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More From
the DMA: EMChoice
by Bill McCloskey,
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
 ONE
OF THE INTERESTING NEW products that I saw at the DMA show
was EMChoice, developed by QuinStreet. Developed internally as a value
added service for their clients, QuinStreet is considering marketing the
product as a stand-alone, third-party application to other e-mail service
providers.
EMChoice is one of a number of
products that have been developed as a direct result of the CAN-SPAM
legislation. In this case, the legislation requires that a company have a
legitimate and working opt-out mechanism. Sounds simple enough, and it is
if you are handling all of your e-mail chores internally. But what if you
are working with a third-party list broker or ESP?
Take scenario A: I make widgets and I
buy a list from a third-party broker that has a list of C-level widget
buyers. As the advertiser, I don't actually see the e-mail list. I provide
my offer and creative to the broker who sends it out on my behalf.
If someone decides to opt-out of
receiving the offer, they are not only opting out of receiving any more
offers from that list, they are opting out of receiving any more offers
from me, the widget maker. As the widget maker, I'm required to stop
sending offers to that e-mail address, no matter what list I use. So if the
same person is on another list I buy, and I send an offer to them, I'm
potentially in trouble.
Now, the list owner is not going to
give me a list of his e-mail addresses for me to check, that would undercut
his business. So what do I do? I need some sort of third-party clearing
house that can check my suppression list against any list I'm about to buy.
In a way, that protects the data integrity of the list owners data and
protects me against being non-compliant with the CAN SPAM legislation.
But there is another problem. I also
don't want my message delivered to someone who is going to report me to a
spam agency and bad mouth my brand. In other words, I don't want to deliver
to anyone who is a very vocal anti-e-mail evangelist, or worse -- a spam
trap. How can I be sure to stay off those lists if I can't see the data.
This is where EMChoice comes in.
EMChoice consists of a client-side encryption technology that sits on the
desktop of both the list owner and the advertiser and a server side
component that compares the encrypted data. The advertiser runs their
suppression list through EMChoice where it gets encrypted in a way that
protects it from being seen by either QuinStreet or the list provider.
The list provider runs their list
through the EMChoice tool where it gets encrypted, so that it can't be seen
by either QuinStreet or the advertiser. The two encrypted files are
compared on the server side and then the scrubbed encrypted file is sent
back to the list owner where it is decrypted and spits out a clean file.
That is great as far as it goes, but
EMChoice also keeps records of known e-mail addresses that no one wants to
deliver to and strips those out as well, thus, in theory, protecting you
from inadvertently delivering your message to a highly agitated individual
with a lot of time on their hands.
EMChoice is just one of many tools
being developed that are making e-mail safe again for today's marketer. And
more are coming. E-mail is too valuable a tool to give it over to the
spammers: EMChoice is another tool in the arsenal.
Email insider Bill McCloskey is president and CEO of Emerging
Interest, a company dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and
marketing industry about rich media and other emerging advertising and
marketing technologies. Emerging Interest has developed the Competitive
Email Tracking System (CETS), an email tracking tool for marketers.
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