How To Level Up Your Small Business’s Privacy Game

Data privacy is more important than ever. Customers expect it and laws & regulations demand it. But for small and medium businesses, building a robust privacy program can seem overwhelming and expensive. That’s where a fractional Chief Privacy Officer comes in. Think of it like having a part-time privacy expert on your team. We provide the guidance and support you need to:

• Comply with privacy laws: A Chief Privacy Officer can help you navigate complex regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and the upcoming Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, so your business stays compliant.
• Protect customer data: A Chief Privacy Officer can help you develop strategies to safeguard your customer information and build trust.
• Reduce risk: Proactive privacy measures can prevent costly data breaches and reputational damage.
• Save time and money: At $10,000 per month, our fractional service is more affordable than hiring a full-time CPO, allowing you to focus on core business activities.

Here’s what we can do for you:

• Develop and implement a customized privacy program
• Conduct data inventories and risk assessments
• Create clear and concise privacy policies
• Train your team on privacy best practices
• Manage vendor privacy compliance
• Answer your customer privacy questions

Don’t let data privacy become a burden. We’ll help you navigate the complexities and ensure your business thrives in the ever-evolving privacy landscape.

Even if you aren’t looking for the whole package, we can still help. We want to help you find what is right for your business, so if all that you need is someone to help you clean up your privacy policy, we can help with the individual items that you need on a more a la carte basis.

Contact us and let us know how we can help you.

Empower Your Marketing with Email Best Practices

Email best practices are things that everyone talks about, but what are they and why are they important?

Best practices are things that you need to do when you don’t know what exactly to do.  They outline the things that most senders should do in most circumstances in order to assure the widest, best possible delivery rates.

There are times when certain best practices might be disregarded, but you should consider them to be the default settings that should not be changed unless you know exactly what you are doing.

The most widely accepted best practices document out there is the one promulgated by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group’s Sender Special Interest Group.  That document outlines the current thinking of some of the best minds in the sender space on how to do things right.

Topics covered include:

• Obtaining consent
• Unsubscribe practices
• Accountability and reputation practices
• List maintenance and error handling
• Mitigating and resolving messaging disruption

Does all of that sound a bit arcane? Did you grab the document and still feel confused by what you read? Our slogan here at Whizardries is “Making Sense of the Arcane” and we can help you figure out which industry best practices you are already complying with, which you need to comply with and which you might safely disregard without damaging your reputation due to your own, unique circumstances.

If you are already having trouble sending mail, we can help you to make sense of it all in such a way that you will know what you need to do in order to regain a good reputation and send mail that your recipients want and will appreciate.  Contact us today to discuss your company’s needs and how we can help make sense of the arcane for you.

Legal Compliance

“What laws affect my ability to send commercial email?”

“I comply with CAN-SPAM. Is that all that I need to do in order to send mail?”

“How do the latest court cases and FTC consent agreements affect my business?”

Questions like these are common among email senders.  Everyone wants to send email that complies with the law, but which laws apply?

The CAN-SPAM Act applies to commercial email sent in the United States, but other statutes may also apply to the mail you send, depending on things like:

• What kind of mail you send
• Where you are sending the mail from
• To whom you are sending the mail
• Where your recipients reside
• What your mail content looks like

Whizardries is able to help you figure these things out so that your mail doesn’t end up on the wrong side of the law.

Have questions? Please have your legal counsel contact us.

Feedback Loops

Ten years ago, getting a feedback loop probably meant that your uncle’s wife’s cousin’s daughter’s housekeeper was married to the brother of the guy who ran the mail servers.  Or maybe you just found out who to send the big box of meat to.  But things aren’t like that anymore.

Now, a feedback loop isn’t just a backhanded way of saying, “You should unsubscribe these people if you want to send mail to us,” it’s supposed to be something that helps you figure out what is going wrong and why.

When it comes to feedback loops, Whizardries can help you qualify for them, apply for them, and put policies and procedures in place to get the most of them.  We know the pitfalls in the qualifying process and can help you avoid them, speeding up the time it takes to get it in place and working for you.

If you think that we might be able to help you with setting up feedback loops with the major B2C ISPs, contact us today.

ISP Relations

It’s 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday and you have just discovered that your mail isn’t getting through at …. well, anywhere.

Your mail is being blocked by all of the big ISPs.  There is no revenue until you can figure out what happened, why it happened, and how to get things fixed.

That’s where Whizardries fits in.  We can help examine the error messages your mailings are receiving, look at your practices, policies and procedures, and figure out what went wrong and why.

Fifteen years ago, we might have bragged about all of the industry contacts that we have and how well and closely we work with all of the big ISPs and mailbox providers. But, anyone who tells you that their industry contacts are the key to getting mail to go through again is just trying to steal your money.

Seriously. Even though we really do have extensive contacts with ISPs, they don’t care who we are (or even who you are) nearly as much as they care about what you are sending and if their clients (your recipients) want it.

But, by helping you figure out what happened, why it happened, and how to fix the issues that caused it to happen, Whizardries can help you put all of the pieces in place to get things fixed more quickly. Now, we won’t say that mail will be delivering by 5:00, but we speak the ISPs’ language too and know where to look and what needs to get done so the right things can get said to get the ball rolling.

If you are having problems with approaching the ISPs to get things fixed, we can help with that too. After helping you fix any underlying issues, we will be happy to act as your representative and approach the ISPs who are blocking you and ask for those blocks to be removed.

Do you have problems with ISPs and need help? Contact us and see what we can do for you.

Get Your Email Flowing Again With Blocklist Remediation

The biggest panic any email marketer faces is a Spamhaus Block List (SBL) listing. As companies approach their busy seasons, they start digging deeper into their lists and mailing addresses that haven’t been mailed in a long time. So, let’s talk about what a listing is, how it can hurt, and what will happen if it happens to you.

Who is Spamhaus?

Spamhaus is the largest and most influential block list around. Their Frequently Asked Questions page states: “The Spamhaus Block List (SBL) is a real-time database of IP addresses of spam sources, including known spammers, spam gangs, spam operations, and spam support services. SBL listings are made according to policies outlined in on their website. Simply put, they list IP addresses they consider to be sending spam.

Unfortunately, the definition of “spam” is very squishy these days. Some subscribers define it as “mail that I don’t like,” others as “mail that I don’t want.” Many receivers define it as “mail that makes our users complain.” Many marketers define “spam” as “mail that doesn’t comply with CAN-SPAM.” Spamhaus has an operational definition: “An electronic message is ‘spam’ if (A) the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (B) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.”

Why Does This Definition Matter?

Simply put, Spamhaus SBL listings can be devastating to a marketing program. One estimate is that a fairly typical B2C list will see bounce rates climb to 60-65%, and the mail that does get through may well be routed to the bulk folder. While that will, of course, vary depending upon the composition of a particular list, an SBL listing will mean that mail won’t get through to people who asked for it because it is potentially being sent to people who don’t want it.

How Do SBL Listings Happen?

SBL listings are data-driven in their origins. That is, they happen because of Spamhaus’s data. Spamhaus runs vast networks of spamtraps. These addresses may (or may not) have belonged to a person in the past, but they don’t belong to anyone now. After a period known as “seasoning,” where all mail is explicitly bounced for periods often of a year or more, these addresses start providing data to Spamhaus SBL editors. They are considered when new listings are created.

In other words, SBL listings don’t happen because your competition is tattling on you, someone got mad at you for sending mail they didn’t like, or a little birdy whispered in someone’s ear. They happen because of things that Spamhaus is seeing from its data.

How to Avoid an SBL

Most senders will never need to talk to someone like me about an SBL listing. They have programs that march along, getting new subscribers and quietly sunsetting addresses that no longer give them any return on their investment. But, many good folks are pushed to increase performance by doing naughty things. Resist that temptation. The things that keep you out of the SBL from January through November are the same things that will keep you out of it from Black Friday through New Year’s Eve.

How to Survive a Listing

The pressure was overwhelming. Your IP address has been listed on a block list. What do you do now?

First of all, don’t panic. Someone like me can help you discover and resolve the issues that caused the listing.

Second, stop mailing. If you expect to see 60% or more of your list not get delivered, why waste your time and marketing budget on sending mail that won’t arrive? Suspend sending marketing emails until the listing is resolved.

Finally, understand that while SBL listings happen because of data Spamhaus sees, they are often removed by making agreed policy changes. That means finding out what recently changed and crafting a policy to prevent that from happening again. For some folks, that will mean getting rid of purchased or appended data (which ET’s anti-spam policy doesn’t allow anyway). For others, it will mean creating a plan to attempt to re-engage subscribers who haven’t shown any signs of life and eventually suppressing those addresses. And other folks will need to develop a different, more custom plan. It will all depend on what happened, why, and what can be done to lessen the probability that it will be a problem again.

Whizardries is here to help you. Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation to see if we can work together to fix your problems. We can guide you through the process and even handle communicating with Spamhaus or other blocklists on your behalf. That doesn’t mean there won’t be much work for you to do, but we promise not to panic, and we hope you won’t either.