Yahoo Mail/Gmail 2024 Easy Sender Compliance Guide: Click here

Tell me about this new opt-out list!


Over here, email marketer Dylan Boyd talks about the the DMA's "launch" of an email opt-out site.

What, you mean, eMPS? That thing that has been around since at least 2005? Actually, since 2000. This is just the same old thing in a shiny new wrapper.

Not only is this thing not brand new, it's not worth the pixels it's printed on.

Think about it. If you only send email to people who explicitly ask for it, then why do you need to work with an opt-out registry? Track who have opted-in to your own list, track (and remove) those who choose to unsubscribe, and that's pretty much all you need to do.

Also, you need to ask yourself, what does compliance with this opt-out registry get you? It's not mandated by law, nor could it have any observable impact on your ability to send email.

What does Spamhaus say about eMPS? "[We know] of no U.S. firm using the DMA's eMPS service that isn't automaticallly by definition a firm sending spam, since the sole reason for users to need to opt-out of bulk email advertising they did not opt-in to is because the sender is sending without consent, i.e: any DMA member that is using eMPS is using it because he is sending Unsolicited Bulk Email, i.e: Spam."

If you send spam, you're going to get blocked, filtered, and blacklisted, even if you use this kind of list. If you don't send spam, you don't need it, as opt-in permission overrides opt-out suppression.

Explain to me once again, what the merit of this thing is? I'm not getting it.

3 Comments

Comments policy: Al is always right. Kidding, mostly. Be polite, please and thank you.

  1. I agree with you as well Al. I think that this "launch" at DMA last week was just a new website around an old dead idea. This thing is all fluff and anyone that needs to use it is most likely someone that falls into bad practices.

    Thanks for giving me some data to back up my thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Al, the point of the eMPS is to be able to tell the government "but we're already doing it" if the FTC ever decides they want to build a national do not email list. It's a preemptive move... nothing more.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Heh. Does that mean I win a prize for being the first to declare that eight year strategy a failure?

    ReplyDelete
Previous Post Next Post