DMA Sends Spam Warning - Day 2, 12:10 PM EST

[Garrett]

"The government will regulate what the industry does not,” warned DMA CEO and President H. Robert Wientzen at today’s DMA Conference in New York.

Wientzen’s keynote opened with remarks from the controversial CANSPAM Act and urged marketers to fully assume responsibility for adhering to the best practices.

Look at what happened to telemarketing, he said. Look at what happened to sweepstakes. Email marketers need to take responsibility now because spam is a very grassroots issue. In the upcoming election, both Republicans and Democrats will be looking to appeal to people based on spam issues, and the press is also very sensitive to this touchy subject right now.

Marketers really have to keep a close watch on what they are doing within the marketing industry and also watch other marketers closely.

Wientzen stressed that its up to marketers to protect themselves.

[John Glube]

Originally Posted by Garrett

"The government will regulate what the industry does not,” warned DMA CEO and President H. Robert Wientzen at today’s DMA Conference in New York.

Wientzen’s keynote opened with remarks from the controversial CANSPAM Act and urged marketers to fully assume responsibility for adhering to the best practices.

Look at what happened to telemarketing, he said. Look at what happened to sweepstakes. Email marketers need to take responsibility now because spam is a very grassroots issue. In the upcoming election, both Republicans and Democrats will be looking to appeal to people based on spam issues, and the press is also very sensitive to this touchy subject right now.

Marketers really have to keep a close watch on what they are doing within the marketing industry and also watch other marketers closely.

Wientzen stressed that its up to marketers to protect themselves.

Garrett,

I appreciate your reporting on Wientzen’s comments.

What this means is the politicians have seen the DMA study in support of non-fraudulent unsolicited commercial email - for the details - read:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=15091

and have told the DMA in essence:

"Ok - we won't go after you with a Do Not Email Registry - as long as there are no blow ups."

"But, if the voters are angry because of your activities - then all bet's are off."

For the life of me, I cannot sort out why the DMA won't bite the bullet and champion the following position:

"You won't send unsolicited commercial emails to a recipient without prior consent unless:

(i) you have a business relationship with the recipient and you give the recipient the right to opt-out; or

(ii) the recipient is the holder of a free email address provided by an Internet access service, the unsolicited commercial email is being sent by the Internet access service to the recipient at his or her free email address and the recipient has the right to opt-out of receiving further emails from that advertiser."

"You won't send commercial emails with false or misleading header information, deceptive subjective lines, the recipient will have the right to opt out of receiving further messages from the advertiser and you must include the advertiser's physical address in the message."

This gives CAUCE, etc. what they want and allows MSN, Yahoo and others to do what they want.

It takes the steam out of the movement for a Do-Not-Email-Registry - since the stuff people are then receiving falls clearly outside of the accepted norm and it would not matter whether you were registered or not.

It sets up a standard which can be adopted by all the internet access services (since it's mandated by law and reflects what CAUCE will buy into) making decisions about delivery much easier, especially if the sender is a "trusted sender."

And this approach gives time for solutions like the Sender Policy Framework, along with its related cousins and approaches like the Turn Tide Router to reduce the flow and so reducing the hostility.

(For those who are not familiar with TEOS, SPF and the Turn Tide Router, you will want to read this article.)

But, I guess reason will not prevail on this one.

So, we will enter the hot house of an election season with the DMA arguing in favor of its position. Opponents will ridicule it.

In the meantime, the flow will continue. The public will continue to be angry and ... the politicians will react to the public anger.

Who will likely pay the price? The legitimate permission based e-marketer, especially the micro-business community.

It's ironic really. On the one hand, the politicians will be talking jobs, jobs, jobs and on the other hand ...

Enough said.

John Glube