By: Steve Outing If you publish an e-mail newsletter or e-mailed content, you have some problems: 1) Not all of your subscribers receive your e-publication. 2) Not all of your subscribers who receive your e-publication actually see it.
The problems for legitimate, ethical e-mail publishers could get worse as ISPs and free e-mail account services beef up their efforts to battle junk e-mail (A.K.A. spam). And just as e-mail publishers get more sophisticated and want to send rich-media content, the walls are rising that could block those efforts.
When any e-publisher sends out an e-newsletter or e-mailed content, it's the rare case indeed where 100% of those who subscribed to the newsletter actually get it. This is nothing new. Some addresses go "bad" because people stop using them. Some temporarily don't accept mail, because the recipient's mail server is offline or the person's mailbox is full and can't take any more messages. This has always happened, and probably always will.
What is new is that e-newsletters that people ask for -- that they "opt in" to receive -- have more hurdles to get past on their way to recipients. You can thank spammers -- those who send out masses of unsolicited and unwanted e-mails -- for making it more difficult for opt-in e-newsletters to reach their destinations.
Dangerous trendPerhaps the most serious threat to e-mail publishers is the e-mail filtering systems that have been added to major Web e-mail services like
Hotmail and
Yahoo! Mail, and the world's biggest ISP, America Online. Such services in recent years have given their users "mail filter controls" that purportedly block spam from reaching them.
Hotmail, one of the most popular free e-mail systems (now owned by Microsoft), has a Junk Mail Filter available to all users, for instance. The filter is turned off as a default when you sign up for a new Hotmail account, but can be turned on easily at one of three levels -- Low, High, and Exclusive. The e-mail companies don't like to talk about how these filters work -- revealing their techniques for identifying and blocking junk e-mail would just help spammers figure out ways around the filters -- but at the higher levels of filtering the only mail that makes its way into a user's private inbox is that from people known to the user. Mail from unknown or unapproved parties goes into a Hotmail user's "Junk Mail" box (where it can be viewed, but often is just ignored).
An e-mail newsletter that a Hotmail user has signed up for doesn't belong in Junk Mail, but increasingly for users who turn on their filtering, that's where it ends up. For instance, if a Hotmail user signs up to start receiving a newsletter published by a news site (say, by registering via a Web sign-up page), when the newsletter begins to be delivered, it will get put in the Junk Mail folder by the junk mail filter (because the filter doesn't yet recognize the address from which the newsletter originates).
The question the publisher has to ask is: Does this new subscriber ever look in his Junk Mail folder, and did he see my newsletter? (Worse yet, what if the new subscriber didn't see the confirmation message that all new subscribers receive to confirm their request? For most opt-in newsletters, these messages require a reply to actually start the e-mail delivery.)
Read or not read? We don't knowDaniel Silver, an executive with
Lyris Technologies, an e-mail list software and list hosting company, says this trend toward spam filtering by e-mail services is becoming a serious problem for ethical publishers. The thing is, there's really no way to tell how many newsletters sent to opt-in subscribers with Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL addresses are getting dumped in junk mail folders -- and of those that are, how many are actually seen by recipients who bother to check those folders.
How do e-mail publishers deal with this issue? There's no easy answer. Silver says that while it's far from optimal, one solution is to send individual messages to users of those services that subscribe to your e-newsletter, explaining to them that the newsletter they requested may be in their junk mail folders. Alert them, and tell them how to tag the newsletters so that they are routed to their main e-mail inbox in the future. (You could send separate mailings to your Hotmail users, Yahoo! Mail users, etc., with service-specific instructions.)
Of course, if users have the more draconian filter settings selected, even your newsletter could get shuffled off to the junk mail box and not be seen.
Rich e-mails blockedAnother significant worry for e-mail publishers is rich media being filtered. As e-publishers get more sophisticated, and more and more Internet users get broadband connections, the temptation is for publishers to send more complicated, rich-media content instead of just plain text. Sending HTML e-mail -- that is, sending Web pages to registered subscribers -- has long been a popular choice among e-publishers. But HTML pages have gotten more complex.
Ron Currier, chief technology officer of
PublishMail, an e-mail service provider that specializes in HTML e-mail and works with the news industry, says that he often sees problems with HTML mail that includes Javascript components -- which is pretty common on Web pages these days. Mail that includes Javascript sometimes gets rejected by various filters at ISPs and corporate servers around the Internet, because the filters catch any incoming content with executable scripts, since they could contain viruses. (The solution is simple enough: Strip out Javascript code from any HTML content you send out.)
Christopher Knight, CEO of e-mail services company
Sparklist, advises his clients that Visual Basic and Javascript file attachments do not make good rich-media file formats. But generally, other problems with rich e-mail delivery issues can be resolved, he says.
As publishers in the future get tempted to include more sophisticated rich-media content, the question to ask is: Will my users be able to receive it? A strong trend on the Web these days is larger, interactive ads. E-mail publishers will want to send out this form of advertising to their subscribers as well, but the various anti-spam and anti-virus filters being implemented by e-mail services, ISPs, and corporate servers may reject mail with the rich-media ads if the technology used might be detected as something threatening.
The key to successful rich-media e-mail is to test first. Send your mailing to accounts at the various e-mail services and major ISPs and see if it makes it through the filtering process.
Bad filter! Bad!Another worry is the e-mail filter that catches mail with objectionable keywords. Some systems will scan incoming e-mail and reject "naughty" words or phrases. This is a less sophisticated form of filtering which can result in many false-positive rejections. Currier cited a recent e-mail sent by one of PublishMail's newspaper clients, which contained the words "sex" and "teen" in articles, but not together. One ISP's filtering system blocked that mail from getting to subscribers because it was set to watch for "teen sex."
Currier says it's mostly corporate mail servers running filtering software that seem to screen by keywords, and a minority of ISPs. Corporate servers, in particular, may have anti-spam filter settings that are less than optimal. (Say, an administrator sets the filter to reject mail with the word "breast," which blocks newsletters that talk about breast cancer.)
Fortunately, when an e-mail newsletter is rejected by an ISP or mail server, the publisher will typically receive a "bounce" message that will give some clue as to why the e-mail was blocked. It's important for e-mail publishers to monitor the bounces they receive after sending out a mailing, and follow up with the rejecting organizations when problems are spotted.
Send in small batchesOne of the worst things an e-mail publisher can do is send out mailings in large batches, which at some ISPs and e-mail services can trigger spam alarms and automated blocking of your mailings. Publishers using unsophisticated techniques such as sending out one piece of mail with hundreds of addresses are asking for trouble; such mail is highly likely to get blocked by the spam filters out there.
Anyone serious about e-mail publishing must at least use list software that sends out individual messages to each subscriber. But even then, ISP spam filters sometimes will be triggered because many messages are seen being sent by the same address. The solution, long practiced by many e-mail service bureaus, is to send out large mailings in many smaller "chunks," so that alarms won't be triggered.
(Sometimes, ISPs like AOL won't even send bounce messages to the originating publishers when large mailings are blocked, so you won't even know your mailing never got to AOL subscribers, says Currier.)
Using list hosting services isn't cheap, but they do typically provide the greatest assurance that your e-newsletters are getting to subscribers.
Richard Hurwitz, a vice president at e-mail services provider
MessageMedia, says that his business focuses on optimizing the e-mail of its clients (who all run opt-in lists) to run through the gauntlet of spam filters that can snare legitimate opt-in e-mail. That includes such techniques as chunking deliveries, closely monitoring bounce messages, and following up on the publishers' behalf when delivery blockages are detected.
Hurwitz says that it's typically unintentional on the part of ISPs and e-mail services when opt-in e-mail does get blocked, but it nevertheless is common.
Potentially a major problemHow big of a problem is this? No one knows how many opt-in e-newsletters land in junk mail folders and go unread. But consider that a typical open rate by subscribers to opt-in newsletters is 25% to 35%, according to Sparklist's Knight, and the thought of newsletters landing in junk mail folders should concern you.
E-mail publishing consultant
Vin Crosbie (also a co-founder of PublishMail) says that for one of his clients, a typical newsletter mailing will see about 1% rejected by spam filters (and another 1% bouncing back for other reasons). PublishMail removes addresses that bounce from its lists and tries to resolve problems it detects.
The trouble with this issue is that the amount of opt-in mail that gets caught in the net of spam and virus filters is likely to increase. As ISPs and e-mail services work harder to fight spam, more legitimate publishers run into problems.
And the really troubling part is that the people trying to stop spam try to keep the details of their technology and procedures secret. So when a legitimate e-mail publisher practicing ethical opt-in techniques finds itself blocked by an e-mail service or major ISP, it's very difficult to get help in solving the problem. As several people who I interviewed for this article told me, the e-mail services want to make it hard to bypass their spam filters, so they make it difficult for everyone to solve problems when e-mail is getting blocked.
Unfortunately, in the fight against spam, ethical e-publishers often pay the price for the sins of others.
Editor's note: Steve Outing's next column will appear Wednesday, Aug. 29.Other recent columnsIn case you missed recent
Stop The Presses!, here are links to the last few columns:
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Publishers Should Open Creativity Faucets, Wednesday, July 25
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A Whack On the Head For Online Media, Wednesday, July 11
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Audiences Aren't Deserting the Web, Wednesday, June 27
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Newspapers, Syndicate To Sell E-newsletters, Wednesday, June 13
? To see the last 10 columns,
click here.
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