Penton Media, a marketing firm with a past history of sending opt-out bulk email (spam), is emailing bulk advertisements to the contact email address for my personal blog (tw86034@ergosphere.net). The ESP is the Oracle Marketing Cloud, which is the combination of former ESPs Eloqua and Responsys, both of which Oracle now owns.
Because Redbox has been actively confirming subscriptions to its lists, I’ve kept quiet about the spamtrap hits that I see from them. They’re doing the right thing to confirm. I don’t want to discourage them. But their initial acquisition process for these email addresses is resulting in more initial spamtrap hits than any reputable company whose bulk email I’ve observed before. I think that they and their ESPs — Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian, and ExactTarget — need to know this. Further, this raises an important issue for many companies that use bulk email: what to do about problems that confirmed opt-in (COI) doesn’t solve.
Somewhere out there, there’s a web page that contains a “sign me up for the mailing list” link.
Somewhere out there, there’s a person with a grudge. Maybe a disgruntled spammer.
The two meet.