MainSleaze

A few years ago an antispammer I know emailed me a link to a blog by an ESP representative, D. J. Waldow at ESP Bronto Marketing. In his blog, Waldow comments on something called “re-engagement strategy” at a web-based online mall, Shop.org. I think Waldow has since left Bronto, but the blog is still there. I’m normally a bit allergic to marketing-speak, but this blog is good and is still worthy of attention. Read it here:

Shop.org: Effective Re-Engagement Strategy

The main purpose of Shop.org’s process is twofold: to get customers who have quit buying from their merchants to start buying again (or “re-engage” those customers), and to drop email addresses from the list if the customers really aren’t interested any more. This clearly has benefits from a marketing point of view. What caught my friend’s attention, and mine, however, is that this is also a nearly picture-perfect illustration of what the anti-spam world calls a permission pass. A company that does not purchase lists, confirms any subscriptions when there might be doubt that the owner of an email address subscribed (such as from a web form), and then reconfirms any email address that has quit responding to their bulk emails is unlikely to send any spam.