Encouraging the Creation of Opt-in Distribution Lists:

Free Opt-in List Building — 20/10 Direct products enable clients to put an "Opt-in" form on their web site. This feature collects and stores an unlimited number of permission-based recipients, seamlessly and at no cost.

Viralocity — "Forward to a Friend" and "Subscribe Now" links can be added to each email, encouraging the possibility of building a list through referrals from existing clients. Referral marketing is more likely to succeed than a regular email campaign because the email is personal, relevant and of interest to the recipient. Viralocity encourages people to send useful emails and attaches their personal information and email address to it so any reply email goes back to the sender. These forwarded emails can also contain a "subscribe now" form. unsubscribe.

Double Opt-in — All 20/10 Direct product clients can use an extra security feature in which an email address is not added to the recipient list until a confirmation email is sent and a reply is received. This is done seamlessly by the software. 20/10 Direct products are the only email marketing software that offer this feature. Spam Discouragement Tools

The terms and conditions of using 20/10 Direct products inform our clients they can only send email campaigns to people who have agreed to receive them. Our spam early warning system uses sophisticated algorithms to assess the probability that a list is not opt-in. Any list that fails the early warning system is held and reviewed with the customer. We are the only self-serve email software vendor to have taken this initiative.

In addition to screening all uploaded lists, we automatically screen each campaign that is scheduled to go for indicators of potential problems — campaign size, billing plan selected, IP address of user, time between account creation and campaign scheduling, multiple credit card refusals, user profile information (i.e.: email address used, and specific words used in the subject or content of the campaign). Any campaign that triggers a threshold is held until a customer support agent reviews and clears it to go. To protect our reputation — and that of our clients — we assist new customers in uploading their first large email distribution lists into 20/10 Direct products. As part of our customer service initiative, it is useful for the client but also allows us to view the contents of a distribution list — with the customer's permission. In addition, we help first time customers run a sample campaign to a few select recipients from their list — before sending out all the rest.

As customers use our system we track their complaint free success — adding stars for successful repeat campaigns, deducting stars for complaints. Customers with high star ratings are not subject to the early warning monitoring or list upload restrictions. Only email lists containing fewer than 25,000 names can be uploaded online. Larger lists are uploaded by 20/10 Direct staff and subjected to manual scrutiny. 20/10 Direct uses training and education resources to educate our clients and the direct marketing industry about the proper use of email marketing and how to market successfully without ever resorting to non permission-based practices.

Software Control Tools
It has become standard for reputable email marketers to include an "unsubscribe" in their email campaign. 20/10 Direct makes this easy by adding the option automatically to each email sent. Unsubscribes can be requested via a link in each email and by replying to the email with 'Unsubscribe' in the subject line. This provides even off-line readers the ability to request an unsubscribe at any time.

This option cannot be removed by the sender however, they can choose how it will be phrased. Anyone who "unsubscribes" will be automatically flagged in the database and their email address will be suppressed from all future mailings. Unsubscribe status can't be overwritten by list merging. Detailed individual reporting highlights bounces and "unsubscribes" against the recipient's email address. To further protect recipients from email abuse, contacts receiving email from 20/10 Direct product users will only see their own names in the "To" field. All other recipients' email addresses are not viewable.

Technical
We honor emerging ISP protocols (restrictions on number of connections, size of pipe, speed of sending servers, open relay off, reverse DNS enabled, RFC compliance). Following these protocols ensures that we are a respected email generator and we are working to protect the integrity of ISP networks without undue burden. We are a polite sender of emails — we distinguish between soft and hard bounces. Hard bounces are immediately flagged and suppressed from future mailings. Soft bounce retries are limited to 5 attempts over several days.

Dealing with Complaints
20/10 Direct takes permission marketing very seriously. Notwithstanding the entire preventative measures outlined in the section above, occasionally we do receive complaints from recipients of a customer's email campaign. When a complaint is received the following process is followed:

Every complaint that is received gets read and acted upon to by one of our employees.

Where the email address of the complainant is known, it will be immediately unsubscribed from the relevant customer list by a 20/10 Direct employee, not left to the discretion of the customer. This is not negotiable.

:When the email address of the complainant is known, they will be notified that their email address has been removed. If the complaint came via an ISP, they too will be notified of the action taken.

:If the number of complaints is below a certain threshold based on number of emails sent and opened, 20/10 Direct customer support will review the list source with the customer and discuss ways to ensure that no further complaints are likely. The customer is noted as having been warned.

:If the complaints continue on subsequent mailings or if the first mailing generates a certain percentage of complaints, the customer's account will be suspended or terminated.

Our license agreement gives us the right to publish the names of any customer who has been terminated because of spam complaints. We share this information with other permission-based providers to reduce the probability that the abuser will simply take their business to another provider and get past their controls.