eMail Spammers be warned - you are hurting your SEO

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With every email that goes out - you may be (and probably are) under the scrutiny of Yahoo. If you cross a certain threshold of “spammyness” - they aren’t going to decrease your page rank…no…they are going to let you keep your “top of the organic listing” search result. They will, however, label you as a spammer…right there…in the “number two” position you fought so hard, and spent thousands of dollars, to reach. It’s a brand nightmare…and many retailers have been caught dozing.

So…email is free - huh? Might as well carpet bomb your entire subscriber base with non-targeted offers and product…right? Hey, why not pick up a file from that guy in the trench coat hocking “high quality lists” and bootleg Sean John gear outside of the Herald Square subway station (like you haven’t thought about it).

Well - in another sign that the “batch and blast”, “spray and pray” and tthically questionable approaches to email has gone by the way side - Yahoo has just introduced a feature where - if you are a spammer - your search engine marketing efforts will pay the price.

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In the above example, 3Dshoots was “captured” as a spammer. Yahoo placed a warning at the top of the search results page that read “1 potentially harmful website is marked on this page”. As you scroll through the listings - well…you can see in the image above why the warning was presented to the user.

Yahoo has partnered with McAfee to produce “SearchScan” - a tool to aid in web surfer protection. From an email standpoint - the tool emulates a real user - signing up for an email under a unique email address. This allows them to track both the volume and quality of email they recieve from you directly.

This also allows them to track the “movement” of that email address…if they suddenly get ANY email from a domain other than your own - they know you sold or traded the address they provided you to a 3rd party without their permission. Combine this with integration to Spam Assassin’s open source scoring API and you have an effective tool to identify spam, and one hell of a deterrent to make retailers stop their spammy ways.

The concept is a simple one. Yahoo is holding you accountable for ethical email in one of the most direct ways that it can - by cutting your flow of newly acquired shoppers from Yahoo Organic Listings.

THE CALL TO ACTION IS CLEAR
Get relevant and stay relevant. This means selectively targeting promotions to customers. This means delivering targeted product offers in email. This means representing your brand with integrity and treating your customers with respect. It means that it’s time for your email program to grow up and align with both the industries best practices and your customer’s expectations.

These days, with amazing merchandising tools like Endeca, Mercado, Celebros, MyBuys, Aggregate Knowledge, iGo Digital, and SLI Systems - it’s NEVER been easier to imbed “targeted product” into an email. For many of these players, integration into your eMail solutions provider is “turn key” - something done within a few weeks.

Speaking of which , top tier eMail Solutions Providers all support “dynamic promotions” allowing you to incent based on “who a customer is”…allowing you to optimize both promo and message. Combine that with good “engagement based” segmentation strategies and you will be able to stay on the safe side of the inbox, and the profitable side of relevance.

Entry Filed under: LightsOut Marketing, Free Solutions For Retail, Find New Customers, Retain Customers