Last Saturday, I wrote a post concerning the need for better supression lists from online marketing (specifically CPA) networks. The post stated the need for better communication between networks and publishers in the context of these supression lists.

This is especially pertinent to email marketers and publishers dealing with direct marketing methods who rely upon suppression lists to stay within the bounds of the law, and who are dealing with a different sort of data than a traditional affilaite marketer placing ads which have been pulled from an affiliate network such as ShareASale, Commission Junction or Linkshare.

These types of affiliates or publishers are most likely making the bulk of their revenue from the world of CPA networks.

In response to that post, I’ve received a few interesting email suggestions from readers, but I wanted to highlight two of the commenters on that post because of the similarity of their suggestions for a certain service…

Ross V. of Xeriton Corporation wrote:

We battled internally whether or not to even deal with affiliates or opt-in DM’ers who couldn’t handle MD5 suppression lists, much less allow them to mail at all. Of course, it meant losing all of those sales and that’s not an option. But here’s what we did: we began to use UnsubCentral’s APIs to distribute our suppression lists to affiliates in a way that worked for everybody. Advertiser doesn’t have MD5? No problem, their UnsubScrub application pings your suppression list and looks for those on your mailing list. It’s been a god-send for us because the affiliate never actually sees your list and there is not of that awkward back and forth “list tango” between publisher and affiliate. The genius of it is that the risk factor vanishes. Do yourself a favor and look into UnsubCentral.

and Jack Hogan of LifeScript agreed…

We use UnsubCentral for our external suppresion list management. They have an API that makes real time updates simple and centralizied. It makes it really easy for us to work with our affiliates and affiliate networks. Also, the suppresion lists that affliates use are encrypted with MD5 so no worries of list harvesting. You should check them out.

If you are unfamiliar with the UnsubCentral product, the homepage spells it out in clear language:

UnsubCentral, Inc. offers solutions to manage the opt-out processes for:

• Third-party & joint email campaigns
• Refer-a-friend programs
• One-to-one emails sent from sales personnel
• Synchronizing suppression lists across email delivery systems and service providers

All UnsubCentral suppression components are designed to snap on to the client’s centralized suppression list, hosted on the UnsubCentral system.

There is even a testimonial by MarketingSherpa’s Anne Holland on the frontpage, so the service screams legitimacy.

However, do automated, and evidently well put together programs such as Unsubcentral, help to validate email marketing and direct marketing practices in the eyes of general affiliate marketing?

In other words, could legitimation of (what should be) simple things such as suppression list technology help to bridge the ever widening gap between the email marketing crowd along with the CPA networks that cater to them and the more traditional affiliate crowd?

Having been on both sides of the fence, I think the largest obstacle for affiliates and CPA networks to overcome is this question of legitimacy and ethical practice.

If CPA networks can show that they are scum ware free, include unique offers and be trustworthy in their unsub process for email marketers, then I think they can gain general affiliate acceptance. If affiliates can show targeted traffic and the ability to market to either niche crowds or open up channels previously unavailable to the networks, then more traditional affiliate marketers can find a revenue generating place within the CPA networks.

It seems that no one is talking about this great divide which still separates our industry. Let’s figure out how to bridge the gap.

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