Caught in the Crossfire

Marketers who rely on e-mail are getting zapped by aggressive new spam filters. To circumvent them, some companies are going retro, others super techno.

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For Jodie Gastel, it seemed like a perfect marketing opportunity. The Victoria, B.C., entrepreneur, founder of the online gift service ScoreBrowniePoints.com, was scheduled to appear on Your Mac Life, an Internet radio show. So she fired off a quick e-mail to 1,000 of her regular customers: "Click here and catch me live on streaming video!"

Less than 24 hours later, Gastel received a stern message from her Internet hosting service. A user had reported her e-mail as spam, the host told her. One more complaint, and she'd be shut down for good. "I was very spooked," Gastel says. "One complaint and I came this close to out of business."

No one likes to see their e-mailboxes fill with crass, ceaseless come-ons for penis-enlargement pills, Nigerian investment opportunities, and too-good-to-be-true mortgage refinancings. But as the war on spam heats up, innocent bystanders are being caught in the crossfire -- namely the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs who have embraced e-mail marketing as a cheap, effective way to maintain strong customer relationships without shelling out big bucks for a traditional media campaign.

Now, after finally figuring out how to make e-mail work for them, marketers have found that the rules have changed. Their legitimate messages are being blocked by a new breed of super-aggressive spam filters; their good names are turning up on anti-spam blacklists; and they're being forced to devote time, energy, and in many cases, a good outlay of cash to keep their e-mail marketing efforts out of hot water. "The landscape has changed," says Al DiGuido, CEO of Bigfoot Interactive, a New York - based e-mail marketing services provider. "This is not the same business it was a year ago."

That's for sure. An April study by market research firm RoperASW found more than one-third of e-mail users surveyed said desired e-mail was getting blocked by spam filters. Yahoo now blocks more than 22% of the e-mail coming through its system, AOL blocks 18%, and ATT stops 12%, according to Assurance Systems, a digital-marketing services firm. Indeed, some 15% of legitimate, permission-based e-mail is getting caught in the sweep, Assurance Systems estimates. "It stinks," says Al Bredenberg, publisher of EmailResults.com, a consulting firm in Danbury, Conn. "But you'd better get used to it."

That's a tough task for small companies, which tend to have less clout with their e-mail providers than their larger competitors. What's more, large corporate marketers often are able, through connections, to learn the closely guarded list of spam filter triggers -- the key words and subject headers that spark e-mail-blocking software. So unless you've got Steve Case on your speed dial, you'll need another tactic to protect your marketing from the spam warriors. What can you do?

Get Help: The spam wars have been good for at least one group of people: e-mail marketing consultants who know how to navigate the anti-spam minefields. The cost can range anywhere from $500 for an off-the-shelf software package -- which would help you set up an e-mail list and create a visually pleasing pitch -- to a five-figure consulting retainer, which generally buys you software, support and training, and analytics.

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