e-Mail Preference Service (e-MPS)

This is a service for consumers to indicate their preference to receive less commercial e-mail.  It is modeled after the Mail and Telephone Preference Services that have been so successful over the years for the DMAs of many countries as both a consumer choice tool and as a way of meeting the concerns of industry leaders.

The industry is under enormous pressure to address the issue of the receipt of unsolicited commercial e-mail -- from consumers themselves and from government policymakers and Internet service providers (ISPs).  Reputable marketers are not able to use Internet marketing to its full advantage out of fear that they will upset their existing or potential customers.

The DMA-US has been working on the development of e-MPS for two years.  This project is clearly a pioneering effort and, because of that, we faced and solved enormous technical issues to make this happen.

We have now completed the technology to accept consumer requests for opt out.  We now have the capability of allowing marketers to clean their lists of all the consumers who have subscribed.

Now that the technology exists, our challenge as an industry is how to make it work as successfully as MPS and TPS.  In the mail and telephone environment, marketers get a financial advantage by not mailing those who are not interested.  In the world of unsolicited e-mail there is little or no financial incentive for the marketers to use the service.  But there is the very important incentive of "doing the right thing" so as not to aggravate consumers.  ISPs, however, do have a financial and operational interest to support the minimization of unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, because bulk e-mail overburdens their systems.

In thinking about how to make it successful and how to encourage marketers to use it, we are mounting a campaign to:

• sign up several hundred marketers by the launch date of January 10, 2000.
• get the philosophical and actual PR support of several major -- or multiple minor -- ISPs by the launch date
• develop an electronic code that lists would "carry" if they had been screened from those that have not been screened.
• Develop a promotional campaign for consumers' understanding of the service

This is already active on the Internet at www.e-mps.org.

Consumer Opt-Out -- live January 10, 2000

1.  We have a home page that describes the system.

2.  Individual consumers will apply and, for security purposes, re-confirm their their [sic] individual registration with e-MPS.

3.  Consumers may register up to 3 e-mail addresses.

4.  They can indicate whether they wish not to receive business-to-business e-mailings, business-to-consumer mailings or both.  (In the future we may further refine these categories.)

5.  They can indicate that they wish to be notified when their opt-out has expired, which we have now stated as one year, and given a chance to renew their registration.

6.  The service would be free to consumers

Domain Opt-Out

1.  Domain administrators may register their individual organizations' domains at no cost.

2.  Those not registered as the technical or administrative contact for the organization's domain will not be processed.

3.  To begin the process, an organization requests registration.

4.  A copy of the registration request is sent to The DMA for approval.

5.  If approved, the organization administrator will receive a confirmation e-mail.

6.  The DMA will not accept registration from entire ISPs.

7.  Domains, too, have the choice of eliminating B-to-B or B-to-C e-mailings or both.

Marketer Subscribers

Individual marketers who want to screen their lists against e-MPS will sign a contract where they agree to use the list for suppression purposes only.  We will "seed" the lists to make sure they keep this promise and will have the legal ability to go after those who violate that promise.

Languages

1.  We can easily translate the e-MPS text to any language.

2.  For example we have made an attempt to translate this into French.  We will have to rely on approval of translations from each country that needs a different language.

Privacy Policy Page

And we have our privacy policy page.

Going Global

The e-MPS that we are developing, because it is on the Internet, is inherently global.

Because e-MPS is on the Internet, consumers in countries other than the US would be able to add their e-mail names to the service to reduce the mailings from US marketers who are enthusiastic spammers.

Because e-MPS is on the Internet, marketers in other countries who are marketing into the US, would be able to screen their marketing lists against the e-MPS before doing a mailing into the US.

We, however, don't think that sort of long-distance relationship is friendly to consumers or marketers.  Consumers want to be able to talk to their own country's DMA in their own language -- and your marketer members would feel far more comfortable contacting their country DMA directly.

At our last meeting in San Francisco IFDMA passed a resolution to "support an e-Mail Preference Service without borders, which will be distributed throughout the world and linked globally."

We believe that we will very soon have developed the technical capability to add consumer names for opt-outs and to allow marketers to screen lists.

The Proposal

It would be possible for each -- and all -- of our IFDMA signatories to build their own Web sites, or add a page to existing Web sites, to use their own name and logo.  And in their own language explain the service and show how they are a part of it and support it.  This would give each country's consumers and marketers comfort, knowing that the DMA is behind and supporting this global opt out program.

Each local web page could then link to the Web site we have developed to accomplish the e-MPS without borders, distributed throughout the world, and linked globally that we all have resolved to develop at the last IFDMA meeting.

We will create the Web site text in a new language, if we need to, to support each country's link to the e-MPS site.

We would do an annual survey of consumers and report on their level of satisfaction with the site.

We would do annual survey of marketer participants for the same reason.