These are the first of the Second Sign-in notices I have received since the official announcement from Y! back on December 13th, 2011.

This triggered email contains a validation code that is required to proceed – no code no entrance into the account. This is a giant step forward in user security, one I would like to see other ISPs follow (Gmail already has this feature).

Is anyone else seeing these now or have you been receiving these notices for some time?

Subject:Your Yahoo! Login Verification Code
From: Yahoo! Account Services account-admin _at _yahoo-inc.com
To: me

Your requested Yahoo! login verification code is ##########.

If you did not make this request, please review your login activity and change password to protect your Yahoo! account: m_vxxxxxxx.

If you can’t click the “review your login activity” or “change password” link above, you can navigate to each destination by entering the following address into your browser:

* Review your login activity: https://api.login.yahoo.com/login/history
* Change password: https://edit.yahoo.com/config/change_pw

Sincerely,

Yahoo! Account Services

Another nice feature within these verification emails is the direct link to your recent access history to see if your account has been accessed from a foreign location (This happened to one of my gmail accounts last year) and provides a method to change your password should your account be targeted by fraudsters.

These types of Second Sign-on features are a great strong step towards protecting users, their friends, families and contacts.

Viewing email marketing as a single, independent channel is not the way to go when it comes to online marketing. It should be part of a bigger, total marketing plan where it sits together with other channels in the marketing spectrum. Be it SEO, adwords, banners, your website, social media or video: email can work together with those in a great way.

Here are some examples to show how the other online channels can strengthen email, and the other way around as well.

Example 1: List building through social media

Some of you might already be doing it: great! Skip this part. But many are not paying attention to this great and simple way to get quality subscribers. Put up an email newsletter signup form on your company Facebook Page. Simple, single action – which will pay back very well with new subscribers. Make it simple, direct and well structured in terms of follow up: send a confirmation email and have new subscribers select topics they want to hear about.

Another way of list building is through Twitter: imagine sending out a newsletter at 1PM the next day. Send out a tweet a few hours before to notify people that the newsletter will be sent that day and they can sign up to receive it. The combination of urgency and quick delivery of the newsletter will get people to sign up.

Example 2: Specific promotion of online content in email campaigns

There are many times that a newsletter contains 5 content items or more. However, people are low on time and attention spans these days. They want quick, bite sized pieces of information that they can take in, digest and in best case scenarios share with others. That’s where your carefully crafted content comes into play.

You’d have a cool video about an industry standard which you’re discussing, an upcoming event video or a demonstration of a new product feature for instance. That type of content is both unique and, because of being video, very digestible. Therefor such content deserves a separate ‘email bit’ to subscribers to keep them up to date.

This coincides with not contacting your subscribers 5 or 6 times per year, but on a much more regular basis, making sure your brand and/or product(s) will be and stay top of mind. If I haven’t heard from you in 1 or 2 months, do I really think of you that often?

Example 3: Sharing is caring – make it unique and spread it!

There are times that some channels are used for unique content and offers. For instance, some retailers have Twitter-exclusive offers: only people who click through from Twitter or use a unique Twitter code can make use of an offer.

The same can be done with email though, the other way around. If you make the content for email unique at first, the ‘newsworthiness’ of the content will be bigger and better than when people have already heard or read about it via other channels. This also means they are more inclined to share it with others through various networks (including email itself, the best social network!) because they will then be the first tier of news bringing people.

These are just 3 basic examples of using other online channels like video and social media to enrich and expand the email channel: it can be so much more than just a simple newsletter!

About the author:
Remy Bergsma is community manager by title, email marketing enthusiast by profession. Working in the email industry for more than 5 years now, he’s keen on writing about many email marketing topics including list management, email design, campaigns and deliverability. His email blog can be found at http://emailblog.eu.

This was a great event (not my typical circle of participation so it’s a double Win!), where I learned a number of things related to marketing, advertising disclaimers, managing contest’s in the province of Quebec (it is really quite different from other jurisdictions), and Canadian Advertising Standards. We were also shown some strong insights into the major differences between Canadian and American consumers when asked about the core value of Marketing and the messages presented by agencies and the clients they represent.

Would love to hear your comments about the content presented here.

* This is not legal advice.

Photo by Alan Cleaver

Hiring Managers often scour the web to find more information about candidates to make sure they are hiring the right person, relying on publicly available information to aid in making hiring decisions for prospective employees.

However some organizations may need to reconsider such policies, or build new guidance, because the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) of Alberta has recently issued guidelines for “Social Media Background Checks” to act as guidance to organizations thus ensuring they are on the right side of law when collecting information via social media.

The guidelines note that reasonableness, relevancy, inadvertent over collection, inadvertent collection of third-party information, accuracy are some of the things organizations need to consider before conducting social media checks on current and prospective employees.

The guidelines further note that obtaining consent also presents significant challenges. PIPA permits an individual to withdraw consent and in such circumstances, the organization can’t use that personal information to make a decision pertaining to the employee. Organizations also need to pass the reasonableness test even when consent has been collected.

Organizations are also liable to honour requests for access to information collected and used to make a decision about an employee. This gains significant importance because under PIPA, viewing personal information may also be a form of collection.

Personal information like race, sexual orientation, national origin, or religious affiliation that are off-limits in the hiring process can inadvertently be viewed (collected) by doing a social media check and can subconsciously bias an employer’s opinion.

The guidelines caution organizations not to attempt avoiding privacy obligations by contracting a third-party to carry out such background checks.

However the regulations on this seem to be a little different in the US…

In May 2011, the FTC had given approval to a company called Social Intelligence Corp. to run social media background checks on potential employees. The FTC also noted such organizations need to make sure accuracy of findings and are obligated employers to provide notice of any adverse hiring action taken on basis of these reports.

Social Intelligence typically does a seven year search of social media history looking for positive – volunteer efforts, participation in industry forums and negative – racist remarks, nude pictures, drug use, violent acts examples.

My opinion is that the more of my time I spend online, the more and more information I build up publicly that can be interpreted in a positive or negative way. It is important for individuals to exercise caution and control over information they are sharing publicly. Having said that, something that was posted online say five years ago may have little or no reflection of one’s character now.

Will Social Media continue to be a factor in your future hiring decision?

Website trust: How do you know which websites to trust, other than the ones you use regularly and already trust with your data, but what about domains that are unrecognized or domains you have never interacted with or sent via phishing emails? Or even more simple – what about they typo domain squatter just waiting to grab your data with a look-alike site.

That is where tools like the Web of Trust (myWOT), and Webutation come in handy. Both of these services give user and automated data reporting on website that are being visited and rated by other users, much like yourself. These tools are available for most current browsers and provide easy to understand feedback on each website your browsing. Do they respect your privacy, or your child’s? Is the Vendor trustworthy? are there malware or security concerns regarding this website?

Password Security: I’ve already mentioned the use of LastPass (in an earlier post) for encrypted password management. With the number of data breaches that we saw last year, and this year already, I can’t stress the importance of having a unique password and user name combo across multiple websites/accounts.

If your like me managing this in a excel file or database would simply become unmanageable, plus admit it you are lazy when it comes to passwords. To get you started they will even import your existing saved passwords from your browser – then erase them from it’s memory. A full Security scan can be run against your personal password database to see how secure you are can also be run on your data resulting in a report showing; a score, the number of duplicated passwords and the strength of your passwords.

This tools is free to use on on a desktop/laptop, and only 1$ a month to run on your mobile – never be without your passwords.

Prevent Key logging: I’ve been using this took KeyScrambler for some time to encrypt keystrokes as you type them in your browser (works in Firefox, IE and Flock). typing your user name and password your transmit across the network as gibberish, this is especially use for for sites that do not implement “https”. Other use full plugins include the EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere plugin (for Firefox) and KB SSL Enforcer (for Chrome), that tells your browser to try https://google.com instead of simply http://google.com.

Secure your Social Networks: With the number of fraudulent posts on Facebook and twitter look to the security experts again for help. Two applications for Facebook (that I use regularly) are BitGo’s Safego for Facebook and Norton Safe Web. Both of these tools will scan your news feed for potential threats and alert you (and your friends if you configure it) to potentially harmful news items. Bitgo also recently released a Twitter focused link security service, safego.bitdefender.com/twitter which uses Twitters OAuth to scan your content and report on the potential threats you may face. I couldn’t get into using this solution, when it first launched, but it does provide an easy to use interface and option to prescan potential new accounts to follow.

While your securing your Facebook account also head over a “like” the FaceCrooks page for the latest in Scams and active threats.

Your Browser Matters… Get out an upgrade your browser now! The Online Trust Alliance along with a number of other industry security firms are pushing for browser security, but if you don’t upgrade you wont benefit from these enhanced features.

Head on over to the OTA’s Why Your Browser Matters page for more details.

Have any other tips to share – please leave then in the comments.

Last year was a bit of a slow year here at EmailKarma.net, but I’m looking to change that in 2012. We are starting a new year and a new attitude and perspective for writing. I’m planning on increasing the number of guest posts this year after the success of last years guest posts (I’ll be drafting some guidelines around these in the coming days), and maybe a few tips on surviving the upcoming apocalypse (kidding).

Instead of a list of predictions for 2012, I’m going to give you a few ideas to jumpstart your marketing efforts this year:

• Start thinking about the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) – How will your email program will need to be updated to comply with this new law. Remember CASL applies to all mail sent TO, FROM, or THROUGH Canada. Know where your recipients are and how your mail is getting to them, and remember more Canadians visit the US than any other nation (Stats Canada 2009) – so they are probably on your lists already.
• Sun setting emails – CASL has an implied data collection clause for existing business relationships, but when this is used for data collection the consent only last for 2 years – think about how you will track this and how you plan on dealing with these members in 2014.
• Account Compromises: Sadly these will likely continue into 2012 – and possibly beyond – building an individual action plan of password protection/updates is highly recommended. Consider using an encrypted password keeper to help you build strong passwords and prevent the common reuse of a single password across multiple accounts – ex: Lastpass can generate password at a set length(10+ characters recommended), with CAPS, lower case, numbers and special characters for you. Lastpass also has plugins for all major browsers and mobile devices.
• Mobile – The Next Frontier. There are millions of text messages being sent each day (billions globally), look to build a mobile experience for your customers/readers. to get you started, check out the MMA for ideas – they had a local event here in Toronto this past fall and some of the case studies were simple in there execution and had amazing results.

Also I’ve added a few new ways to get in touch with me here:

EmailKarma.net is now on Google+

Along with the Google+ account my list of +1′s are available here – lots of different things here across other interest than just digital marketing) like this: “This Black Bun Darth Vader Burger Looks More Awesome Than The Phantom Menace”
I’ve revamped the contact form, I was getting too much spam from the addresses published on the site. However please fee free to continue emailing me at the addresses you have.
]]> http://emailkarma.net/2012/01/starting-2012-with-a-bang/feed/ 0 http://emailkarma.net/2011/12/why-marketers-shouldn%e2%80%99t-care-about-greymail-but-actually-should/ http://emailkarma.net/2011/12/why-marketers-shouldn%e2%80%99t-care-about-greymail-but-actually-should/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:06:17 +0000 admin http://emailkarma.net/?p=2251 Guest post by: Jordie van Rijn

With the latest version of Hotmail, Microsoft started their battle against greyMail. The ultimate goal is to keep the Inbox nice and tidy and the users coming back to the Hotmail service. Greymail? What does that mean to you? The underlying trend is undeniable. Marketeers need to adjust email strategy to an interaction strategy, otherwise your email might get greyed out.

True Spam and email we don’t want
The era of true spam is over. In 2006 the average inbox ranked up to 35% spam messages. Now it is less than 3%. The inbox is still (too) crowded, but now its far less about Spam, but more the combination of interesting and uninteresting email.

The uninteresting email contains messages we’d rather not see in our inbox. 75% of the messages that are tagged as being SPAM actually are legitimate email newsletters, offers or alerts. E-mailings that people signed up for, but don’t want anymore. That is what is called greymail.

The general public calls legitimate but unwanted email Spam just the same. But those emails might be interesting and wanted for other recipients that signed up/ (or at least they are supposed to be). It’s not all black and white, that is why these e-mails are called greymail. Greymail takes up too much time and space in the inbox. Email providers like Hotmail and Gmail are taking action by recognizing these messages and placing them out of sight.

More is coming: The dawn of the engagement inbox
The movement towards more and more strictly filtered email didn’t just appear out of the blue. In may 2010 Hotmail announced that email would be filtered on relevance. This ended up being Hotmail Sweep, while they were working behind the scenes to refine the technology.

Galileo Vieira of the Hotmail team at the launch of the Greymail features:

“We’ve been rebuilding “from the ground up” – meaning back-end infrastructure work – for a couple of years now. The back-end work takes a lot of time … thanks to the rebuilding from the ground-up, you’ll see a lot of new things in a faster release cadence from now on, so keep an eye out.”

Filtering on relevance works
Gmail already proved that filtering on relevance works. With the priority inbox, people spend 13% less on unimportant email, and it is a self-learning system. An individual user can tag what email he finds important and what type of mail it is. This information is fed back into the system and adds to the accuracy of the filters.

A lasting trend in email marketing
Do you see where this is going? Spamfilters have become so powerful that they are ready for the next step. Filtering and sorting of email based on type and relevance. It can ensure that interesting, wanted email gets more attention. Helped by the software algorithms uninteresting email is shoved to the side and gets less attention. So if you want your messages to be read…

The messages that are perceived as interesting and quality content is rewarded with extra attention. This has always been the case, people already filtered the email by relevance and gave your company their own ‘reputation score’ in their mind. There are 11.3 companies in what Merkle calls the Email inner circle. The inner circle gets most of the attention, a lasting trend, aided by technology.

Increasing your engagement score
Good news for marketers that send quality and interesting messages already. They will appear above the average, mediocre e-mail. And will produce above average email marketing results. But email filters also need to be confirmed in their perception. This is already a big thing when switching email service providers. Marketers need to be aware that unengaged e-mail recipients can hurt your send reputation and cause email to end up in the junk or “uninteresting” folder.

Some Email service providers are adding features to easily see who is acting on your email and who isn’t. They give them an engagement score. The best thing you can do though is make sure your emails are acted upon. Stimulate opens, clicks, even replies as quickly as you can after the sign-up.

About the author:
Jordie van Rijn is an email marketing specialist, working with A-brands like AEGON, Unilever, Roche and Heineken to keep their customers loyal and brand enthusiasts. As the co-founder of Emailtestbox, he drives to inspire marketeers to optimize their email marketing and get the most out of their marketing efforts. He spends his free time thinking about email marketing. Contact him via twitter: @jvanrijn

]]> http://emailkarma.net/2011/12/why-marketers-shouldn%e2%80%99t-care-about-greymail-but-actually-should/feed/ 0 http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/ideas-for-dealing-with-bad-affiliates/ http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/ideas-for-dealing-with-bad-affiliates/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:24:33 +0000 Matt V - @emailkarma http://emailkarma.net/?p=2232
Yesterday I attended a meeting lead by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), that consisted of a number of the Nations largest Mobile Carriers and Aggrigators. It was exciting to finally get some real insights into the world of mobile, the types of concerns that the eco-system has and some of the issues that they are facing as a larger group…

I’m happy to say true spam is not a major one (at least at this time) due to the built in controls of the communication networks and the contracts/agreements that aggregation systems and marketing content providers and the mobile networks have built into the systems (the limited number of players also helps). But it wasn’t all roses either, just like in the email space, the largest concern seemed to be dealing with rogue affiliates generating subscriptions that violate the guidelines of the CWTA and Short Code programs. This is a problem that many email marketers will also be very familiar with.

Listing to the discussions between the three groups at the table got me thinking… how to dissuade rogue affiliate from filling your subscriber list (email or mobile) with junk subscriptions that could cause you some real i$$ues down the line, or suspension/revocation of your short codes or internet connectivity.

Here is what I was thinking, if you have more ideas please add them in the comments:

• Build a policy guide for your programs should you decide to use affiliate marketing tactics for list growth. Include things like; payment terms, acceptable practices, zero tolerance termination notices and legal recourse for violations.
• Make the payment cycles long enough (at least at the start) to gauge how well your affiliate is doing, consider reducing over time for those that prove to be good sources. Example: Pay after 90 days, withhold all payment once you receive complaints until they are resolved to your satisfaction or termination of affiliate is decided.
• Build a “klout-like” reputation score for affiliates that tracks the affiliates programs and pays higher for better performers with lower issues, have a cut off for who you will deal with “no scores under 40/100, can participate”
• Have a clearing house of rated affiliates – write reviews after using them for a period of time (ex: iTunes app store review model).
• Only pay for offers sent from registered sites that you can regularly review for compliance to your policies, build a process to reject other sources – go through the process with the affiliate to ensure your policies are being maintained
• Set an internal “walk away” process for affiliates that are out of line with your policies – even if they say others let them get away with these same practices
• Have an application process for affiliates in order to screen potential affiliate partners, try and identify fake or misrepresented applications before they get on your network

Do you have any other ideas for dealing with bad affiliates, leave them in the comments.

Building a win-win process from the start, or totally reviewing your current processes to be win-win, as you can better screen affiliates to work with and potentially pay higher premiums based on some of the items listed above due to the reduced number of individuals but higher quality leads that are generated.

]]> http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/ideas-for-dealing-with-bad-affiliates/feed/ 0 http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/mainsleaze-blog-goes-live/ http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/mainsleaze-blog-goes-live/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:37:10 +0000 Matt V - @emailkarma http://emailkarma.net/?p=2211

Put this up on your list of places you don’t want to be talked about (not all press is good press).

Increasing the tool set for dealing with BACN (irrelevant messaging to subscribers) and big business spam a new blog has appeared and is already attracting some attention in the email space, the Mainsleaze Blog. A place where anti-spammers will discuss spam from companies that really should know better and the networks supporting the deployment of these messages.

Mainsleaze. An adjective for unsolicited bulk email sent by or on behalf of otherwise legitimate companies. For example, if a company takes the email addresses of everyone who contacts their sales department with a question and puts those email addresses on a bulk email list without first asking for and receiving permission from the recipients, email sent to that bulk email list is mainsleaze spam. If a legitimate company persistently sends bulk email to people who did not request it, that company is a mainsleaze spammer.

I see this as a tool for Email Service Providers (ESPs) to vet potential new clients and see if there are any shady secrets hiding in the past they should be aware of, but I also see a potential powder keg for ESPs where a deep pocketed marketer could take offence to being included on the list or excluded from getting services due to a listing… but I digress.

The first post from the Mainsleaze blog outlines their mission and some of the reasons that they have taken these steps:

This blog is an experiment. A group of long-time anti-spam professionals and activists want to see whether documenting spam sent by (otherwise) legitimate companies is useful enough to be worth doing. Obviously, we hope to convince these companies and their ESPs not to send bulk email to users who did not request that email. We also hope to publicize those companies that persist in sending spam, and perhaps make that an issue for individuals and companies who might want to do business with the spamming company. Finally, we are sick and tired of seeing companies who should know better sending spam to us and to others who did not ask for it, and want to vent.

I’m not going to advocate for or against “Name and Shame” tactics, doing either usually gets you a headache from the opposite opinion, but I think this will become an interesting experiment into the social world to affect behavioural change and as a tool for ESPs client education and ISP Relations and reputation management teams when working with existing clients and vetting possible new clients.

Follow @MainsleazeSpam on twitter.

]]> http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/mainsleaze-blog-goes-live/feed/ 0 http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/launching-a-new-newsletter-to-existing-subscribers/ http://emailkarma.net/2011/10/launching-a-new-newsletter-to-existing-subscribers/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:22:32 +0000 Matt V - @emailkarma http://emailkarma.net/?p=2201 Thinking of expanding your current email offering with an additional daily email? Maybe something closely related to your current email program, but not something that everyone will want daily? Then take a quick look at the following invitation from Beyond the Rack where a new (a second) daily email is being promoted offering home decorating solutions to existing subscribers (Typical existing deals include accessories, clothing and electronics).



Wins for this announcement:

• Clear notice on the timing and frequency of offers
• Clear and easy to understand calls to action on how to participate in both the new email program or just the old one
• A full sample of the new program, sent at or around the time you would typically receive the newsletter.

Misses for this announcement:

• No indication of what happens to passive recipient, will they be opt-ed in to new program or just stay active with their existing subscription?

We are interested in hearing your thoughts on this process. Would you try something like this?

The more I think about it the more I think this might actually be a good strategy for Barnes & Noble to employ with the Borders email data, read more over at ClickZ: Does $14 Million Worth of Email Addresses Cross the Privacy Line?

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