Spam Prevention for Marketers

This page is designed to help make opt-in marketing easy to understand and implement. The concepts behind “permission marketing” are explained in these links, and tools are provided to help make sure your list is managed properly.

Email Marketing Advice
Marketing on the Internet
Email Marketing Products and Services
Email Marketing Jargon
Email Marketing News

Email Marketing Advice

General Email Marketing Advice
Opt-in Mailing List Management Best Practice
Email Deliverability
E-Pending Issues

E-Pending Issues

The practice of adding email addresses to existing customer records is known as “e-pending”. If the owner of the email address had not opted in to receiving third party email this leads inevitably to spamming.

Epending is Evil - spamvertized.org/#epending
DMA adopts new e-mail append guidelines - www.the-dma.org/cgi/disppressrelease?article=552

Remove your address from websites and directories

General Marketing on the Internet

the cluetrain manifesto - www.cluetrain.com/
Marketing on the Internet without Spamming - www.tincher.to/market.htm
How to advertise responsibly on the net - www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3098.html
Advertising on Usenet - www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/advertising/how-to/part1/
Stealth Marketing in Usenet news groups - www.tincher.to/stealth.htm
SelfPromotion - www.selfpromotion.com/
Bruce Clay, Internet Business Consultants - www.bruceclay.com/
MarketingSherpa - www.marketingsherpa.com/

Promoting Your Website

Marketing Your Organization's Web Site - www.coyotecom.com/webdevo/webmrkt.html
How To Announce Your New Web Site - epage.com/faq/webannounce.html
Beginner's guide to creating popular websites - www.tincher.to/begin.htm
Eight Quick, Easy and Free Steps to Promote Your Website - www.reedmedia.net/misc/marketing/eightsteps.html
Search Engine Submission Tips - searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=webmasters
How to Meet New Friends: Traffic Generation Basics - www.camturner.com/archives/how-to-meet-new-friends-traffic-generation-basics/
13 Tips on Asking other Bloggers for Links - www.problogger.net/archives/2005/11/21/13-tips-on-asking-other-bloggers-for-links/

Remove your address from websites and directories

Search Engine Quality Guidelines

Google Webmaster Guidelines - www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines - help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html
Live Search Site Owner help - help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-gb&project=wl_webmasters

Web Spam

Non-Profit Marketing on the Internet

Preventing the Nonprofit Spam Epidemic - news.gilbert.org/noSpam
Convio Free Resources for Non Profits - www.convio.com/resources/

Link Exchanges

Link Exchange Scams

Email Marketing Products and Services

Email List Management Software
Opt-in Outsourced Email
Trusted Sender or Reputation Programmes
Email Deliverability and Auditing
Opt Out Programmes
Global Remove Lists
Mail Provider Postmaster Websites

Email List Management Software

Mailman - www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman.html - see: mailman.sourceforge.net/, www.list.org/
Majordomo - www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/
Mail-Bulkmail - search.cpan.org/dist/Mail-Bulkmail/ - Perl module
L-Soft Products - www.lsoft.com/products/products.asp
MaxBulk Mailer - www.maxprog.com/MaxBulk.html - Mac
eMail Bounce Handler - www.maxprog.com/EmailBounceHandler.html - Mac
Declude Confirm - www.declude.com/Articles.asp?ID=127 - IMail Plugin
Email Bounce Products - boogietools.com/products/ - Windows
ezmlm - cr.yp.to/ezmlm.html - qmail
Ezmlm-idx - www.ezmlm.org/ - qmail
phplist - www.phplist.com/
Ecartis (formerly Listar) Modular Listserver - www.ecartis.org/
Dada Mail - dadamailproject.com/
Sympa - www.sympa.org/
Listproc - listproc.sourceforge.net/
Campaign - www.arialsoftware.com/
exilist - duncanthrax.net/exilist-distro/ - Exim
StrongMail - www.strongmail.com/
Bronto - bronto.com/
Spinnaker Pro - www.spinnakerpro.com/
Email Marketing Director - www.arialsoftware.com/emailmarketingdirector.htm
Gammadyne Mailer - gammadyne.com/mmail.htm
EmailLabs Email Marketing Software (Installed) Solution - www.emaillabs.com/email-software/email-marketing-software.html
Castcadia - www.castcadia.com/

Opt-in Outsourced Email

This list of email delivery service providers has been suspended.

Trusted sender programmes may help in determining a provider that suits your needs. Check online listings of spam sources, such as SPEWS or Spamhaus, and pay attention to spam reports on anti-spam forums and discussion lists. Beware of any provider that will accept a list you have built yourself without verifying it in some manner.

Email Industry Organizations

Trusted Sender or Reputation Programmes

Sender Score Certified - www.returnpath.net/commercialsender/certification/ - was Bonded Sender
Habeas Sender Warranted Email (SWE) - www.habeas.com/
SuretyMail - www.isipp.com/email-accreditation/
ESPC Project Lumos - www.espcoalition.org/project_lumos.php
Spamhaus .mail TLD - www.spamhaus.org/tld/
Goodmail Systems Trusted-Class Email - www.goodmailsystems.com/
Outbound Index - outboundindex.org/
AOL Whitelist - postmaster.info.aol.com/tools/whitelist_guides.html
TRUSTe Email Privacy Seal - www.truste.org/businesses/email_privacy_seal.php
Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) - www.eco.de/servlet/PB/menu/1779020/index.html
The Domain Assurance Council (Vouch By Reference, VBR) - www.domain-assurance.org/
MIPA Affil - mipassoc.org/affil/
RepuScore - isr.uncc.edu/repuscore/
EmailReg - www.emailreg.org/

Email Deliverability and Auditing

Some companies can help assure and monitor your email delivery rates and delivery practices.

Sender Score - www.returnpath.net/senderscore/
Pivotal Veracity - www.pivotalveracity.com/
Lyris EmailAdvisor - www.lyris.com/solutions/lyris-hq/email-delivery/
Habeas RepCheck - https://secure.habeas.com/repcheck/reg.php?s=repcheck_blacklist
Return Path SafeList - www.habeas.com/en-US/Senders/Overview/
AboutSpam - www.aboutspam.com/consult.php
LashBack's UnsubMonitor - www.lashback.com/marketers_index.htm
Black List Monitor - www.blacklistmonitor.com/
StrongDelivery - www.strongmail.com/solutions/email-delivery/deliverability.php
RBL Watch - www.drcc.com/publicaccess/sales.nsf/rblwatch-intro
EmailReach Delivery Audit - www.emailreach.com/
DeliveryMonitor - www.deliverymonitor.com/
Project Honey Pot Monitor - www.projecthoneypot.org/monitor_overview.php
BorderWare Security Network Alerts - bsn.borderware.com/profile/alerts.php
Karmasphere - www.karmasphere.com/
IPChecks - ipchecks.net/
Delivery Monitor - www.deliverymonitor.com/
CampaignMonitor - www.campaignmonitor.com/testing/

Email Deliverability Advice
DNSBL Lookup

Opt Out Programmes

Several “opt out” services exist that allow you to subscribe a single email address to be scrubbed from participating mailers' lists. Often the identify of the participants is not known, and the reliability or motive uncertain, so none of these single address services are listed here; instead, only services that allow a domain owner to opt-out his entire domain are listed.

Opt Out by Domain - www.optoutbydomain.com/
Registry Compliance - https://www.registrycompliance.com/ - Children's Protection Registry laws
UnsubCentral - www.unsubcentral.com/ - handles opt-outs for mailing lists across a company

Spam Laws

Global “Remove” Lists

Global remove lists are a central database of email addresses which have opted out of unsolicited email - they don't work, and these links explain why.

Spam “Remove” Lists - www.spamhaus.org/removelists.html
Problems with opt-out lists - www.templetons.com/brad/spam/globout.html
Fraudulent use of remove.com - www.remove.com/removedisclaimer.html
Sham Site Is a Scam: There Is No “National Do Not E-mail Registry” - www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/02/spamcam.shtm
“Do Not Spam” List Cannot Be Implemented - www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/canspam2.shtm
National Do Not Spam Registry - www.thespeciousreport.com/03031216nospam.html