Re: A Little Common Sense Please

From: Sharon Tucci <sharon_at_listhost.net>
Date: Wed 26 Dec 2001 13:08:35 -0500

"Miguel Alvarez" <miguel_at_encenta.com> wrote:

>2. If you sell me an e-mail list on a CPM basis how do
>you propose I gather this information prior to my paying
>you? (FYI - If you can tackle this you will be the hero
>of the entire online advertising industry)
<SNIP>

>D. How can I know you actually did send out the total amount
> of e-mail I paid for? How can I get a third-party
> unbiased report?

My own specialty is in the email space and specifically
in management of opt-in lists.

Aside from email delivery, one of the services we offer
is verification of email lists. What we essentially do
is take an email list, do a check without sending an
actual email of the valid addresses and then provide
corrobation to third parties. Although this is a service
we've been providing clients with for almost 4 years,
it's become popular enough on it's own that we set up
a web site expressly for this service at
<http://www.emaillistcleaning.com>.

Mind you, we cannot catch all bad addresses (we average
between 85 and 90%). However, I know that for many advertisers
it has proven to be useful to have the subscriber count
validated in some way.

Personally, I think that third party verification is
going to grow over time. An increasing number of companies
providing opt-in lists are choosing to handle delivery in
house along with the sales function. (This is not to say
that I see a decline in brokerage of lists, I just see
that as the opt-in market continues to grow, we'll see
more and more companies choosing to do it all themselves.)

What's interesting, in my opinion, is that we don't just
have the owners of list who use this service, but also
a few brokers use it occasionally when their clients
ask for third party verification.

Occasionally, we're also called on by third parties we
provide verification of this service for to do a
confirmation of actual mailings by performing a log
analysis.


Sharon Tucci
President & CEO
Sling Shot Media, LLC
http://www.ListHost.net




Received on Wed Dec 26 2001 - 12:08:35 CST