Monitor Blacklists that are indicative of hitting spam traps
• Monitor your activity using the Hotmail SNDS tool
• Monitor aged addresses on your list that never open or click within your email messages

Second, review your data collection, third party data sourcing, bounce management, and data maintenance practices to identify areas that might allow the collection of spam trap addresses, or that permit the retention of aged and inactive records on your database.

If you are unable to identify problem areas with your data collection, data partners, or data maintenance, you may need to localize the spam trap problem through a process of segmentation of data, and either reconfirming or deleting high risk segments.

Also, if you employ confirmed opt-in procedures, where you send an email confirmation to any email address collected, you may send those confirmations from a separate IP address than where you send the regular email. If someone is signing up spamtraps, or potentially mistyping their email address, your confirmation email will be sent to that address and it will count against your IP. Sending confirmations is a best practice, but it comes with this risk, so send them from a separate IP address.

Once you have identified and corrected the problem areas in your mailing program and practices, your rate of mailing to spam traps should decrease over time. Continue to monitor volume and rate of spam trap hits from ISP and performance tools and public blacklists to ensure continued compliance.

UNKNOWN USERS

Sender Score Certified requires senders to employ email address list maintenance systems which reliably receive and process bounces and other replies from receiving networks. Permanent delivery errors from Email Messages sent from IP address(es) enrolled in Sender Score Certified must be processed by removing the Recipient.s email address and should not exceed 10% of all messages sent from IP addresses enrolled in Sender Score Certified.

Maintaining an accurate subscriber database is a cornerstone of email best practices. Generally, ISPs are tolerant of an unknown user rate up 10%. At or around 10%, unknown users can result in delivery performance issues. Analysis of Return Path senders indicates that mailers with strong data hygiene practices can attain unknown user rates of less than 2% on a consistent basis.

Resolving your Unknown User problem is a two-step process. First, regularly monitor data that provides feedback about your Unknown User rates. You should be monitoring the following sources, at minimum, to track your Unknown User rates:

• Monitor your activity using the Hotmail SNDS tool
• Your own internal data that reports out on Unknown User rates by ISP, by Campaign, by customer segment
• Monitor sending logs for messaging from ISPs that is indicative of a high Unknown User rate or a data quality problem

Second, conduct a detailed review of your data collection and maintenance practices to identify areas that may allow collection of erroneous addresses or retention of addresses that are aged and/or inactive. If you get data from data partners, affiliates, or list services, it is critical that you personally review their collection practices as well. Make sure that data partners uphold best practices or your reputation and delivery performance will suffer.

Additionally, review your bounce processes to ensure that you are aggressively removing bad or inactive addresses, and you may want to consider using list hygiene techniques such as ECOA.

Once you have identified and corrected the problem areas in your mailing program and practices, your rate of mailing to Unknown Users should decrease over time. Continue to monitor volume and rate of Unknown Users from ISP and performance tools and other such industry sources to ensure continued compliance.

UNSUBSCRIBE FUNCTIONALITY

Providing subscriber.s with the ability to unsubscribe from receiving your mail, and maintaining a process that consistently works and processes requests in a timely manner is a cornerstone of email best practices and required by CAN-SPAM. Further, if your unsubscribe process isn.t consistently available or is difficult to use, you run the risk of subscribers hitting the "report spam" button just to get off your list.

Resolving the problem with your unsubscribe functionality is a two-step process. First, conduct a detailed review of your unsubscribe practices. This entails reviewing the actual process that subscribers use to be removed from your list, as well as, reviewing the internal processing of the request that results in the removal of the address from additional mailings.

Second, Lashback is a company that specializes in monitoring unsubscribe functionality and identifying specific points where the process is not reflective of best practices. If you are interested in contracting with Lashback to audit your unsubscribe functionality, contact us at Return Path and we can provide you the necessary information.

Once you have identified and corrected the problem areas in your mailing program and practices, you should see improvements in your ability to efficiently unsubscribe recipients over time. Continue to monitor your unsubscribe processes to ensure that they easy to use, nearly always available to subscribers, and that requests are processed in a timely manner.

WINDOWS LIVE SENDER REPUTATION DATA

Windows Live Sender Reputation Data is reflective of recipients voting that the mail they received is "junk" or "not junk". Understanding why your recipients consider your mail to be "junk" or complain about your mail can drive changes to your email program that reduce complaints overall. Return Path has the following recommendations for reducing complaints and complaint rates:

1. Sign-Up for Feedback Loops
   Return Path requires that senders are signed up for the Microsoft feedback loop, the JMR program, which is available at no cost to senders. Information is available at http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP.
   
   Return Path also recommends that senders sign up for and analyze complaint data from ISP feedback loops available from AOL, USA.net, and other ISPs. Data sources such as Microsoft's Smart Network Data Service (SNDS) and Return Path's Sender Score Reputation Monitor can also be invaluable in diagnosing the root cause of user complaints.
2. Reduce Volume of Mail Sent from Certified IP Addresses
   A short-term solution to reducing Windows Live Sender Reputation Data rates may be to reduce the volume of mail being sent from certified IP addresses, remove the problematic IP addresses from the program, or segment the types of email being sent through separate IP addresses.
3. Make It Easier to Unsubscribe than to Complain
   Always make it easier for recipients to unsubscribe than it is for them to "report spam" and block communication from you permanently. One benefit of being a Sender Score Certified sender is that email sent over certified IP addresses will have an unsubscribe prompt where you use a list unsubscribe header. You can find more information about implementing list unsubscribe at http://www.list-unsubscribe.com.
   
   Placing unsubscribe instructions in an area where users are most likely to see it, allowing users to unsubscribe by offering a "one-click" mechanism, and providing multiple methods to unsubscribe (like a link to a simple web form or replying with "unsubscribe" in the subject line) are ways to promote unsubscribing rather than clicking on "report spam".
4. Objectively Analyze Your Email Program for Reasons to Understand Why Your Subscribers Complain
   The long-term solution is to address problems with your email program. To gain an understanding as to why recipients think mail is junk, examine the user experience, paying special attention to:
   • Consent and Disclosure statements at Point of Collection of user email address
   • Recipient expectation on content and delivery (do they expect to see 3rd-party offers? Are they clearly labelled as coming from you?)
   • Clear, conspicuous, and functional unsubscribe process including your mail being RFC compliant.
   • Content relevancy
   • Content frequency
   • Age of user records and email addresses on your mailing list
   • Permission Practices / Privacy Policy
   • User preference centers
   • Data sources and data partner vetting and auditing
5. Segment Mail Streams
   Another approach is to segment mail streams and deliver each mail stream over a separate IP address. For example, send transactional messages over one IP, third party marketing messages over another IP, and new data from partners over another IP. Monitor the complaints generated on each IP to gain additional knowledge about which program is driving high complaint rates.

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