Symantec expands consumer portfolio to better enable and protect consumers’ digital life

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Aug. 18, 2008 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PC Tools, a global provider of innovative software products designed to protect the privacy and security of Windows® computer users. The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the calendar year and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

With the addition of PC Tools, Symantec will expand its consumer product portfolio to include award-winning PC utilities software and point security technologies. PC Tools will help Symantec expand its reach with consumers in new emerging regional markets and will bring an array of go-to-market capabilities, that have been effective with consumers in many markets around the world.

“We are excited to welcome PC Tools into the Symantec consumer family and believe the combination of our two companies will provide additional value and choice for consumers worldwide to better enable and protect their digital life," said Janice Chaffin, Symantec Group President of Consumer Products. “By adding PC Tools, we build on the market-leading success of Symantec’s consumer offerings and firmly position ourselves for continued incremental growth in a rapidly expanding market."

PC Tools will maintain separate operations within Symantec’s consumer business unit, with Simon Clausen, PC Tools, Chief Executive Officer, leading the team and reporting to Janice Chaffin, Symantec Group President of Consumer Products. PC Tools will continue to offer their products under the PC Tools brand and serve its customers through its existing partners and channels. PC Tools is a privately held company headquartered in Australia, with offices in USA, UK, Ireland and the Ukraine. Their customers are located across the globe and their products are available in more than 196 countries.

The key dates for this effort are as follows:

* August 28, 2008, 5PM US/EDT - The existing Road Runner FBL will
be frozen, and no new enrollments or additions to or modifcations
of existing enrollments will be accepted after that time. Reports
will continue to be sent to enrolled parties after that date.

* November 17, 2008 (tentative) - The new Feedback Loop goes live,
and everyone wishing to be part of our feedback loop will have to
re-enroll beginning on that date.

* December 31, 2008 (tentative) - The old Feedback Loop ceases to exist.

Much more information about this migration is available here:

http://postmaster.rr.com/FBL.html

So what happens to those Habeas customers that were using their delivery tools such as their seedlist, message preview or even delivery support? Those customers will be migrated over to the Return Path tools and services in the next couple of months so that there will only be one platform supported by the company.

What does this mean for the industry? Well, the first thought is that it reduces the number of well-established accreditation companies from three to two, with only Return Path and GoodMail still in the mix. While there are some other smaller options out there, these two seem to be the most widely used and well known by those that are not just in the deliverability space, but email as a whole. With regards to delivery tools, there are still other companies such as Pivotal Veracity as well. Of course, the next question most people will ask, will the reduction in options increase the prices for what is left, that is something we will have to wait and see on. For now, I think this acquisition makes a lot of sense for Return Path, and I have all the faith in them that they will make a smooth transition for the current customers of Habeas.

Let me know what you think—Do you agree or think I have lost my mind on this—please make sure to add your comments.

I think the other part of this argument that I don’t agree with is that this email professional doesn’t take into account a number of different factors. Does this person know for sure that these clients haven’t asked for help and the ESPs are simply trying to work with them improve their practices. Sure some customers will say anything in order to work with some of the ESPs—like, “just tell us what to do and we will do it, we really want to improve our delivery rates.” That might say this just to get in the door, or they really believe it at the time and then they realize what is being asked of them and they are unwilling to do make those changes. If that is the case the sender might just play the game of going to one ESP and then move on to the next ESP once their current one gets wind of everything they are doing.

But how is that a dirty little secret? I know most of my friends in the industry talk about these types of clients on a regular basis and we all understand that they are out there. Sure as a deliverability professional it is my job to try to help any sender improve their delivery if they are willing to listen but some of them just wont so we continue to try to work with them, if they do anything against company policy then we will all let them go as a client to protect the entire business.

I would love to hear any other thoughts on this subject—let me know if you think I am crazy or not on this one.

Make sure you review your opt-out methods as well as other items that have been updated and make any changes needed.

The new rule provisions address four topics: (1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender; (2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements; (3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”; and (4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

For some senders not a lot will change in the way that they do business. Others however will need to make some changes within the next 45 days, when these provisions go into effect. Many senders use preference centers to streamline their opt-in and opt-out procedures. Most of these preference centers require a username/email address and password to log into. This process is no longer a legal way to accept an opt-out from future messages. With the FTC’s latest provision senders can not require anything more then the user to enter in their email address on one webpage to process an opt-out. As I have mentioned a number of times it is considered a best practice to implement a one-click unsubscribe. By implementing this one-click process in all of your messages, not only will you comply with the new legal standards but you will also reduce the potential for spam complaints because the process is quick and easy for the end users. Preference centers can still play an important role in subscription management, but they should be accessed through your website or a link in the email that clearly indicates the purpose.

Another important new provision for some marketers is the definition of a sender when it comes to send messages with multiple companies. One example of where this definition is important is when talking about affiliate marketers. The user should be able to easily understand who the sender is no matter how many different companies are part of the message. One of the basic ways to follow this distinction is who is in the From address—this is the first area that the end user will look at.

The FTC also decided not to rule on a number of things with these final regulations. The one that stands out, as it has been discussed quite a bit in the past couple of years, is the 10 day requirement to process unsubscribe. While it had been proposed that the timeline be reduced to 3 days the FTC has decided to maintain the 10 day standard at this time.

As always this article is not meant as legal advice but more as guidance for moving forward. Please make sure to consult your legal advisors for formal guidance. For more information Copies of the Federal Register Notice are available from the FTC’s Web site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish (bilingual counselors are available to take complaints), or to get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

As I continue to research this I will update this blog with any new thoughts/ideas.

StrongMail Customers,

WHAT'S HAPPENING
Today, the FTC announced four new rule provisions under the CAN-SPAM Act. These new provisions bring some much needed clarification to several key definitions.

In summary, the new rule provisions address four topics:

Prohibition of an Opt-out Fee – This provision prohibits the imposition of any fee, any requirement to provide personally identifying information (beyond one’s email address), or any other obligation as a condition for accepting or honoring a recipient’s opt-out request.

Definition of "Sender" – CAN-SPAM now defines "sender" as the entity identified in the "from" line. The definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single email message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements.

Definition of “Valid Physical Postal Address” - A “sender” of commercial email can now include an accurately registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial email display a “valid physical postal address."

Definition of "Person" – Up until now, CAN-SPAM had no definition for "person," which created some confusion in regards to whom the act applied. With this new provision, "person" has been defined as an individual, group, unincorporated association, limited or general partnership, corporation, or other business entity. Note that non-profits are not exempt from CAN-SPAM.

HOW THIS MAY IMPACT YOU
These new rule provisions will not likely affect your day-to-day email operations, as these updates are more applicable to companies not currently following the email best practices that StrongMail promotes to all of its customers. In fact, the best practices we recommend go far above and beyond current CAN-SPAM provisions.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
If you think you might not be in compliance, you can review the FTC press release or the official May 12 Federal Register Notice for more information on the updated provisions.

AOL has always factored the number of invalid recipient's into a sender's reputation, but it sounds like their new process will weigh this factor more heavily in getting your email to the AOL inbox. If you’re a b-to-c mailer, you likely have a good number of AOL addresses that could be affected. However, even b-to-b mailers should take this as a wake-up call to ensure that their list hygiene practices are sound, and that bad addresses are regularly removed from all mailing lists.

At StrongMail, we highly recommend keeping your lists clean. We advise our own clients to keep their invalid recipients less then 5% of their total list, and we make it easy for them to do this with automated bounce processing and other handy tools in our email marketing solutions. In an era of sender accountability where reputation means more than content, you can't risk damaging the reputation you've worked so hard to establish. And remember that all the major ISPs look at the number of bad addresses you send to assess your reputation – not just AOL.

So, take a good long list at your lists, and make sure you have good processes in place to remove bad addresses. For more information on bounce management, including how hard and soft bounces should be treated differently, we encourage you to read our whitepaper, Get Smart About Bounce Management.

To me, they are one in the same for the end users--when I talk to people every day that are not in the email industry, they see these as the same thing. Sure they might remember that they signed up for a newsletter, but if they no longer find it useful, to them it becomes SPAM. One time at a family gathering, everyone was trying to figure out exactly what I did. I asked the question--"what do you think SPAM is?" Almost everyone told me, it is the junk I got in my inbox that I don't want. So of course I dug deeper. What if you signed up for that junk, I asked. "Then they should make it worth my while, if it isn't, then it is SPAM," they replied. So by this definition hasn't SPAM always been email that people don't want, not just what they didn't ask for?

Yahoo! has verified that they have recently put in new, more aggressive measures to fight illegitimate mail coming into their servers. While they have acknowledged that this may be have some affect legitimate mailers they are working on fine-tuning these systems. Their goal as always is to make sure that the legitimate mail that people want to receive gets to their end users, and that which they don’t is blocked. According to Yahoo!, any legitimate mail that has been received but not yet have been delivered will eventually reach the intended recipient as their inbound mail queues drain. They have asked for everyone’s understanding during this time and hope to have the issue resolved soon.
If you're seeing 451 4.70 [TS01] or [TS02] errors you should wait at least 4 hours before trying to redeliver the mail.

As always if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to our support group or for this particular issue you can go to http://postmaster.yahoo.com.

According to Yahoo's official blog site, they were experiencing issues with their POP accounts that were being sent to Outlook, Outlook Express and others. As stated on their blog "As a result we spent the last several days not only upgrading hardware resources for our SMTP servers, but also restructuring the way the bandwidth of these servers is allocated. We are confident that this solution will not only resolve the immediate problems, but also ensure that the systems are even more reliable in the future."

Hopefully all is fixed, but one thing we have to remember as senders, the ISPs aren't perfect either--they all do their best to keep their systems up and running, but some times they run into issues as well.