TRUSTe is in the final stages of developing a new program for companies that send permission-based commercial email. Our Point-of-Collection Email Seal will provide a new TRUSTe-branded trust mark that communicates to consumers that you will not spam them. We fully expect the trust mark to increase consumer confidence at your site, and that confidence should translate into higher transaction volume and accelerated list growth.

To prove our assumptions, and to make sure that we have the trust mark that provides the most value to sealholders, TRUSTe has folded an extended ROI testing process into our product development cycle. With the help of our development partner, Return Path, TRUSTe is testing multiple messaging, layout, and placement concepts. Each is being tested on an array of Web sites with diverse demographics. While we can’t yet cite specific numbers, preliminary results have been heartening. We’re confident that when the Point-of-Collection Email Seal launches in the second quarter of 2005, we’ll have a program that can make a material difference on the bottom line of any organization that sends commercial email.

To answer a few questions you may have about the seal program:

How is this program different from the Bonded Sender Program?

Thus far, TRUSTe has been accrediting email senders solely for the benefit of the Bonded Sender Program. At its core, the Bonded Sender Program is strictly a business-to-business whitelisting service, with no consumer-facing communication mechanism. Our research, including review of the Watchdog complaints consumers submit directly to us through our Web seal program, have consistently indicated that spam is the top concern of consumers on the Internet, and that this concern materially limits e-commerce. The new seal program will provide a trust mark for the online forms that accredited senders use to collect email addresses. The trust mark will reassure consumers that they are interacting with a company that will not abuse their email address.

Will the certification process be different from the Web seal certification process?

Yes. The Point-of-Collection Email Seal program is focused on email practices and goes into much more depth in this area. TRUSTe has created a separate self-assessment that covers a range of email-related issues, including disclosures, marketing practices, specific forms of email collection, and unsubscribe practices. Account managers will review applicants’ self-assessments, review their data collection forms, seed their lists, and test their unsubscribe procedures. A telephone interview will also be scheduled in most cases.

What are the minimum standards for the program?

To ensure that consumers are empowered to make informed decisions wherever the trust mark is displayed, our program requirements will include the following elements:

• Notice: A clear description of the types of messages that will be sent and any sharing practices that may generate additional commercial messages at the point of email address collection must be posted.
• Consent: Prior consent given by a consumer (opt-out for primary purpose and opt-in for secondary purpose) or an existing business relationship (purchase within 16 months) will be required to send him or her commercial email.
• Easy, Working Unsubscribe: Such a mechanism will be required in every commercial email.

If you would like to be notified of the Point-of-Collection Email Seal release before the public launch date, contact Michelle Hines at mhines@truste.org.

Colin O’Malley is director of product development at TRUSTe

 

IAPP