The History of Email List Hygiene

This presentation is powered by eHygienics locate at Bend, OR 97701, USA.

In the early 1990’s, only a small percentage of people gathered online to communicate, play, work and socialize

Online marketers saw an opportunity and started posting advertisements

Interference with communication became a problem with net users

1991:

Conversions fell on forums, billboards and message boards

So in 1993, marketers hired hackers to harvest email addresses in order to send advertisements.

Hackers wrote bot/spider software to pull anything online with an @ sign into their email sending platforms

Unsolicited bulk email was born In 1996, a Usenet Group dedicated to exposing and

combatting spam was created (NANAE) “Spam Fighters”

1993:

Unsolicited Bulk Email didn’t sound bad enough So, Spam Fighters used Sun Tzu (The Art of

War) to reference an enemy with something distastefully common to the public, so they used Hormel’s SPAM® luncheon meat to reference unsolicited bulk email

The term “Spam” was born and consumers took the bait

1994:

Spam Fighters started sharing domains, IP’s and keywords for filtering techniques

Despite their best efforts spam still doubled every year and IT Administrators were desperate for antispam tools

Spam Fighters needed funds for their own efforts so monetization of their blacklists was essential

1995:

Spammers continued to hack websites eventually hacking top level domains like AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail

Spammers used alias’ to hide from the public eye which made it harder for spam fighters to locate, DOX and block

Spam Fighters resorted to Hacker techniques to fight back

1996:

Bulk email software and new techniques crushed spam fighter’s efforts

So Spam Fighters started blocking entire c-block ranges just to rid one spammer (blackmail)

Spammers started buying more IP’s and domains using threading and tunneling techniques which tricked the ISP’s once more

2000:

Because of Spam Fighting efforts by blocking, doxing, and blackmailing

Spammers decided to clean up the industry by introducing Spammers as “Publishers” and Advertisers as “Affiliates”

Publishers would spam advertisements that the Affiliates would find or create. This made it easier to get more mail out because it was harder to pinpoint who was sending Spam

And for policing efforts, affiliates would shut down a publisher if they received too many complaints or hit traps

2002:

Affiliates (advertisers) were now responsible for Publishers’ actions

Publishers would change business names if booted off Affiliate platforms if blacklisted

It was the perfect cover to send spam – act like there is regulation by deflecting

Spam grew again and spam fighters had to rethink their strategy

2004:

TLD traps, spamcop.net (where consumers can become traps) were introduced

Complaints and traps were causing problems with inbox delivery

.com domain prices spiked IP’s were getting expensive and scarce So publishers started creating their own

suppressions to remove complainers, traps litigators and bounces for better delivery to keep current IPs green

2005:

Suppressions removed a lot of emails so Publishers needed more

Data brokers came into the pictureBrokers traded and harvested targeted

lists while courting large corporations for their own

Companies found that selling their private customer databases was really profitable

2006:

So data surged in the industryPersonal suppressions were not enough to

clean so much dataSeeding helped list owners see how many

times their data was sold or traded and some owners added spamtraps for shady purposes

2007:

Spam fighters created bots to fill out form pages to monitor list owners

There was a huge need to study and monitor spam fighters

Full time list hygiene companies spawned As marketing lists were dirtier than ever

2008:

Hygiene companies offered clean files and publishers had no reporting options or suppressions to analyze

Static lists worked well for a few years but better reporting was expected

One company decided to separate all suppressions and offer transparent reporting setting the trend for future cleanliness - eHygienics

2009:

eHygienics is a true email list hygiene company specializing in removing threats from email marketing databases

eHygienics uses mx verification logic in order to find and remove unwanted email addresses

eHygienics also uses static lists to suppress and remove against certain threats that the mx logic can’t find

eHygienics cannot remove every bounce from email marketing lists due to false positives from top level domains

eHygienics’ mx verification tool and static bounce list of 100 million can remove up to 75% of all bounces from regular and TLD domains

Ask yourself these questions:

Is your list confirmed double optin? Are you a whitelist email marketer? Do your subscribers know who you are? Are you only interested in removing bounces? Are your domains and IP’s clean? Have you never hit a blacklist or been blocked?

If you answered yes, then chances are, we are not a fit for your company. We scrub databases that were bought, traded, leased or sold and also marketing lists that are old and have sat around for a while.

But, ask yourself this:

Did you buy, rent, lease or trade this data? Are your subscribers protesting? Angry at your

messages? Are you listed on any blacklists or blocked and can’t

get mail through? Did your email service provider suspend your

account? Are you spamming and want to clean up your act?

If you answered yes, then we may be a right fit for you.

eHygienics is an industry trend setter setting the bar for all other hygiene companies. They copy us and we are flattered.

eHygienics can reverse engineer any list to find any threat that is causing deliverability issues or blacklistings

If our mx tool and static lists do not have the latest pitfalls, we have the technology to find the the culprit with our predictive hygiene tool

Spam Fighters purchase expired domains and turn on incoming traffic. If list owners do not monitor and keep track of threats immediately (inbox monitoring), they are subject to blacklisting, blocking to even account suspension

Spam Fighters control 70% of all incoming and outgoing email traffic. This means that almost all Internet Service Providers use blacklists to filter spam

Spam Fighters can blacklist your company domain and keep your IP’s ransom until you clean up your act

Spam Fighters will search for and publish private or identifying information about you and your company on the Internet

Your company and any domain associated with it can be blacklisted for 6 months

Your company and its officers will be a chew toy for Spam Fighters if you are caught spamming

Email list hygiene is the future for white listing and deliverability

If you clean your lists through us,You will receive free consulting and

support along with the cleanest list in the market

Sign up for our monthly subscription and find out why we have set every industry standard since 2009