|
TeamCaster™ ANTI-SPAM POLICY
eLevel, Inc, developers of TeamCaster™ email marketing tools, support ONLY permission-based marketing practices. TeamCaster™ has implemented various policies and procedures that:
- Encourage permission-based marketing.
- Help prevent TeamCaster™ from being used for the purpose of unsolicited email campaigns.
- Respond to all complaints suggesting TeamCaster™ has been used as a vehicle to send unsolicited email.
Spam is Unsolicited Email
Spam is unsolicited commercial email (UCE), junk mail or bulk mail that has not been requested by the recipient. In addition to being perceived as intrusive, irrelevant and often offensive, it is also typical that spam emails do not contain an option to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Simply put, spam is the opposite of permission-based emails - those that are requested, anticipated, personal and relevant.
TeamCaster™ encourages the Creation of Opt-in Distribution Lists:
- Free Opt-in List Building - TeamCaster™ enables clients to put an "Opt-in" form on their website. This feature collects and stores an unlimited number of permission-based recipients, seamlessly and at no cost.
- Viral Marketing - "Forward to a Friend" and "Subscribe Now" links can be added to each email, encouraging the possibility of building a list through referrals from existing clients. Referral marketing is more likely to succeed than a regular email campaign because the email is personal, relevant and of interest to the recipient. Viral marketing encourages people to send useful emails and attaches their personal information and email address to it so any reply email goes back to the sender. These forwarded emails can also contain a "subscribe now" & unsubscribe forms.
- Incentive Marketing - TeamCaster™ encourages its recipients to "Forward to a Friend" via its incentive marketing application that allows the User to record who has referred customers and reward them.
The terms and conditions of using TeamCaster™ inform our clients they can only send email campaigns to people who have agreed to receive them.
To protect our reputation - and that of our clients - we assist new customers in uploading their first large email distribution lists into TeamCaster™. As part of our customer service initiative, it is useful for the client but also allows us to view the contents of a distribution list - with the customer's permission. In addition, we help first time customers run a sample campaign to a few select recipients from their list - before sending out all the rest.
Only email lists containing fewer than 25,000 names can be uploaded online. Larger lists are uploaded by TeamCaster™ staff and subjected to manual scrutiny. TeamCaster™ uses training and education resources to educate our clients and the direct marketing industry about the proper use of email marketing and how to market successfully without ever resorting to non permission-based practices.
Software Control Tools
It has become standard for reputable email marketers to include an "unsubscribe" in their email campaign. TeamCaster™ makes this easy by adding the option automatically to each email sent. Unsubscribes can be requested via a link in each email and by replying to the email with 'Unsubscribe' in the subject line. This provides even off-line readers the ability to request an unsubscribe at any time.
This option cannot be removed by the sender however, they can choose how it will be phrased. Anyone who "unsubscribes" will be automatically flagged in the database and their email address will be suppressed from all future mailings. Unsubscribe status can't be overwritten by list merging. Detailed individual reporting highlights bounces and "unsubscribes" against the recipient's email address. To further protect recipients from email abuse, contacts receiving email from TeamCaster™ users will only see their own names in the "To" field. All other recipients' email addresses are not viewable.
Technical
We honor emerging ISP protocols (restrictions on number of connections, size of pipe, speed of sending servers, open relay off, reverse DNS enabled, RFC compliance). Following these protocols ensures that we are a respected email generator and we are working to protect the integrity of ISP networks without undue burden. We are a polite sender of emails - we distinguish between soft and hard bounces. Hard bounces are immediately flagged and suppressed from future mailings. Soft bounce retries are limited to 5 attempts over several days.
Dealing with Complaints
TeamCaster™ takes permission marketing very seriously. Notwithstanding the entire preventative measures outlined in the section above, occasionally we do receive complaints from recipients of a customer's email campaign. When a complaint is received the following process is followed:
- Every complaint that is received gets read and acted upon to by one of our employees.
- Where the email address of the complainant is known, it will be immediately unsubscribed from the relevant customer list by a TeamCaster™ employee, not left to the discretion of the customer. This is not negotiable.
- When the email address of the complainant is known, they will be notified that their email address has been removed. If the complaint came via an ISP, they too will be notified of the action taken.
- If the number of complaints is below a certain threshold based on number of emails sent and opened, TeamCaster™ customer support will review the list source with the customer and discuss ways to ensure that no further complaints are likely. The customer is noted as having been warned.
- If the complaints continue on subsequent mailings or if the first mailing generates a certain percentage of complaints, the customer's account will be suspended or terminated.
Our license agreement gives us the right to publish the names of any customer who has been terminated because of spam complaints. We share this information with other permission-based providers to reduce the probability that the abuser will simply take their business to another provider and get past their controls.
|
