How will Habeas help my business?

Blocked legitimate email, or false positives, is costing U.S. businesses roughly $3.5 billion this year alone, according to a study from San Francisco-based Ferris Research Inc. Is this happening to you? Is your organization among the many that are experiencing email delivery and ROI problems? Or, is email so important to your business that it is critical for each and every email to reach the inbox? Either way, achieving anticipated returns from email communications is becoming more complex every day in an agressive spam environment. "Of great importance to corporate is that 70 percent of people have not gotten email that was expected,'' says Vincent Schiavone, President of Philadelphia-based ePrivacy Group Inc. ''When it comes to blocked email, the consumer is inconvenienced. The enterprise could be losing an expensive deal... When you send a business-to-business email, you don't need it caught in a spam filter. That stops business. False positives damage business." Habeas helps eliminate the false-positive problem by certifying legitimate senders and ensuring their important email gets delivered. Not to the bulk folder, not trapped in the spam filter, but delivered to the inbox - where your customers and prospects are expecting it. Habeas offers the most trusted Internet whitelist with the broadest global reach to help you get your email delivered. Whether you outsource your email programs to a service provider or manage the entire process in-house, Habeas can make a positive impact on your delivery rates.

Industry Quotes

"Despite very real delivery problems, 84% of marketers fail to take basic precautions. Depending on which study you trust, the false positive rate is 17-19% to consumers and can reach as high as 50% to the corporate workplace (Company IT heads are infamous for relying on content-based filters and third party blacklists, which produce extremely high false positive rates)."
Email Marketing Metrics Guide 2005
Marketing Sherpa

"In the most basic terms, the problem of spam is that costs and benefits are misaligned: Spammers send messages almost cost-free and gain some return from very low response rates; the recipients, both mail services and the ultimate individual, bear the costs, both in money for filtering services and in user time and annoyance. Somehow, we must redress that balance."
Esther Dyson, Release 1.0

"AT&T Broadband, a major technology company itself, had a similar experience. It offered customers in Seattle a spam filter, but the technology snagged messages sent from AT&T, including one e-mail message alerting customers to a rate increase."
eWeek

"AOL's spam Filters blocked nearly 100 notices that Harvard University had emailed to applicants telling them whether they had been accepted or not."
Washington Post

How does Habeas help ISPs and mail security vendors manage email?

As the leading Email Trust Authority, Habeas is the only company that helps ISPs, mail security vendors, and blacklists by both certifying mail practices of senders, and classifying that mail into six types that perfectly align with their vision of the marketplace and commitment to their customers. These six categories correspond to how the corporation obtained permission to send email to that address, and are as follows:

• Transactional
• One-to-One
• Confirmed Opt-in
• Single Opt-in
• Personal Referral
• Registered

ISPs and mail security vendors only accept mail sent to email addresses that have been obtained via informed consent or an opt-in process. These have been defined by the Email Service Providers Coalition as:

• Informed Consent: A mechanism through which an individual is clearly and fully notified of the collection and use of an email address and has consented prior to such collection and use. Informed Consent may be implemented in the following forms:
• Opt-in: At the point of email address collection, a person has affirmatively requested to be included on an email list to receive commercial email. No confirmation email is sent and the person is not required to take further action to be included on the email list.

You can view the Email Services Providers Coalition pledge here.
Not all email certification and reputation companies follow this standard. Some include senders that use pre-selected options in which a person does not affirmatively request email. ISPs and mail security vendors refer to these methods of collection as "opt-out", as they require the end user to actively deselect an option in order not to receive email. This class of mail is often referred to as "retail spam" as it is the most common industry where this practice is seen. For example, Travis goes to a Website and purchases a new watch. Suddenly, next week and every week thereafter Travis receives emails from the retailer about watch specials. Travis missed the pre-filled checkbox that stated "Yes, please send me emails about special offers." Though the box was clear and conspicuous, it was below the submit button on the shopping cart. Because this is so easy to hide, it is not accepted by the email community as true "opt-in".

Quotes from the email community

"Restoring trust to the email ecology requires good sender practices as well as the intelligent application of technology. Given the importance of the medium, enterprises must cultivate a core competence in the use and management of outbound email. StrongMail's mission is to assist senders by providing the future-proof technical foundation they need to succeed in this challenging, ever-changing environment. Our technology has been optimized for the delivery of email, and providing reputation ratings through providers like Habeas is part of the solution."
- Frank Addante, CEO of StrongMail Systems

"We believe email accreditation and certification services such as those provided by Habeas play an important role in the fight against spam and in maintaining the reliability of email."
- Kevin Doerr, MSN Group Business Manager

"Habeas Certified Email is a key security feature to ensure that spam is not received by our users."
- Stephen Morrow, CEO of Anti-Spam Software, makers of SpamAgent

"By integrating Habeas into Spamfire, we've reduced Spamfire's false-postive rate and provided uses with a more reliable spam-filtering experience."
- Michael Herric, President, Matterform media, creators of Spamfire

How many ISPs and corporations use Habeas to identify legitimate email?

The Habeas SafeList currently receives nearly 1 billion requests each day from over five million messaging systems worldwide to determine legitimate email delivery - a ten-fold increase in just over a year.

Email senders on the Habeas SafeList, the industry's most widely used Internet whitelist, experience significantly higher delivery rates than non-safeisted senders. The Habeas SafeList is used by the world's largest ISPs and is also by many Fortune 1000 companies. By checking the SafeList, ISPs and corporations improve the efficiencies of their mail servers and prevent "false positives", or legitimate mail marked as spam.

How easy to implement are Habeas Sender Solutions?

Extremely easy. Sender Solutions include Habeas Certify, SafeList, and Email Monitor. These solutions can be used together or separately to ensure best practices, improve delivery rates, and monitor your email reputation and delivery to prospects, customers, partners and more.

The first step is to complete Habeas Audit, a best practice assessment conducted by our email experts. If any issues are identified, our experts will provide specific recommendations on how to fix them. Habeas Audit is an extremely efficient and cost-effective means to improve your email practices and ensure you meet industry standards.

Once all Habeas Audit requirements have been met, you are eligible to be placed on the Habeas SafeList, the industry's premier Internet whitelist. Your sending IPs will then be automatically checked by the Habeas Network of over four million mail servers around the globe, every time you send email. The SafeList will confirm that you are a sender that is in compliance with industry best practices, and ensure your emails are delivered to the inbox.

Habeas Email Monitor is an easy-to-use Web portal that works with any browser or Internet connection. A dynamic dashboard tells you everything you need to know about your email reputation and inbox delivery rates.

No infrastructure changes are required, and Habeas Solutions can be used whether you outsource your email to an Email Service Provider (ESP) or not. In fact, if you decide to switch ESPs, Habeas can move with you.

How does Habeas work with email service providers?

ESPs provide valuable services to commercial mailers, but they do not provide certification and reputation services. They do not have established relationships with ISPs and MTAs (mail transfer agents, i.e. mail servers) to ensure your email receives preferential treatment in the spam filtering process. Many factors can affect email deliverability including, but not limited to, infrastructure set-up, past emailing practices, customer/recipient feedback, Internet blacklists and your reputation as a mailer. While ESPs can help you with many of these items, they can't help you with all of them. Habeas offers complementary services that help improve delivery whether you outsource your email or not. This is why top-tier ESPs such as EmailLabs and others have decided to partner with Habeas to help improve their customers' delivery rates.