Change is good – Make MD5 encrypted suppression files the de facto standard in your email marketing program

There is a trend happening with more stores starting to charge for plastic bags. In some places too, there are even bylaws enacted that force the store to charge for the plastic bags. Here in Montreal, for instance, a number of large grocery chain stores have also started to charge for plastic bags.

The reason behind this of course is the environment and the intended motivation behind charging per plastic bag is to get people to think more environmentally friendly way and cut down on the amount of landfill space from discarded plastic bags. With everyone’s support and compliance, thousands of cubic meters per year of landfill space could be saved. It starts with one person, then more, and then eventually becomes the accepted norm.

In the email marketing industry an analogous problem is suppression list abuse. A suppression list, of course, is a file that contains the list of recipients who have requested to be unsubscribed and as a result should never be mailed-to. All professional and legitimate email marketers carefully scrub their data files against suppression list files for campaigns. This has always been an industry best practice. There is still a lot more, however, that needs to be done. Compliance monitoring company Lashback, for instance, routinely records millions of IPs who have sent mail to suppression list files.

Suppression list abuse has a number of root causes—from the egregious to simple mistakes—but in the end has a damaging affect on the industry, company reputation & brands, and most importantly, consumer trust in email.

While you may not be contributing to the problem, you can however start contributing to the solution: MD5 encryption.

An industry best practice is to encrypt suppression list files using MD5 encryption. This is a one-way encryption algorithm that will protect the suppression list contents. It works this way:

• The subscriber list is added to the system (or is already present)
• The MD5 encrypted suppression list is also added to the system
• The system runs the MD5 algorithm on each subscriber record and compares the value with what is contained in the MD5 suppression list file
• The system blocks matching records (i.e. email addresses) from reaching the recipient.

The keyword is “one-way” which means that it is not possible to decrypt the data records. And, because it is not possible to decrypt the data records, the data remains in a much more protected state should it fall into the wrong hands. By contrast, should a clear-text suppression list file fall into the wrong hands, there is no technical barrier preventing the data from being mailed-to. Don’t think that a password protected ZIP file provides significant security. Such as “security measure” can be bypassed in little or no time, providing access to a readily mailable list.

It took me a few trips to the grocery store before I remembered to bring along my reusable plastic bags. Now, it is second nature. Make MD5 encrypted suppression list files part of your email marketing program:

• Set a project plan to convert your plan-text suppression file into MD5 encrypted format
• Ask partners to use and provide MD5 encrypted format suppression list files
• Provide and offer partners (first) with MD5 format suppression list files
• Educate the value of MD5 encrypted suppression list files to clients, employees, and business partners.

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Cypra Media’s CypraCommunicator solution supports both download and upload of MD5 one-way encrypted files.