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June 30, 2006

In Spam Wars, I mention a high-powered friend of mine in the consulting business who has gathered over 100,000 email address during his years of schmoozing (and believe me, this guy is a First Class Schmoozer). Most of these addresses weren't gathered through any opt-in mechanism, but from a variety of sources, including the business-card-left-in-a-fishbowl technique at trade shows.

Here's what I say in the book when he explored trading lists with another consultant:

My friend fears that if he attempts to requalify his list by asking everyone to go through a modern confirmed opt-in process that he’d lose a large percentage of names. Would that weaken his reach or offering? My own sense is that, due to increased personal, technological, and legal sensitivity to spam, he would be better off with a smaller, confirmed opt-in list.

Now comes word that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society actually went through a complete requalification of its 33,636 newsletter email addresses to help reduce the headache of getting so many spam reports and undelivered messages. While the resulting list count dropped to an alarmingly low 4,510 addresses, some magical things happened as a result:

• Spam reports dropped to zero.
• The average open rate more than doubled.
• The clickthrough rate nearly quadrupled.
• The total clicks per campaign remained virtually the same.

A responsible emailer—holy cow!