The History of Email List Hygiene

1
The History of Email List Hygiene This
presentation is powered by eHygienics locate at
Bend, OR 97701, USA.
2

• 1991

• In the early 1990s, only a small percentage of
  people gathered online to communicate, play, work
  and socialize
• Online marketers saw an opportunity and started
  posting advertisements
• Interference with communication became a problem
  with net users

3

• Conversions fell on forums, billboards and
  message boards
• So in 1993, marketers hired hackers to harvest
  email addresses in order to send advertisements.
• Hackers wrote bot/spider software to pull
  anything online with an _at_ sign into their email
  sending platforms
• Unsolicited bulk email was born
• In 1996, a Usenet Group dedicated to exposing and
  combatting spam was created (NANAE) Spam
  Fighters

• 1993

4

• Unsolicited Bulk Email didnt sound bad enough
• So, Spam Fighters used Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
  to reference an enemy with something
  distastefully common to the public, so they used
  Hormels SPAM luncheon meat to reference
  unsolicited bulk email
• The term Spam was born and consumers took the
  bait

• 1994

5

• 1995

• Spam Fighters started sharing domains, IPs and
  keywords for filtering techniques
• Despite their best efforts spam still doubled
  every year and IT Administrators were desperate
  for antispam tools
• Spam Fighters needed funds for their own efforts
  so monetization of their blacklists was essential

6

• 1996

• Spammers continued to hack websites eventually
  hacking top level domains like AOL, Yahoo! and
  Hotmail
• Spammers used alias to hide from the public eye
  which made it harder for spam fighters to locate,
  DOX and block
• Spam Fighters resorted to Hacker techniques to
  fight back

7

• 2000

• Bulk email software and new techniques crushed
  spam fighters efforts
• So Spam Fighters started blocking entire c-block
  ranges just to rid one spammer (blackmail)
• Spammers started buying more IPs and domains
  using threading and tunneling techniques which
  tricked the ISPs once more

8

• 2002

• Because of Spam Fighting efforts by blocking,
  doxing, and blackmailing
• Spammers decided to clean up the industry by
  introducing Spammers as Publishers and
  Advertisers as Affiliates
• Publishers would spam advertisements that the
  Affiliates would find or create. This made it
  easier to get more mail out because it was harder
  to pinpoint who was sending Spam
• And for policing efforts, affiliates would shut
  down a publisher if they received too many
  complaints or hit traps

9

• 2004

• Affiliates (advertisers) were now responsible for
  Publishers actions
• Publishers would change business names if booted
  off Affiliate platforms if blacklisted
• It was the perfect cover to send spam act like
  there is regulation by deflecting
• Spam grew again and spam fighters had to rethink
  their strategy

10

• 2005

• TLD traps, spamcop.net (where consumers can
  become traps) were introduced
• Complaints and traps were causing problems with
  inbox delivery
• .com domain prices spiked
• IPs were getting expensive and scarce
• So publishers started creating their own
  suppressions to remove complainers, traps
  litigators and bounces for better delivery to
  keep current IPs green

11

• 2006

• Suppressions removed a lot of emails so
  Publishers needed more
• Data brokers came into the picture
• Brokers traded and harvested targeted lists while
  courting large corporations for their own
• Companies found that selling their private
  customer databases was really profitable

12

• 2007

• So data surged in the industry
• Personal suppressions were not enough to clean so
  much data
• Seeding helped list owners see how many times
  their data was sold or traded and some owners
  added spamtraps for shady purposes

13

• 2008

• Spam fighters created bots to fill out form pages
  to monitor list owners
• There was a huge need to study and monitor spam
  fighters
• Full time list hygiene companies spawned As
  marketing lists were dirtier than ever

14

• 2009

• Hygiene companies offered clean files and
  publishers had no reporting options or
  suppressions to analyze
• Static lists worked well for a few years but
  better reporting was expected
• One company decided to separate all suppressions
  and offer transparent reporting setting the trend
  for future cleanliness - eHygienics

15

• eHygienics is a true email list hygiene company
  specializing in removing threats from email
  marketing databases
• eHygienics uses mx verification logic in order to
  find and remove unwanted email addresses
• eHygienics also uses static lists to suppress and
  remove against certain threats that the mx logic
  cant find

16

• eHygienics cannot remove every bounce from email
  marketing lists due to false positives from top
  level domains
• eHygienics mx verification tool and static
  bounce list of 100 million can remove up to 75
  of all bounces from regular and TLD domains

17

• Ask yourself these questions
• Is your list confirmed double optin?
• Are you a whitelist email marketer?
• Do your subscribers know who you are?
• Are you only interested in removing bounces?
• Are your domains and IPs clean?
• Have you never hit a blacklist or been blocked?
• If you answered yes, then chances are, we are
  not a fit for your company. We scrub databases
  that were bought, traded, leased or sold and also
  marketing lists that are old and have sat around
  for a while.

18

• But, ask yourself this
• Did you buy, rent, lease or trade this data?
• Are your subscribers protesting? Angry at your
  messages?
• Are you listed on any blacklists or blocked and
  cant get mail through?
• Did your email service provider suspend your
  account?
• Are you spamming and want to clean up your act?
• If you answered yes, then we may be a right fit
  for you.

19

• eHygienics is an industry trend setter setting
  the bar for all other hygiene companies. They
  copy us and we are flattered.
• eHygienics can reverse engineer any list to find
  any threat that is causing deliverability issues
  or blacklistings
• If our mx tool and static lists do not have the
  latest pitfalls, we have the technology to find
  the the culprit with our predictive hygiene tool

20

• Spam Fighters purchase expired domains and turn
  on incoming traffic. If list owners do not
  monitor and keep track of threats immediately
  (inbox monitoring), they are subject to
  blacklisting, blocking to even account suspension
• Spam Fighters control 70 of all incoming and
  outgoing email traffic. This means that almost
  all Internet Service Providers use blacklists to
  filter spam

21

• Spam Fighters can blacklist your company domain
  and keep your IPs ransom until you clean up your
  act
• Spam Fighters will search for and publish private
  or identifying information about you and your
  company on the Internet
• Your company and any domain associated with it
  can be blacklisted for 6 months
• Your company and its officers will be a chew toy
  for Spam Fighters if you are caught spamming

22

• Email list hygiene is the future for white
  listing and deliverability
• If you clean your lists through us,
• You will receive free consulting and support
  along with the cleanest list in the market
• Sign up for our monthly subscription and find out
  why we have set every industry standard since 2009