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Infogroup Exec Rebuts e-Append Critics
10/4/11
By Ken Magill
Not only can email appending be done responsibly and cost effectively without harming the marketer’s reputation, it happens all the time, according to Dan Babb, senior director, interactive, for data giant Infogroup.
What’s more, Babb said, he’s got the repeat business to prove email appending works.
“Email appending isn’t for everybody,” he said. “It’s a marketing tactic that needs to be thought through and a strategy needs to be put in place for how you’re going to use it.”
Babb contacted The Magill Report last week to rebut the assertions in a piece published here in which Al Iverson, director of privacy and deliverability at email service provider ExactTarget, said when companies use email appending services, invariably they end up with lists full of spam traps and people likely to report the marketer’s messages as spam.
“There are things responsible append vendors do to protect clients from complainers,” Babb said. For example, he said, if someone opts their address out of one Infogroup appending project, Infogroup suppresses that address from all future append efforts.
“We’re never going to mail that address again,” he said. “I don’t want to sell an email address to someone that’s not going to be responsive. I don’t want to sell one that causes problems for them.”
He said another way he protects his clients is by making clear that addresses acquired through an append must be treated differently than those organically acquired.
“You need to treat those two universes differently in your strategy,” he said. “They need to work harder to get the people who were appended to be responsive. Subject-line testing, content testing and frequency are all going to be factors in how you make this data perform.”
Babb also said that contrary to Iverson’s assertions that appending is almost universally cost ineffective when done on a confirmed-permission basis, he’s got several clients who do so regularly.
“I’ve got some clients who are very privacy sensitive so they will only send emails to people who have confirmed by clicking the ‘yes, I want to get your emails,’” he said.
However, 95 percent of his clients append on an opt-out basis, he said.
Meanwhile, Babb said, in any append project, Infogroup sends the welcome messages from its own servers. An appender who won’t send welcome messages on the client’s behalf is usually an appender who has no confidence in the quality of its data and/or has been blacklisted and can’t send the messages from its servers.
“The fact that we look at opt outs from a global basis helps keep our platform clean enough so that we can send those welcome emails,” he said. “I’ve had a number of clients who don’t see the value of a welcome email. We require that we send it because we want to provide our clients with good, deliverable email addresses. We’re their service bureau for that first email.”
Babb added that his success in email appending is proof that it works when done properly.
“I sold my first append project in November of 2000, so I’ve been doing this for quite a while,” he said. “Last year alone I sold 1,100 email append projects. About 50 percent of my business is repeat business. My longest-running client has been doing email appends with us on a quarterly basis for seven years and has never missed a quarter. If email append wasn’t working as a tactic, why would they spend money every single quarter for that much time. Year to date, we’ve run 700 email appends.”
Babb also took issue with the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group’s recently released position paper condemning all forms of email appending, claiming it contained inaccuracies.
“When an organization like MAAWG is going to come out with a position on email append, they owe it to the industry to be factual,” he said. “There are things in this document that are either inaccurate, or stating something that could be perceived as fact when it’s not.”
For example, Babb takes issue with the following statement in MAAWG’s anti-appending document: “[E]mail appending creates significant risks of violating consent requirements in privacy and anti-spam legislation.”
“That makes it sound like email append is an illegal practice,” said Babb. “It is clearly not an illegal practice.”
He also said the following statement in MAAWG’s document is misleading: “Further, the data collected by email-appending service companies today is often error-prone. Their practice of using various clues to determine an email address from publicly available information often leads to incorrect guesses.”
“That’s not how we or any of the other responsible appenders operates,” he said. “We’re all using very accurate match logic to match these records. We’re using components of name, address, city, state, ZIP from records that were [supplied] voluntarily and of their own free will. These consumers provided their information on a website where they were giving consent to receive marketing email.”
Babb took particular issue with MAAWG’s statement that “legitimate marketers do not engage in email appending.”
“I looked over the supporters and members of MAAWG and found my client in their member list,” he said. “So when you tell me that legitimate marketers don’t use append but a supporter and member of MAAWG ran a very large email append recently, it’s sending the wrong message.”
What is more, Infogroup has a major repeat append client who is also an ExactTarget client, Babb said.
“I won’t tell you who the client is, but they have been using ExactTarget for almost a year and nobody on the marketing team has seen any negative repercussions from using appending,” he said.
Author’s note: For what should be obvious reasons, Babb did not want to name any of his clients who are engaging in appending. Considering that any marketer identified here as an append client would be blacklisted immediately no matter how clean their file may or may not be, I did not press him.
Comments
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Date: 2011-10-27 20:57:48
Subject: Thank you
We banned mail/spam from Infogroup and similar domains (OmniSource/Zoominfo,etc) from our web site some time ago...
Date: 2011-10-11 15:35:39
Subject: Blacklisted?
Ken, really, you have to be kidding when you say, 'For what should be obvious reasons, Babb did not want to name any of his clients who are engaging in appending. Considering that any marketer identified here as an append client would be blacklisted immediately....' That is complete hogwash. Oh I'm so thankful you didn't 'PRESS' him. There are well known ESP's out there that deploy appended data. Anyone who thinks otherwise has their head in the sand. Of course they wouldn't speak up in this forum, you might blacklist them! LOL!!
Date: 2011-10-05 03:33:53
Subject: I have to again request
For just one client to step forward and extoll the benefits of an e-append. I promise I won't bash them if it's successful for them, I just want to hear it from the horse's mouth.
Please, just one.
Date: 2011-10-04 18:14:47
Subject: E-pending has no permission
Babb said:
“That’s not how we or any of the other responsible appenders operates,” he said. “We’re all using very accurate match logic to match these records. We’re using components of name, address, city, state, ZIP from records that were [supplied] voluntarily and of their own free will. These consumers provided their information on a website where they were giving consent to receive marketing email.”
If they were providing all that information to you so as to give consent to receive marketing email, they would have given you the email address, and no e-pending would have been necessary.
If they person wanted email, they would have given the email address at the point of consent. If the person didn't give their email address at the point of consent, then they didn't give their consent for email.
Therefore, e-pending is nothing more than a thin tissue of obfuscation over what is nothing more than unsolicited email. In other words: spam pure and simple.
As for match accuracy, even with all those factors, there's still plenty of leeway for match error, and we hear of them all the time.
Date: 2011-10-04 17:05:18
Subject: Evils of Appends
1)Some of Babb's clients only send to those who click confirmation links? How do they get the email w/ the confirmation links prior to permission? Oh, he sends it for them, thus making him their agent, making them the sender, meaning they do send unconfirmed email.
2) I've seen plenty of abuse reports in append sending results of the following types:
A. Email sent to work addresses, where it can be a firing offense to get personal email at work.
B. Email sent to mismatched addresses. E.g., John Smith Sr., instead of John Smith, Jr., just because they live in the same zip code.
3) I've also seen repeated blocking/blacklisting by ISPs & blacklists in append sending results, due to spam complaints & spam trap hits.
Date: 2011-10-04 15:19:18
Subject: Email appending is good for who?
ok so a marketer does an append, and gets "good results". I have to assume that good results means they aren't blacklisted all over the planet and they made more sales than it cost them to get the list. ok, thats great. What about all of the people who are now on a list they didn't ask to be on. You're cluttering their inbox and making them less likely to read any mail and ruining it for the legit marketers who they openly invited into their inbox.
With regards to this statement made by Babb:
"These consumers provided their information on a website where they were giving consent to receive marketing email." Can you point me to this website? I'd really like to know what these people thought they were signing up for. and if there is a place i can pop my email address in and say "please append me to any list where someone has my physical address" I would really like to see it.
Date: 2011-10-04 15:04:30
Subject:
MAAWG is a global organization that has to consider laws outside the US jurisdiction. There certainly are jurisdictions where appending violates the law.
Date: 2011-10-04 14:17:42
Subject: Blurring the lines
Babb seems to float effortlessly between "appending" and "selling" an email address, only adding the well-deserved perception that "appending" is just a pretty name for selling email addresses. He does nothing to draw lines between the two, but seems to interntionally obfuscate.
THEN, he goes on to state that his company doesn't really sell (as in hand over) an email address, because his company doesn't hand over an addresws, but instead mails an opt-in request to the intended, which is what is commonly known as "list rental".
So either Babb doesn't know the language or is intentionally playing fast and loose with it; which is it?
You can't legitimately buy or sell someone else's permission, and if you're "appending" email addresses to additional data you're doing it backwards.
Date: 2011-10-04 13:23:36
Subject:
Date: 2011-10-04 13:23:21
Subject: More perceived facts.
It is a fact that in Canada and the EU (but not in the US), mailing without permission is in many cases illegal. To append, which is by definition to send without permission, would indeed seem to create a significant risk of abridging the law in those countries. I'm not sure I see the factual errors Mr Babb refers to.
Date: 2011-10-04 13:19:40
Subject: Interesting claims that don't match my experience of infogroups behavior
My personal experience of infoGroup's behavior is nothing like what Babb describes. My experience of of them is much more in line with MAAWGs description of the processes and behaviors of appenders.
They were sending me unsolicited email offering to sell or append addresses for quite some time. When I tried to find out how I came to be receiving the emails they claimed they spoke to me on the phone to confirm my address which they did not. They kept sending me further email despite my attempts to stop them. This was over a multi-month period.