BlackList Monitor Gives Businesses Options to Ensure Opt-in Email Gets Through

Email may be fast becoming the preferred means of businesscommunications and marketing, but, according to Karen Fegarty,it is only an effective tool if your messages are gettingthrough to your opt-in clients. This is not always the case.

"You can find a lot of data that shows that information isnot getting through by email, and the impact that has on any given business. AOL currently blocks about 80 per centof all email to its users, data from Return Path suggests, on average, 22 per cent of legitimate opt-in emailwasn't delivered to user inboxes, and the costs to businessof incorrectly blocked opt-in email is expected to reach$419 million by 2008."

Why is such a high percentage of business email not gettingthrough? For the most part, it comes down to the growing phenomenon of blacklists. A blacklist is a database of internet addresses (IPs) that have either been identified as, or are being used by companies and individuals to send spam. There are many blacklists in existence and service and bandwidth providers (ISPs) subscribe to these lists tofilter out the spam that their customers receive. In theory,it's a sensible solution to a significant problem, but thelists have their flaws, which means that many legitimateopt-in messages are being blocked from reaching businessclients. Because it only takes one complaint, it is very easy for a company's IP to be added - and erroneously - toa high-use blacklist like SpamCorp. Also, many blacklistsadd IPs in blocks, so if one user of an IP is labeled a spammer, any business using it will be penalized. And therehave been instances where companies have falsely reported competitors as spammers, just to gain a market advantage.

Fegarty's company, MailWorkZ, has come up with one of themost effective tools available to avoid erroneously blocked opt-in email - BlackList Monitor. Launched in 2004, the web-based service actively monitors, on an hourly basis, 75 of the most popular blacklists, providing clients withautomated email notifications if their IPs are found onany of these lists. It also provides clients with the best available information on how to contact and negotiatethe removal of their IPs from any blacklist.

According to Fegarty, the genesis of BlackList Monitor camefrom problems that MailWorkZ and its clients were havingsending email to clients.

"Not only do we have an email marketing software productBroadc@st - that companies can buy and use to send their own campaigns, we also conduct email campaigns on behalfof clients through our own servers."

Seeing the deliverability of a major client's email declinedue to blacklists, Fegarty and her team knew they neededan effective solution, and fast: "We needed to determineexactly where we were listed on a real-time basis so we could take immediate steps to be removed. We didn't have time to check the lists daily, let alone hourly, or to findinformation to negotiate a way off the lists. It needed to be an instant, automated process."

With this in mind, MailWorkZ spent about four months of development work over the course of a year coming up witha solution using the .Net platform. During that time,the company conducted extensive research, wading through thousands of blacklists to determine the ones that werechecked by the majority of major ISPs, how the lists determined legitimate email, and how to negotiate a way out of these databases.

Since its launch in June 2004, MailWorkZ has registered more than 400 active BlackList Monitor accounts, and ismonitoring more than 1000 IPs. Client renewal rate, adds Fegarty, is over 50%, and feedback has been uniformlypositive.

"Clients are indicating that this is a necessary tool,improving their email marketing success. They've alsoindicated that they appreciate the fact that it is easyto use, and how beneficial the removal information isfor them."

Fegarty says that the company is focusing its marketingefforts on the UK and building greater market share inthe U.S.

Mark Campbell is a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based marketingand communications consultant. He can be reached atkrambell@ns.sympatico.ca.

More information about MailWorkZ (http://www.mailworkz.com) and the BlackList Monitor (http://www.blacklistmonitor.com) products can be seen byvisiting their sites.