Are Email Appends An Achilles Heel For Deliverability And Strategy? - by Ryan Deutsch

I joined a friend for a pick-up basketball game, played (poorly) for 30 minutes, made a move on the baseline and ripped my Achilles tendon in half! Four days later, I was in surgery, and I am now in a cast for the next ten weeks....arghhhhh! What does this have to do with email marketing? Not a thing -- other than giving me some extra time to read up on all the latest email articles and putting me in the mood for a good fight -- I mean, debate!

On Tuesday, I came across a blog post denouncing the use of opt-out email appends. For those of you not familiar with the practice, it is essentially a quick way for marketers with large postal files to add emails addresses to their database. For example, Acme Company sends their postal file to a database company, said database company matches Acme's postal records to the records in their database, and when a "match" is found with an email address they add that record (with the new email address) to an "append" file. The database company then does a quick "welcome" email to the entire append file with an opt-out only link and then ships the resulting file back to Acme company. The issue with this process is that Acme Company now has a file that is NOT opt-in and could cause serious delivery problems for their business.

While opt-out email append is not without risk, if managed correctly it can be an excellent way for marketers to grow their email lists. In these tough economic times, companies are looking for ways to accelerate the use of the email channel, essentially reallocating marketing budget from less "accountable" channels to email. As experts in the space, I think it is our job to help them do so responsibly.

We often look at things as black and white with regards to email best practices and deliverability. I understand and agree that from a delivery standpoint, email append can be a bad idea, especially if the senders simply add the append to their current list. However, I think from time to time we should try and look at things from the marketer's standpoint. If we know that they are going to go down this path, why not try to help them do it effectively?

Here are some thoughts on opt-out appends that folks should consider before deciding to throw in the towel altogether:

1. Only append active customer files. Do not append inactive or "stale" customer files. These result in poor match rates and are riskier than active customer files. Furthermore, it is critical that these customers pass the PBR (Prior Business Relationship) test. As a general rule, be sure that the customer has purchased and/or interacted with your organization in the last 12 months. If you append bad data you will, as the article I read Tuesday suggests, destroy your deliverability.

2. Build an append-specific communication strategy. You should not treat your appended email recipients the same way you treat subscribers that have been on your file for months and years. First, make sure you isolate your append mailings from your core programs. While I believe opt-out appends can deliver value to a marketer, we must accept that this file IS riskier than the house fi0