New Email Privacy Seal Program From TRUSTe - Should Ezine Publishers Care?

As you can tell from my sarcasm, I am not overly amused by TRUSTe's newest invention, but let's shake off that silly face and explore what lessons we can pull out of their announcement this week.

Fran Maier, the executive director and president of TRUSTe said in their press release that:

"A survey last month found that two-thirds of Internet shoppers decided not to register with a website because the privacy policy was too complicated or unclear. This marks a difficult and worsening situation for businesses that rely on trusted digital communication...Companies need a way to declare simply, clearly and believably 'we don't spam.' Our seal lets them say that with confidence and consumers now can trust they won't be receiving unwanted email from these companies."

Ahh ha! I knew there was a nugget in here to give you. Quick, go check out your posted privacy policy. Is it 5 pages long? If it is, you may have a problem. Don't have a privacy policy? Are you serious? Get one up today... but use simply, clean and short language to get to the point and sell confidence that you won't abuse your new potential list member's privacy.

It would be good to see a research report in 6 months from now that was not paid for by TRUSTe, as to whether their seal has any market value as perceived by consumers... better yet, if it actually statistically improved new subscriptions vs. without the seal.

One good thing going for TRUSTe is that they have Return Path setup as an exclusive reseller of this new email privacy seal. TRUSTe provides certification, monitoring and oversight for Return Path's Bonded Sender Program. I don't know if this sounds weird or not, but I trust Return Path more than TRUSTe, ...mostly because TRUSTe is in the business of licensing reputation for a hefty fee. They are continually having to watch the relationship between how much money they can take in vs. how much slack they allow email privacy seal holders that violate their ruleset. For TRUSTe's sake, I hope they hold their clients to the ruleset very closely...but they will always be at odds of wanting or needing the recurring revenue from their clients ...and clients that don't receive slack if there are any program infringements won't renew for future annual email privacy seal fees.

According to TRUSTE's website, participants in their email seal program must meet the following requirements:

• Prior consent standard for commercial email, At a minimum, pre-selected option for house files, Opt-in for 3rd party mailings
• No 3rd party sharing without explicit permission
• Clear and conspicuous notice describing use
• Easy to use, responsive, persistent unsubscribe
• Privacy statement fully disclosing email practices
• Willingness to participate in dispute resolution and ongoing monitoring

Why Pay TRUSTe Big Bucks For This Email Privacy Seal?

It's all about boosting your subscription rate. According to their price chart, they have an application fee that ranges from $450 to $1,875 and an annual license fee of $1,000 to $15,200 depending on your annualized revenues and assuming you have a single brand. If you have multiple brands, it could cost you up to $88,000!

My Email Privacy Seal Recommendation:

If you have more than 1 million visitors a month coming to your website and/or more than a few million in annualized sales/revenues, it may be worth a test to apply for the new TRUSTe email privacy seal. The test that you are evaluating is whether or not it increases subscriptions vs. not having it, and if the increased subscription rate justifies the hefty annual seal fee.

If you have less than a million unique visitors or less than a million dollars in annual revenue, in my opinion, you don't have enough web traffic or revenue flow to make a statistical difference to warrant the effort to acquire the seal.

This Ezine-Tip was submitted By Christopher Knight -- Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. Get your weekly dose of Email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email-etiquette, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: http://Ezine-Tips.com/

By Christopher Knight, eZine