Come Join UnsubCentral’s own, Theresa Farmer, as she and fellow panelists discuss the importance of Brand Reputation and the Internet Marketers role in protecting those brands.

Monday, April 19

12:00 PM
The Performance Marketing Leadership Summit
San Francisco
Intercontinental Hotel | 888 Howard Street | 94103

For more information: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113936291952018

UnsubCentral was recently featured in DMNews for an article titled:  Smart marketing: Prospect your prospects, not your customers.

The article stresses the importance of segmenting your email targets and to always scrub against your customer lists when engaging in acquisition email. As consumers, we’re constantly annoyed by companies who send us offers for products we already own.  For marketers, the benefits go far beyond just irritating your customer base.

Read more:
http://www.dmnews.com/smart-marketing-prospect-your-prospects-not-your-customers/article/167442/

UnsubCentral was featured in the Internet Retailer’s E-Commerce Technology Report newsletter this week in a piece titled: “Technology used to secure government secrets is applied to e-mail marketing”. The article discusses reatailers partnering to expand their email efforts and the importance of protecting their data and the advanced list security options offered by UnsubCentral, including MD5 and SHA-256. 

Check it out: http://www.internetretailer.com/ECTR/article.asp?id=33676

AUSTIN, TX–(Marketwire – February 25, 2010) – UnsubCentral, the leading email compliance and suppression list management company, today announced the implementation of advanced email list security options for its customers including SHA-256 hashing and Salt capabilities for both MD5 and SHA-256 hashing. SHA, which stands for “Secure Hash Algorithm,” was designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Salt is a level of additional security that can be applied to both MD5 and SHA-256 hashing that significantly mitigates the risk of brute force attacks. UnsubCentral has also built the tools to simplify the implementation of these options for both its clients and their partners, further solidifying the company’s leadership and commitment to providing customers the most secure options for suppression list management and distribution.

Marketers running email campaigns across affiliate networks or other third parties typically share suppression and opt-out lists in order to comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act. While removing opt-out requests is a common email practice, there are risks associated with sharing lists of physical email addresses for individuals who do not want to receive email. Suppression list abuse, where email partners intentionally or unintentionally email suppression lists, is real, and the consequences can include federal fines and tarnished brand reputations.

UnsubCentral has been providing clients list security options including list scrubbing and MD5 Hashing for several years. List scrubbing is the practice of uploading one’s suppression file to a neutral third party, like UnsubCentral, who then scrubs the list against a partner’s email list to remove unsubscribed email addresses. List scrubbing is considered the most secure way to allow access to suppression files as no addresses are actually shared. MD5 hashing is an industry standard one-way hashing algorithm that converts plain-text email addresses into 32-character alphanumeric hashes. Advertisers use UnsubCentral to hash their suppression lists before sending to third parties. Third parties then do the same to their mailing list and compare the MD5 hashes in their list against the MD5 hashes in the suppression file. If a match is found, the mailer removes the corresponding email address in their list.

SHA-256 is a more advanced one-way hashing algorithm than MD5 that converts plain-text email addresses into 64-character alphanumeric hashes. Salt serves as a unique password that is applied to each hashed email address before the address is then shared with partners. With the announcement of SHA-256 and Salt, UnsubCentral is demonstrating its commitment to providing the latest standards of compliance for advertisers, affiliates and other third parties.

“Utilizing third parties to expand email reach can be highly effective and achieved with little risk if simple steps and best practices are adopted,” said Russ Riley, marketing director of UnsubCentral. “We’re proud to continually provide our customers a variety of means to protect their data, their brands and consumers.”

“The effects of non-compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act can be extremely detrimental to brand advertisers, leading to a significant decrease in deliverability to the inbox, poor reputation in the eyes of the ISPs and a lack of trust from online consumers,” said James Campbell, managing director of the Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC). “We commend UnsubCentral for adding these increased security features to their suite of solutions to help their clients protect both their brands and their customers.”

About UnsubCentral
UnsubCentral, Inc. provides email suppression and campaign performance management solutions to leading advertisers, ad networks and affiliate networks. UnsubCentral solutions help companies comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and data privacy requirements by allowing them to securely manage opt-out lists across the enterprise, affiliates and various third parties. UnsubCentral is integrated with major affiliate networks and email service providers. For more information, visit: www.unsubcentral.com.

Media Contact
Carla Vicens
blast! PR for UnsubCentral
(919) 833-9975 x10
Email Contact

Secure Email Revenue: How to Protect Data When Engaging in Third-party Email Marketing

Date:  January 20, 2010 at 2:00 EST.   Register Now

When running email campaigns across affiliate networks or other third parties, suppression or opt-out lists are typically shared across parties to meet CAN-SPAM requirements.  While removing unsubscribes is a common email practice, there are risks in sharing lists in plain-text formats – lists of physical email addresses associated with individuals who do not want to receive email.  Suppression list abuse is real and the consequences can include federal fines and tarnished brand reputations.  The Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC), a cooperative of leading email marketing firms and email service providers, has announced a plan that requires members to support suppression file encryption when those files are transferred to or from third parties or clients.

This webinar will discuss three options for securely managing and distributing your opt-out or suppression lists with third parties.  These options not only protect your data and brand but can also impact your email deliverability and reduce your costs.

1. List Scrubbing – instead of downloading a list of email addresses to not mail to, email partners upload their mailing list(s) to a neutral 3rd party to be “scrubbed” against an advertiser’s suppression list(s).  The suppression list never leaves the 3rd party’s secure environment.
2. Hashing (MD5 or SHA-256) – MD5 and SHA-256 are one-way hashing algorithms that render email addresses useless for mailing.
3. Hashing + Salt (MD5 or SHA-256) – Salt is an extra layer of security in that it serves as a password that gets applied to the email address before it is converted to MD5 or SHA-256.

Join the leading authorities on CAN-SPAM compliance for a webinar you can’t afford to miss.

Speakers:
James Campbell, Managing Director, Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC)
Todd Boullion, President, UnsubCentral
Alex Araujo, Director of Technology, UnsubCentral

Register Now

AUSTIN, TX–(Marketwire – December 7, 2009) – UnsubCentral, the leading email compliance and suppression list management company, today announced that its client and partner, Direct Agents, has successfully acquired new international customers through the deployment of UnsubCentral technology. UnsubCentral provides email compliance and suppression list management solutions through a secure and automated technology platform. Direct Agents, a full service interactive agency specializing in performance marketing solutions, stated that UnsubCentral’s compliance and database strategies played a key role in attracting several high profile clients including international advertisers looking to penetrate the U.S. marketplace. New customers include Snapfish UK, Kiddies Kingdom and Ink4U.

Direct Agents entered into a strategic partnership with UnsubCentral to better monitor and manage CAN-SPAM compliance across its vast and growing network of over 10,000 affiliates. Direct Agents employs UnsubCentral’s proprietary syndication feature, which provides better visibility into affiliate behavior with suppression lists at the sub-ID level. Syndication allows networks to track suppression list compliance, downloads and unsubscribe activity on a per-affiliate basis. By integrating UnsubCentral into its processes, Direct Agents can manage, track and distribute suppression lists with ease.

“UnsubCentral allows us to engage in high volume email campaigns with our clients and helps us steer our United Kingdom advertisers through the complex CAN-SPAM landscape,” said Francesca ReDavid, senior marketing and communications manager for Direct Agents. “The integration of UnsubCentral has been seamless and highly successful in helping us to reach a wider, global audience.”

“We are pleased that our UnsubCentral technology has enabled Direct Agents to better serve its customers and attract new clients,” said Russ Riley, marketing director for UnsubCentral. “For digital marketing campaigns, the safeguarding of customer data and the protection of a brand’s integrity are of paramount concern. Our products and technology help clients to successfully navigate compliance issues in order to achieve success at all levels of the business.”

To learn more about UnsubCentral’s compliance solutions, visit: http://www.unsubcentral.com/solutions/advertisers.

Managing and distributing your email opt-out lists across multiple parties just got easier.  Announcing 3.0, the latest version of UnsubCentral that further simplifies opt-out and unsubscribe list management and distribution for email compliance.  3.0 was also built to provide users greater insight and control of their opt-out lists to make compliance efforts more transparent.

UnsubCentral 3.0 enhancements include:

• Improved Usability:  A redesigned user interface, workflow and dashboard
• Customizable Alerts:  User defined notifications, including when a list has not been updated or downloaded, or when a key has not been used or expired, etc.
• Filters: Dynamic filtering of large data sets and the ability to save filters
• Security: Increased password and affiliate key security

We’ve also made several affiliate key enhancements.  Affiliate keys are unique and secure links used when distributing a suppression or opt-out list to partners.  Upgrades include the ability to customize keys, automatic key creation, the ability to define all download/upload options per key and the ability to set custom key messages.

Interested in a demo?  Click the contact us link and we’ll give you a test drive.