This presentation took place at Affiliate Summit West 2006, and was about CAN-SPAM and what affiliate marketers need to know. The session was presented by Joshua Baer, CEO and Founder of UnsubCentral, and Brandon Phillips, President of Lashback. The presentation covered what affiliate marketers need to comply with CAN-SPAM, securely manage suppression list exchange, monitor suppression list management and select the best tools for protecting their brand’s reputation and deliverability (ROI). When the CAN-SPAM Act defined the Advertiser as the Sender, the dynamics of affiliate marketing underwent a fundamental shift. Because merchants are essentially viewed as the sum of their parts (i.e.; affiliate senders), it became necessary for them to crack down on any and all abuse and noncompliance on the parts of their affiliate partners in order to maintain their reputation and brand image. As an advertiser, who you work with has never been more important, and as an affiliate, it is imperative that you learn how to properly manage suppression lists and overall CAN-SPAM compliance.

2. Questions we’ll answer today
• Why am I getting blacklisted and sued? I
didn’t even send any email!
• How do suppression lists get abused? Has
my list been stolen and spammed?
• How do I protect my suppression list?
• How do I monitor my suppression list?
• How do I monitor my affiliates?
• How do I monitor my reputation?
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3. Why am I blacklisted?
• I don’t send any email on my own, so why
is my domain and mail server blacklisted?
– Anti-spam advocates "follow the money"
– If links in a spammy email go to your site, you
can easily be blacklisted
– Your images, domain name, URL links, and
content can be "fingerprinted" affecting
delivery by all of your affiliates
– You will be held responsible by the industry
and ISPs for emails sent by your affiliates
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4. Why am I getting sued?
• I didn’t send the email and my contract
says its not my responsibility!
– CAN-SPAM holds the advertiser responsible
– FTC and state AG’s cracking down
– By the time you get sued, the company that
sent the email might not be around anymore
– A serious storm is brewing!
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5. Affiliate Lawsuits
• 2003 MSFT/NYAG vs. OptinRealBig
– $38m in lawsuits
– Synergy6 goes out of business
– OptinRealBig settles out of court
• 2004 Hypertouch vs. BobVila.com
• 2005 Hypertouch vs. Kraft / Gevalia
• 2005 DirectTV DNC Violation - $4.5m
• 2005 FTC vs. Global Net Solutions - $621,000
• 2006 New York Times vs. Click2Boost
– $2m awarded for fraudulent signups
– Of 41,000 leads, 187 actually converted
– 41% said they never signed up
• 2006 FTC vs. Your Company Name Here 5

6. Types of suppression abuse
• No advertiser unsubscribe link
– Third party emails should have 2 unsub links,
one for the list owner, one for the advertiser
– Advertiser is liable for failure to include
• Failure to honor an unsubscribe request
– CAN-SPAM says to honor within 10 days
– Advertiser is liable for failure to honor
• Sending spam to a stolen suppression list
– Affiliate is told to suppress, but sends instead
– Advertiser is liable for failure to protect 6

7. Has my list been stolen?
• If you have it posted on an affiliate network
that doesn’t use UnsubCentral, your list
definitely has been stolen and spammed.
• If you don’t use UnsubMonitor, you probably
have no idea its happening.
• If you don’t pay close attention, your results
will go down from fingerprinting.
• The way you’re going to find out is when a
lawsuit gets filed against you or your
corporate email server gets blacklisted.
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8. Affiliate Networks are Worst
• Some of the largest networks are havens
for suppression list abuse and spammers
• Contrary to claims, anyone can sign up
and become an affiliate
• Once logged in, spammers can download
tens of millions of email addresses with no
auditing or accountability
• Then they can send spam or sell the list
with little chance of being caught
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9. Just last week...
• Created bogus affiliate account at MAJOR
affiliate network you all know and use
• They called to confirm the account and
approved it within 10 minutes
• Instantly had access to download over 16
million email address from major
advertisers that are in this room today
• Yup - I have your suppression list :-)
• Who will have it tomorrow?
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10. How do I protect my list?
• Don’t ever post on FTP site or network
• Insert unique "seeds" into the list for each
affiliate that downloads it
• Encrypt the list with MD5 so the
addresses are protected
• Let a neutral third party manage both lists,
protecting the advertiser and the affiliate
• Terminate bad affiliates immediately
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11. UnsubCentral
• Hosted suppression list management
– Know who downloads suppression list
– Audit trail for all unsubscribes
– Prevent and detect abuse
– Integrated with major ESPs and networks
• Hosted unsub page for third party emails
– Prevent blacklisting
– Reduce complaints
– Improve deliverability with custom domains
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12. UnsubCentral
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A secure, centralized repository for managing and sharing
suppression lists across all of your commercial email channels.

13. The Market Leader
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14. How do I monitor my list?
• Sign up with a unique seed address, then
unsubscribe and make sure you don’t
receive email at that address after 10
days.
• Unsubscribe a unique seed address that
was never on the list to begin with. Make
sure it doesn’t receive any email ever.
• Continuously add new seeds each week
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15. UnsubMonitor by LashBack
With UnsubMonitor You Can:
• Monitor the reputation of IPs or URL domains
• Insure emails have working unsubscribe
• Insure Unsubscribes are honored within 10 days
• Monitor for suppression list abuse (harvesting)
• See how partners are affecting your reputation
• Qualify new affiliate/partner applications
UnsubMonitor Customers Include:

16. Technology
How it works:
Consumer Unsubscribe Requests Received
Identify the Advertiser/Sender and check Reputation
If Safe – Unsubscribe Request is Processed
If Not Safe – Unsubscribe Request is Suppressed
If Unknown – Unsubscribe is paused while Advertiser/Sender is tested
Unknown
Unsubscribe Reputation
(UnsubScore) Extracted
Good Reputation
LashBack safely automates the unsubscribe
process on the consumers behalf.
Bad Reputation
Unsubscribe is suppressed, the receiver is
notified and future messages are blocked.
No Reputation
The unsubscribe is paused while LashBack
deploys a series of probes and tests.
Email forwarded
to LashBack

17. How do I monitor affiliates?
• Must track statistics on a per affiliate basis
– Revenue generated
– Unsubscribes generated
– Complaints generated
– Spamtraps hit
– Volume sent
• Don’t take their word for it! Check yourself!
– Sign up seed addresses to your affiliate’s lists
– See actual emails your affiliates are sending
– Identify rogue and sub-affiliates 17

18. UnsubCentral
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19. EmailAnalyst
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20. Affiliate Reputation
• Ask for the IP addresses that will be used
– Check if they are blacklisted or whitelisted at
www.senderbase.org
– Check if they honor unsubscribes at
www.lashback.com
– Review the email they send at
www.emailanalyst.com
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21. Sign up for LashBack
http://lashback.com/unsubmonitor.htm
Sign up for UnsubCentral
http://www.unsubcentral.com/summit2006
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22. What is your reputation?