Chris,

I’ve noticed that also re: single opt-in. I’m sure the reasons vary somewhat between companies, but I’d imagine that at least in part it has to do with the email marketing department having to justify its budget (and very existence) to upper management through metrics.

The metric that probably most impresses/concerns someone not intimately familiar with email marketing would be the overall number of email addresses subscribed to a list. With single opt-in that number will be artificially inflated by nonresponsive and/or invalid subscribers (to what extent depends in part on their mailing practices, such as bounce handling). So they use single opt-in to make their email marketing appear more effective than it actually is.

That’s my take, anyway

Re: the TAF form and whether the friend’s name is typically included, I can’t say. I can understand why a company would want to include the friend’s name, but that doesn’t change the fact that it could easily be interpreted as a privacy invasion.

Ultimately the perception that subscribers/customers/prospects have of a business should affect our actions more than whether a tactic is common or not. And as Vonage has been kind enough to illustrate for us, things that might be seen among the marketing community as accepted practice may not be interpreted that way by the people we’re attempting to reach.

If you’re interested in corporate email tactics, check out Chad White’s RetailEmail.Blogspot. It’s a great source of data and examples of what major companies are doing with their email programs.

Hi Ben,

The issue with TAF is that it can be and is (ab)used to send unsolicited email to people (not only by people filling it out, but also by web bots).

When someone gets that email and clicks "Spam" their ISP takes that complaint and looks at the email that caused it.

Part of what they look at is not only the domain/URL referenced in the email, but also whether there are any other sites associated with that domain. (Such sites may be referred to as "Spam Services" or "Spam Support Services.")

If you had an AWeber form on the page that those TAF scripts point to, that means that ISP could make that association between not only you and the complaint/spam, but us as well. As our relationship/reputation with ISPs is a key reason that businesses use AWeber for their email marketing needs, such associations aren’t something we can permit to occur.

Hope that helps!

Joshua,

Using a TAF form on a site where you’re also using or linking to AWeber just isn’t something we can work with at all.

Tell-a-Friend forms send unsolicited email (the friend didn’t ask to receive the email, whether his/her email address was entered by a human or a web bot). While web bots are an example of how such forms can be abused, they’re not the only way - people abuse them as well.

Mark,

"Using the definition quoted, EVERY email I send to anyone I know (friends, family, customers, whatever) that isnt a direct reply to a question theyve asked me is an unsolicited email and in your eyes: SPAM."

Thanks for pointing that out. I inadvertently omitted a key word in the definition of Spam - Unsolicited *Bulk* Email - in my comment.

The difference between a personal (or "one-to-one" as they’re often called) email as opposed to the type that we commonly refer to as spam has to do with that second word.

If I send you a personal email, you may not have asked for it (so it’s unsolicited) but it’s a message I sat and wrote it *just for you.*

Spam, on the other hand, is not only unsolicited, it’s sent in bulk. Who the recipient is doesn’t really matter - the message is the same regardless. As Spamhaus puts it, copies of a spam message sent to different people "all [have] substantively identical content."

  http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html

A message you send me from a TAF form meets both criteria:

  * it’s unsolicited (I didn’t ask for it)
  * it’s bulk

As for having a TAF script "properly secured" - I don’t see how that could be done, given that they inherently send out email that meets both of the above criteria. Whether or not the person filling out the form did so in good faith/responsibly doesn’t change what the message is, and doesn’t control how the recipient perceives the message.

Thanks again for getting that clarified.

Cody,

I like the idea of someone sending a personal note rather than filling out a Tell-a-Friend form; however, I see two issues with the implementation you’re suggesting:

1. Offering a bonus in exchange for someone else’s email address is going to end up in people sticking in addresses just to get the bonus. This ups the spam risk that’s already inherent to TAF.
2. The CAPTCHA doesn’t change the fact that the person receiving the message didn’t request it. So they’re getting a piece of unsolicited bulk email, sent from your website, which has an AWeber opt-in form on it. Complaints against those messages would be against you and us.

What I recommend to people is this: rather than using a tell-a-friend form, put a call-to-action in your email messages that encourages people to forward those messages to someone they know who would benefit. Combine that with a section that tells people who may have been forwarded the message how they can sign up.

  http://www.aweber.com/faq/questions/267/

Martin,

That’s true. When you encourage your subscribers to forward your message, you may want to remind them to clear the remove link so that doesn’t happen