Elationship Builders

In the late 90's, the founders of Elationship Builders foresaw the spam crisis, the privacy uproar, and the coming need for trustworthy delivery partners. Hence, Elationship Builders has always placed "privacy before profit", and maintained our permission-based standards during the heyday of selling addresses.

Having heard us predicting spam and privacy problems for so long, business leaders have recently been asking us:
"What's next? How do we protect our e-marketing investment?"

Email is here to stay, demand for its integrity will single-handedly force a global overhaul of Internet standards.

Deceptive emails will worsen, and will erode consumer confidence until email becomes concretely trackable. At the same time, email from recognized sources, those whom we've granted permission to enter our inbox, will garner greater respect.

Trackable email will require us to be accountable for our communications. Only when we are all accountable will con artists be trackable.

"Opt-In" lists will continue to be sold (until the overhaul) even though they're already over-populated with disposable email addresses and returning sub-one-percent response rates. Old-fashioned focus on "size of list" instead of quality of relationship will plod on until forced to retire. (Unlike the marketing industry's definition of "opt-in", "permission" cannot be sold. Elationship builders has held this view from day one, and therefore will not deliver to purchased lists).

Spam will exist till the overhaul too, you will have to pay to avoid it. Fortunately, decent filtering solutions already exist (99%+), for rich enterprises, and for SOHO sized budgets.

Today's "Blacklists" of delivery vendors will grow, decreasing the effectiveness of non-whitelisted delivery vendors (Be sure your delivery vendor will always retain white-listed status. It will require strict permission-based standards).

Today's high-volume, low cost, (& low-accountability) delivery providers will be decimated as filtering usage grows. Marketers that pay for thousands of pieces will not be satisfied when only dozens are actually delivered through the filters.

Any service that doesn't start a customer relationship with a strongly worded sermon against email abuse will never be whitelisted. Their business model is temporary and margins will disappear with the eventual regulation of the industry. Their unfortunate customers will be starting from scratch to re-build subscriber lists in a way that complies with upcoming permission-based laws.

Eventually, the laws will require you to PROVE that a subscriber specifically ASKED to receive your email. (Be sure to trust your business only to a service already prepared for the most stringent laws, otherwise the effort invested in growing your list will be lost).

In light of these predictions, we at Elationship Builders consider it our duty to educate and protect our clients from the long-term negative effects of irresponsible email practices while providing fully whitelisted delivery, and compliance with every foreseeable future legal requirement.