A dinner was held May 28, in Camarillo, CA, to discuss the possibility of a new performance marketing association.  The dinner drew several accomplished members of the affiliate marketing industry, and was put together in part by Brooke Schaaf, who gave a great recap of the night on ReveNews.  Notably, Brad Waller of ePage and Rebecca Madigan of AffiliateClassroom shared the research they had done on the logistics of creating the new association, which would focus solely on performance/affiliate marketing.

The main goals of this new organization would be to hire a voice to lobby on behalf of affiliate marketing, promote performance marketing, educate those interested in the industry and work out more specific standards and best practices.  The DMA, Internet Advertising Bureau, and the Internet Commerce Association are all good organizations to look to and are supportive of affiliate marketing.  However, the affiliate marketing industry is looking for an avenue to represent its specific interests.  According to Brooke Schaaf, "There was a strong consensus that we need fund something like a nonprofit that can support paid staff, because volunteer efforts have not and will not have the impact we are looking for. "  The association would consist of a board or directors elected  by dues paying members who would hire and fire staff including the executive director.

The need for a new performance marketing trade group has been highlighted recently by the amendment of a New York state law which forces out-of-state online retailers to pay NY state sales taxes.  The law has caused Overstock.com to drop its more than 3,400 New York affiliates as of June 1 in order to avoid the law.  Both Amazon.com and Overstock have since filed legal complaints against New York in the state's supreme court, asking for an injunction and declaring the law unconstitutional.  The negative implications for the affiliate marketing industry could be huge if the court rules in NY's favor and other states like California pass similar laws.  Clearly, a trade group to stand up for affiliate marketing in the future, at least in the political arena, is worth considering.

To continue discussing the possibility of the new performance marketing trade group, Rebecca Madigan is organizing a meeting before Affiliate Summit in Boston on Saturday, August 9.

For more info on the New York Tax Law issue,  Lisa Buquet has comprehensive coverage and insight.

Lashback had a great time attending Affiliate Summit '08 West, which was held February 24-26 in Las Vegas.  Click the link below to view a short media clip of our sales specialist explaining how the Lashback Team helps clients with email compliance.

Lashback At Affiliate Summit 2008 West Distributed by Tubemogul

The crew at Lashback looks forward to  attending Affiliate Summit '08 East in Boston, August 10-12.

Accountability is the key to keeping your brand trusted.  Not only should you take credit for the results of your campaigns, but you should also embrace responsibility for each email offer that is sent on your brand's behalf- the good and the bad.

ISP's and users are increasingly relying on reputation tied directly to accountability to decide which emails are worthy of their inboxes.  Making your company visible and accountable to subscribers and ISPs gains trust, which is the foundation for reputation and deliverability.  In other words, make it obvious to your subscribers that they are receiving emails from you, not some third party that they don't know or trust.  And if you are a third party- be proud, professional and send mail that converts. Take the deliverability high road through authentication, and pay close attention to the mail you have going out.  This means watching your affiliates and partners and working with them closely because what they send is a manifestation of you.

Recognition is also an important aspect of accountability.  Having an appropriate from line that is easily recongnized by recipients is the first step in ensuring that mail is well received. Mark Brownlow links to other professionals for more tips on recognition from Jordan Ayan, the Emma Blog and Chad White.  We found the following quote from Jordan Ayan in Media Post's Email Insider to accurately describe the shift in today's email marketing climate.

"The bottom line is that the email landscape is shifting. While many emailers worry about complying with CAN SPAM (as they should from a legal perspective), the reality of the marketplace is that reputation is much more important �?? and the rules are more stringent �?? than the legislation."  -Jordan Ayan

At LashBack, Compliance is the foundation of reputation. If you can not get over the low bar of complying with federal law, worrying about advanced concepts that improve deliverability is putting the cart before horse.

The quality and value of service are what ultimately drive a company's success.  Customer service must be rooted in a true willingness to please the customer in order to project sincerity and a genuine need for customer satisfaction.  Similarly, when relationships are the focus of email correspondence, the customer becomes engaged in a postive way.  Brownlow says, "If you truly value the email relationship with recipients, then that attitude pervades all your activities and lets you employ winning tactics you'd otherwise not think of.  Once you see recipients as people you want to keep happy and loyal, best practices fall out naturally." 

It is important to personalize emails based on the particular needs and attributes of the customer. Relationship based email lends itself to communication that is credible, relevant and trustworthy. Emails of substance will receive warmer and far more frequent responses from customers than the generic, sloppily-conceived messages they are used to receiving.  Brownlow offers several bits of advice for adding value to your emails from other industry professionals.

Brownlow's full posting including links to the work of Wendy Roth, Aaron Smith and Anna Yeaman can be found at the URL below:

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2008/05/new-email-marketing-live-r-word.html

Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports recently posted an informative four part report entitled The New Email Marketing.  The blog outlines the problems experienced in the old school of email marketing and how enlightened marketers use email "successfully, sustainably, ethically and efficiently".  In the past, email marketers have been overly focused on the quantity of mail being sent and rarely addressed the relevance or quality of their campaigns.  Brownlow stresses a need for "smart email marketing and not bulk email marketing."

Reputable companies are beginning to realize the positive impacts of sending to a high quality list and reaching out to the right consumers in a meaningful way. They have abandoned the days of blindly spamming millions, hoping their sales would draw a parallel.  Deliverability has become tied directly to reputation, which is ultimately in the hands of that other consumer; the wrong consumer.  More harm than good comes of repeatedly sending offers to this annoyed recipient. Sending to people who don�??t fit the mold for your offers not only affects your deliverability, but it reflects poorly on your brand as well. These connections may seem perfectly elementary and obvious, but one might ask, �??How do I best perform quality control on my list and ultimately cement my brand's trusted reputation?"  Marketers are finally getting the right idea about scaling back the bulk offers, but challenges lay ahead in streamlining email marketing.

Yahoo! is suing under the CAN-SPAM Act, federal trademark laws, and other state laws in the the U.S. District Court in New York City and is seeking unspecified damages and an end to the company's practices.  Although the defendants are unknown at this point, Yahoo! hopes to indentify them through third party mailers during a discovery period.

Click here to view the full AP article:

news.yahoo.com: Yahoo Files Suit Against Lottery Spammers by The Associated Press

Lashback offers email brand monitoring with BrandAlert, which allows companies to see how their brand is being used or referenced in commercial e-mail.  With this data, companies are able to find out who is using their trademarked brandname to sell products and detect and research fraud and phishing schemes such as the one above. Enforce compliance of your brand rules, with your contracts and with all applicable laws today.

This is the most significant, clear and far reaching concept for the entire set of new rules. The Commission is clearly stating the critical nature of Consumer Unsubscribe as a foundation of the CAN-SPAM Act. If you send a commercial email offer, all a consumer can be required to provide in order to opt out is their email address. This makes any obfuscation of the unsubscribe process a potential violation of federal law. This rule will be much talked about by the industry and seems to have the impact of codifying not only the existing "visible and operable" unsubscribe mechanism mandate, but also a simple, close to one click, unsubscribe process for consumers.

Implications are being discussed for unsubscribe landing pages which contain "best practice" global, as well as granular, opt-out choice menus for consumers, which if structured properly should continue as a legal best practice. Common practices like adding survey questions during unsubscribe should be audited to ensure they do not hinder the process and are not a requirement for the consumer to leave your list. Perhaps they are now better off on the opt-out confirmation page?

Authentication of Unsubscribe by requiring the consumer to include their name with the email address to be removed is also non-compliant based on the new rule. Avoid any action or process which makes your unsubscribe process anything but simple for consumers- whether web-based which is highly recommended as a best practice or as a reply-to email based mechanism, which seems to be degraded as a practice further by the new rule though it is still clearly compliant.