dELiA*s: Clothing for the Fashionable Spamtrap
The online storefront for dELiA*s, a women’s clothing store in the United States, is sending email advertisements to a spamtrap that closed several years ago. The ESP is Cheetahmail, a subsidiary of Experian.
A single spamtrap hit is rarely, if ever, a smoking gun that proves spam. In this case, a typo is possible, especially if the email address was manually entered at a store. However, judging from the “why you received this” blurb in the spam sample, dELiA*s thinks that it’s OK to send marketing email to anybody who orders merchandise from their web site until the customer says “stop”. CAN-SPAM allows companies to spam customers until the customer opts out, so dELiA*s may be in the clear LEGALLY to do this. It is also possible that you must agree to accept their opt-out marketing email to check out on their site. (Who reads the entire legal notice on most sites?)
My reaction to businesses who assume the right to send opt-out marketing email to customers is to stop being a customer of that business, and tell them so when unsubscribing to their email. I recommend the same response if a company you do business with spams you thereafter.
Sending IP: 8.7.43.19
Spam Sample:
Actual Headers:
Received: from mta923.deliasshopemail.com (mta923.deliasshopemail.com [8.7.42.154])
by <xxx> (Postfix) with ESMTP id <xxx>
for <xxx>; Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:xx:xx -0000 (UT)
DKIM-Signature: <xxx>
DomainKey-Signature: <xxx>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:xx:xx -0000
Message-ID: <<xxx>@mta923.deliasshopemail.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:rm-<xxx>@deliasshopemail.com>
From: "dELiA*s" <delias@deliasshopemail.com>
To: <xxx>
Subject: Hey Texas! Shop at dELiA*s on Your Tax-Free Weekend
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: "dELiA*s" <support-<xxx>@deliasshopemail.com>
Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="<xxx>"
Readable Email:
From: dELiA*s <delias@deliasshopemail.com>
To: <spamtrap>
Subject: Hey <xxx>! Shop at dELiA*s on Your Tax-Free Weekend
Reply-To: dELiA*s <support-<xxx>@deliasshopemail.com>
——————————————————————————
dELiA*s.com
http://deliasshopemail.com/a/<xxx>
——————————————————————————
FREE SHIPPING on orders over $75. Use code: <xxx>
http://deliasshopemail.com/a/<xxx>
TAX-FREE WEEKEND!
Take advantage of your tax holiday at dELiA*s in Texas from August 17-19
SHOP NOW
http://deliasshopemail.com/a/<xxx>
*EXCEPTIONS MAY APPLY
<removed>
You are subscribed as: <xxx>
You’ve received this message because you’ve registered to receive email from dELiA*s, or you’ve made a purchase from dELiAs.com. If you no longer wish to receive email offers from us, unsubscribe here:
http://deliasshopemail.com/a/<xxx>
Please do not reply to this email as we are not able to respond to messages sent to this address.
Questions or comments?
Visit our web site: to email us or write to us at:
dELiA*s Customer Service
780 Brooksedge Plaza Dr.
Westerville, OH 43081
© 2012 dELiA*s Corp. All rights reserved.
thanks for letting us know about this–we are looking into it
Good. I’m actually less concerned about the spamtrap hit itself (which, as I said, could be due to a tyop or some other similarly trivial issue) than the apparent policy of this sender to send bulk email to everybody who orders from their online store. :/ I blogged about a similar problem with Godiva a few weeks ago. This attitude appears common in the retail business, and I cannot think of anything more likely to alienate customers.
We believe we have identified the issue–please let me know if you see any other issues–thanks again
After a few days of spams, the spams from dELiA*s disappeared. So it looks like whatever you/they did worked. 🙂
Spoke too soon. dELiA*s is hitting a different spamtrap now, one that it hadn’t previously hit. Does your customer accept unconfirmed subscriptions? This one could be a typo.