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June 30, 2006

The Importance of the Email From Address

I chose this example soley on the basis that I really don't like when I get emails from a company and the sender email and reply to addresses are some whacked out ESP alpha numeric email address rather than that of the company. It is not that it is all that bad, but it is close to impossible to whitelist, trust or reply to this email address with any confidence.

I am a HUGE proponent of visibility and not cloaking a sender contact through an ESP email. As a consumer it does not build any trust with me and it makes me feel as if this email is quite possibly spam of some sort. That being said, does an email address like this cause a large opportunity for blacklisting if the emails are being sent out from a larger shared IP address? Something I am not positively sure of, but seems if the domain become a flagged one on a watch/block list due to another client on this IP's bad campaign, I could be impacted.

My word of advice is to be as transparent as possible and send email from your own domain.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:59 AM | Permalink

June 29, 2006

Presidential Spam in the Mexican Elections

Mexico Presidential Hopefuls Spam for Edge

Mexico's presidential candidates have moved into cyberspace, where the campaigns are bombarding voters with online games, cartoons and attack e-mails ahead of the July 2 vote.

With more than 20 million Mexicans now using the Web, this is the first election where the Internet could make a real difference in Mexico. Most Internet users are young, and so is the electorate: more than 40 percent of the 71 million registered voters are under age 30.

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2006

eROI June News - Are Your Emails Getting Any This Summer

Where Are Your Customers This Summer?

School is out and people are on the move. Many are planning vacations and this affects both consumer and business marketing plans. A large number of clients and partners that we have spoken with have not really taken this into account for planning and adjusting their summer campaigns. You may want to be asking yourself the following: Will your audience be online at home? Or will they be on the go in the parks, at summer camps, in the woods or at beaches and fairs? How will these factors impact your email campaigns?

We suggest allowing for more time for responses to summer campaigns come in as many people will be traveling and schedules, no matter the audience, will change. Think about adding 3-5 days onto any measurement rates you have in place and allow additional time to convert recipients and respondents into sales or leads.

On the flip side, expect to see people having more time that they can allocate to sitting in front of a computer. The computer, and especially the email Inbox, have become more of a fixture in everyone's daily life, so it will be interesting to see if a noticeable behavioral change in response rates occurs.

Either way, get out and enjoy some of these longer days and sunshine for yourself. We here at eROI certainly plan to do so.

Read Full June News

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:51 AM | Permalink

Is E-Mail an Art or a Science?

Here is a good article from Jeanniey Mullen at Ogilvy One on email. Worth the read.

A question at an ESP user conference I spoke at last week was whether I thought e-mail was an art or a science. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and couldn't provide my opinion.

A few days later, the same question came up during a call with Pivotal Veracity. We were discussing teachings Pivotal Veracity is currently assembling on the use of forms and search boxes within an e-mail. (These will be compiled and put into a report, which I'll cover next column.) During the conversation, I was interested to hear the report will focus on the science of e-mail. My initial responses to the findings came straight from the art aspect.

So, is e-mail an art or a science?

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:25 AM | Permalink

June 27, 2006

No Limits on Humor to Update Your Profile

I frequently applaud the efforts of Diesel at truly pushing the envelope of cool and shock. They once again had my attention this past week with the profile update creative. The importance of "knowing" your audience is a top line deliverable, but this one had to surely drive the click through.

The only thing that left me a bit lost, was that the click threw me to the home page and not to my exact profile update. Made the conversion a little harder, but trust me, I wanted them to know that this spring's surgery was a success and I would look great in relevant offers for strapless tank dresses.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 2:35 PM | Permalink

Major Marketers Underestimate Spam Risk

I was at this event and just had a chance to read the article today. I have been a little slammed, but what is new. The teeth of CAN Spam

From Erik Sass, at Mediapost

THE CAN SPAM ACT that went into effect in January 2004 has proven to be far less disruptive of the e-mail marketing industry than many had feared--but the general feeling of relief has grown into outright complacency, leading executives warned at a "town hall" meeting on spam on the third and final morning of MediaPost's Email Insider Summit here. Some popular methods could land e-mail marketers in trouble if used improperly, they said. Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for Experian and CheetahMail, summed up the general thrust of the discussion when he said "the slightest mistake in an otherwise legitimate campaign" could result in fines or legal action.

Before delivering the bad news, Michael Goodman, a former staff attorney for the FTC, confirmed that the CAN SPAM Act did indeed have fewer ramifications than originally feared: "In the industry its nickname is the 'You Can SPAM Act," he said, since "it doesn't prevent you from sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to anyone."

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:14 AM | Permalink

June 26, 2006

Why is My Gmail SO Full of Spam Lately

I have always found gmail to be great at limiting the amount of Junk or spam I get at this address. I actually rarely use this email address for anything else than personal emails. Now all of a sudden I am seeing a flood of spam coming in the box. It only takes one clown to sell a list and watch it take off. The good thing is that it is all being caught in the Junk box, the bad thing is that there is actually so much of it.

Time for a new account right? And the email address churn continues.....

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:29 AM | Permalink

E-Mail Marketers: Customers Tell You What They Want

What do favorable brand perceptions, trust, and relevance all have in common? They were all found to be the most effective e-mail marketing tactics for eliciting a favorable response, according to consumer responses to the fifth annual View from the Inbox survey of 2,500 consumers.

For the survey, consumers were asked to rank how likely they would be to respond to various e-mail marketing tactics. “Response” was defined as clicking on the links within the e-mail message to take further action, such as make a transaction, register for a Website, or access more information.

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:02 AM | Permalink

June 25, 2006

One way to keep spam traps off your list

Thanks to George Bilbrey, VP & GM Delivery Assurance Solutions, at ReturnPath for another great article. I like this idea and have a few questions around this technique. George, how many IP addresses would a customer need to do this and how would you be able to flag one honeypot email address if you are getting 5-10K new subscribers a day? Let me know as we have some ideas around a test of this.

Having spam traps on your email list causes a world of problems: listings on commonly used blacklists and blocks at top ISPs. For the uninitiated, a spam trap is usually an address that was created new and never signed up to receive any mailings. Therefore, by definition, all mail going to that account is unsolicited. This is a great tool to catch spammers who will often mail to addresses that they have harvested from web sites and newsgroups where the good folks who run the spam trap network have published their spam trap email addresses.

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:25 AM | Permalink

June 24, 2006

China Arranges New Anti-Spam Email Campaign

China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the Internet Society of China (ISC) and the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) have jointly launched a nationwide campaign against spam to educate consumers about unsolicited bulk email.

The campaign is called "12321", which is also the anti-spam reporting phone number for MII.

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:03 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Join Up with the Email Experience Council on Gather.com

We were fortunate this week to hold the first Gather.com live chat about email marketing. The EEC members joined with many other subscribers and collectively had a live session of questions and answers. These will be held each month and I encourage you to join up.

If you have not yet subscribed to the Email Experience Council newsletter, time to click away from here and get it done.

Learn more about the Email Experience Council now

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Queensboro Shirt: No E-Mail Address, No Service

So this is an interesting ploy, I have not given much thought to ecom sites that don't require an email address when you place an order anymore. Now this article is worth the read, but can someone find me an ecom site that does not require email? I challenge you. If you can, they must not be selling.

Don't try to place an order with Queensboro Shirt Co. unless you are willing to give your e-mail address. That and Internet-only prospecting have made the company a pioneer in business-to-business direct marketing, though few others have followed its path, according to the company's top executive.

Read On

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:55 AM | Permalink

Jakob Neilsen's Email Study - Great Read

I was sent this from a partner agency today. Great read on email usability, newsletter subscriptions and other data I love to read. If you are reading this, I assume that this applies to you as well.

In a nutshell:

Four years is a very short amount of time, so it's heartening to observe that companies have invested enough in user experience quality to win improvements in the 25-89% range. Such investment is evidence of the email newsletter's importance to the bottom line.
Despite the improvements, however, much remains to be done. Users should be able to subscribe to a newsletter in less than a minute, for example.

Also, in the latest study, the success rate for subscribing to newsletters was 81%. While higher than the 66% we found when testing a broad range of websites, a success rate of 81% implies that a newsletter with 50,000 subscribers could gain an additional 11,700 subscribers by improving the usability of its subscription process

.

Take the time to read this study if you do nothing else today.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:42 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

State Kids’ No E-Mail Bills Dead

I came across this in the Brightwave Newsletter today. Alot of it is not too new if you have been following this, but they give a good wrap up of all the states and what has happened with all the bills.

The kids’ do-not-e-mail juggernaut that for the last year has threatened to wipe legal adult content out of electronic communications is grinding to a halt—at least for now. A bill in Georgia that would have established so-called child protection do-not-e-mail registry died in April. A similar bill in Connecticut was gutted. Similar bills in Iowa, Wisconsin and Hawaii are also either dead or languishing. Though child do-not e-mail registries in Utah and Michigan still pose significant threats to e-mail containing legal adult content, other states allowing their registry bills to die or gutting them indicates the tide may be turning in marketers’ favor.

Read the full articleat Direct Mag

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

June 20, 2006

Why Do You Copy Our Studies?

I don't want to toot our horn, but EVERY quarter when we come up with a new way to present data - starting in q1 2006 this year - with a study based on list size, Exact Target and everyone else follows 3-6 months later. Kills me. Guys love the data and glad we can give you some ideas for your marketing and customer education efforts. But come on, there are 300 things you could focus on to stand out.

PSSSST> We are going to talk about "Dayparting + List Size + Relevancy - the Monkey Effect".... hope you don't write about that one too.

Look for our new stuidies coming soon that will be completely original, as marketing efforts and research should be.

"What's the #1 indicator for best email open/clickthrough rates? According ExactTarget's data from 4,000+ organizations, 230,000+ campaigns and more than 2.7 billion email messages in 2005 the answer is LIST SIZE.

Get this and much more in our NEW WHITEPAPER."

If you have not read our industry leading studies yet, grab a copy.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:10 PM | Permalink

June 19, 2006

Canadian Email Study

It is always nice to have our quarterly email study referenced against another agency. Even better when that agency measures it against thier own country. If you are curious as to what is going on in Canada this is a must read.

Read On (PDF)

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:24 AM | Permalink

June 16, 2006

Find Your Inner Flavor

I found my flavor, What Kind of Kettle Chip are You?

We worked with Kettle Foods (LOVE THE CHIPS) again to put together a great new Crave Club Site. Hats off to Kettle as they are great designers and to Maxwell PR for the direction.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:27 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

RSS Versus E-mail

Will RSS eat e-mail marketing’s lunch? It’s a provocative topic and one, by the way, that OMMA magazine takes up in a feature package in the July issue–which we’re producing even as I write this column.

In any event, the Nielsen Norman Group has a new report out on the subject. The report examines RSS feeds from mainstream users’ point of view and compares them to e-mail newsletters to find that businesses forge closer relationships with customers through e-newsletters than through RSS feeds. Surprised?

We’re not. E-mail newsletters have become warm and familiar forms of communication, landing in our boxes with precision and regularity–at least when there are no technical or server issues. When the content and headlines are well-crafted, e-mail newsletters are artful creations. They can even be personalized to an extent. They serve niche audiences. They foster loyalty.

From: Just An Online Minute…
Posted June 14th, 2006 by Tobi Elkin

Read All:

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 11:16 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

Hey! You with the bushy whiskers and the sprouting shrubbery.

Yes, you, the walking carpet. Get over to barberbrigade.com and do something about the surplus of protein strands sticking out of your facial epidermis.

At barberbrigade.com you’ll find heaven for the click-happy site visitor. Almost everything in this well-made flash movie of a site is interactive. I really enjoyed the many different audio clips of people with crazy accents telling me I either look great or that I could use a shave. One of the my favorite pieces of the site had me creating my own message, from a list of provided phrases, to send to a friend/loved one to hint to them that it’s time to do some weed whacking and hedge trimming. I spent a good hour clicking through this site, which is a long time for my 10-second attention span.

The product itself is intriguing enough. Personally, I’m not one to purchase a hair or skin care product that costs more than a 10-spot but apparently Barber Brigade research says that other men do. More than likely, after I show her the site, my wife will see some of their grooming goop at Target and pick it up for me. She will tell me to use it to rid myself of the prickly pubes on my face and keep my skin looking youthful and smooth. Maybe in her wildest dreams I’ll start caring about the way I look. Ah but probably not. Marriage has made me a bit of a sloth. However, the single, or not quite as involved, man will undoubtedly latch onto any grooming product that keeps him looking good while not making him feel too much like teenage girl. These guys have that market dialed in.

Overall, I give the site an A-.
Docked points for not having ecommerce and for being so flash heavy that SEO will be difficult. Big props for the use of the word ‘manimal’.

Comments (0) | Posted by Jeff at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Are You Ready for the Political Emails?

In the past 4 days I have fielded many calls from PACs and political campaigns looking for an email platform to send from 1 million to 100 million emails a month. Not too shocking right. But as with any other client prospect (or partner as I like to refer to them) I have a series of questions.

1. What is your group or candidate?
2. How often will you be mailing?
3. How large is your list?
4. Where did you get this list?

Well number 4 seems to throw all of them off. Like I just can accept that they ALL have lists this parge after the last campaign season. I know that we are all pretty passionate today about our country's governement given the state that it is in, but where did the rules and laws go, let alone the common sense of spam? It seems to me that many of these groups have either procured or bought lists from other campaigns or groups out there and are ready to send too many emails to those that have not opt in.

There does exist a loophole in the law around politics and goverment, but I think personally that it is crap. I have seeded past campaigns with special emails that will help me to see where they get used this time around. I can tell you from personal client experience in this realm, that many unscrupilous would be candidates make requests to current elected officials list with the Freedom of Information Act. And then spam the hell out of them, even when they are on the other side of the issue or RED/BLUE line.

I welcome your feedback on this as I expect that you will all soon see an increase in unsolicited emails from candidates, campaigns and PACs. God bless America right?

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:33 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

New Ideas for Rebuilding Email

An interesting idea surfaced today in a blog, entitled : E-mail 2.0.

To paraphrase that old adage about the weather, everyone complains about e-mail, but no one ever does anything about it. E-mail has become a technology that we couldn't live without in our business and personal lives... yet it's rife with spam, viruses and fraud. In fact, one estimate places the amount of spam at 90% of all e-mail traffic!

In response, Kelly Martin of SecurityFocus makes the modest proposal that the backbone of our e-mail system, Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), is fundamentally broken and should be scrapped. Designed to be used by a handful of engineers and geeks, SMTP was excellent at what it was designed for -- and is, indeed, the reason why e-mail has evolved into such a successful medium. But it wasn't designed for security or accountability, and patchwork attempts to make it so can't keep up with the threats.

Read More

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:54 AM | Permalink

June 9, 2006

Create a Client Profile System

I have subscribed to an unknown amount of emails in my time and one thing that frustrates me is not being able to tell people more about yourself so that they can deliver not only relevant content, but know who you are. Now some privacy maniacs might think that they don't want to tell any company more than they need to. Well you don't HAVE TO. But for those of us who like to get emails that match up with our needs from companies, I salute The North Face and other companies for doing this.

My personal favorite (although I find it odd that they cannot tell this from their internal DB of online purchases, I understand the offline) is that they ask where you have bought their products. Like REI they are really trying to meld the online/offline worlds and drive customers to points of interaction that they want to shop.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:08 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

Internet Retailer Conference Assigns Email Addresses

This is a really interesting idea. I got this as we just put two of our team on a plane this week to the Internet Retailer Conference. I think that this has merit as I have seen some other conferences sell or give their attendee lists to all the vendors that are coming. This has resulted in unsolicted emails from every vendor dropping into the inbox. Now it is nice to be able to communicate with everyone that is coming to see your booth, drop emails during the event and follow up afterwards with those that you met or might not have met, but giving them an event driven email really protects the attendee.

Now on the flip side, I wonder how many attendees will really go and check this email address? I would hope that they see the value in it, and I would assume that those that want more info and to learn more from who was there (that they did not give a business card to) will use it.

I personally love this action by Internet Retailer. Nice work and a really creative solution to the challenge.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:01 AM | Permalink

June 7, 2006

Image Blocking in Email Clients

You might not really be aware of what email clients are blocking the images in your email campaigns. Do you know when you send an email if the images you have embedded are really going to show up by default? Many people do not think about this prior to sending a campaign.

Now if you want to take a precaution, I suggest that you make sure to name the image exactly what it is as well as use ALT tags to let it display with text as to what should be in the suppressed image box. Just a good practice.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:57 AM | Permalink

June 6, 2006

Blocking Delivery Due to URLs in Email

If you are not aware of it, ISPs and blacklists can impact your email delivery simply based on URLs you might reference in an email campaign. I know that it might seem odd, but even giants like Yahoo/Flickr hit the blocklist from time to time. I noticed this in a SpamAssasin Score this past week.

Make note that you check URLs you might have as a link in your email against lists like URBL and SORBS before you send.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:54 AM | Permalink

June 5, 2006

ISP Delivery Report

Even though this chart is from 2004, it seems useful to see where we were back 1 and a half years ago. I find that this study is a good metric to look at and really benchmark your delivery against. Although many ESPs have really stepped up the relations and management at the ISP level, it is still good to watch what is occuring with your lists.

Does you ESP show you exactly what they are delivering? eROI does with emailROI.

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Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Majority of People Can't Tell Legit from Spam

Not sure if this is a good or bad report. But what it tells me is that we need to be aware of the common person, and not think about ourselves, when we are creating email campaigns. If the majority cannot tell the difference, will this impact your campaign from being flagged as spam, reported as Junk, or just deleted? Make sure that you are taking the high road and working on client communication from the start, the opt in page. Let them know what is being sent, when it will be sent and whom to expect it from.

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Though many Web users believe they can recognize legitimate e-mail from spam, many of them are overly suspicious, according to a study by the National Cyber Security Alliance.

The study, 'Online Fraud Report,' was released Wednesday by the NCSA and Bank of America. It found that 87 percent of respondents expressed confidence that they could tell real from fraudulent e-mails.

However, when given screen shots of three e-mails (one legit, two spam), more than 60 percent failed to identify the legitimate e-mail. Most respondents classified all three as fraudulent.

Ron Teixeira, executive directory of the NCSA, said that this over-suspiciousness is a dangerous trend.

Read more

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:34 AM | Permalink

June 2, 2006

MSN Live Mail to Add Text Ads

I an twist that was not really a twist, just a matter of time, MSN has rolled out testing of text ads in your inbox. I mean it was a given that they would start to monetize EVERYTHING in LIVE sooner or later. With the LIVE interface being in "BETA" for a while now, and looking way to clean and usable, it was time to mix it up.

What this means to you is like Gmail, you need to be aware that your competitors can now compete against you with every email you send based on keywords and names in your email. Think carefully about your copy, or buy against those keywords to protect your brand and your messaging.

Read more after the jump

Microsoft to Test E-mail Text Ads

NEW YORK Microsoft said next week it would begin testing the targeting of text ads to e-mail messages, the first step of what the company believes could be a rollout across several properties, including its blogs and instant messenger.

The initial test will be confined to some users of its Windows Live Mail desktop e-mail program. Like Google's Gmail, Microsoft will scan e-mail messages for keywords that it matches to search ads. "Active Search" will provide a search box with a list of suggested search terms and results for the message's keyword, including search ads. Unlike Google, Microsoft will give users the opportunity to turn off the scanning, and instead see graphical ad units.

Read More
http://www.adweek.com/aw/iq_interactive/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002612384

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:22 AM | Permalink

AOL suffering e-mail glitch

AOL e-mail users were prevented from sending or receiving most of their e-mail for at least three hours Thursday morning, the online portal said.

"An e-mail software issue started to cause delays in the sending and receiving of AOL e-mails for our members and AOL.com users, said company spokesman Nicholas Graham. "We are in the process of implementing a fix and investigating its cause."

Read More:
http://news.com.com/AOL+suffering+e-mail+glitch/2100-1032_3-6079074.html?tag=nefd.top

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:11 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2006

AOL All Clear 3am EST Friday

==AOL UPDATE=================
Thursday, June 1, 2006. 5:30 PM Eastern.

Dear Clients,

Earlier we sent out a notice (please see below) advising you of problems at AOL and included AOL's request that all mailers stop mailing into AOL while they fixed the problem. For those of you who were able to stop mailing into AOL, many thanks on behalf of AOL as a reduction in mail was extremely helpful to them. If you did mail into AOL, you may have observed intermittent delivery problems.

The good news is that AOL has just contacted us and advised us that mailers now have the

"ALL CLEAR" to mail again beginning after 3am Eastern Standard Time, Friday June 2.

Thus, please contact all parties responsible for sending emails on your behalf and let them know that AOL recommends they begin mailing again Friday morning after 3am Eastern Standard Time.

If you have any questions or need any assistance on this issue or any other, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 2:45 PM | Permalink

CEASE MAILING INTO AOL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

== THIS IS AN URGENT NOTICE REGARDING AOL ====
Thursday, June 1, 2006. 1:22 PM Eastern.

Dear Clients,

AOL has just contacted us and notified us that AOL is having "massive internal system failures" and can not process mail. AOL has asked that we please ask all our client mailers to:

CEASE MAILING INTO AOL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

AOL is requesting your assistance in this. The more mail they receive, the longer it will take them to fix the problem. Furthermore, your emails will not get in if you do email now as the emails will bounce.

AOL will notify us when their system is fixed and we will notify you.

This is an urgent notice and should be communicated to all parties responsible for sending emails for you.

If you have any questions, please contact Pivotal Veracity.

Sincerely,
Your Pivotal Veracity Support Team

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:43 PM | Permalink