April 25, 2008

Yahoo Mail Blows Up

Over on the Yahoo Mail Blog they stated they have been doing work on Yahoo Mail classic, and of course, anytime they do work, there are bugs.

http://www.ymailblog.com/blog/2008/04/24/update-to-yahoo-mail-classic-has-resumed/

The postmaster and development teams at Yahoo have been using the blog to communicate changes, and actively read comments from users. If you are experiencing problems, it is a good place to post or read comments from other users to see if they are already aware of the issues.

Comments from the WEB on this:

Someone was asking about problems with Yahoo yesterday. I use Yahoo Classic for my personal emails and I noticed yesterday and today that it's making emails that I haven't opened as read. If I mark those as unread, it then marks other unread emails as read. So perhaps there's not a deliverability issue but one with open and click rates because subscribers are not reading messages because Yahoo is telling them that they've already looked at the emails. Anyone else seeing this?
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I'm seeing similar problems in the new version of Yahoo Mail. Over the past week, in my personal account:

Previously read & deleted emails have returned to my inbox as unread
The inbox has failed to load & generated JavaScript errors
Individual messages have been failing to load, generating internal Yahoo error messages to try again

It seems as if they may be doing some behind-the-scenes work that's negatively impacting the user experience--and, in some cases, making select messages unreadable for a period of time.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 11:01 AM | Permalink

April 22, 2008

Anti-Spam Bill Being Crafted in CA

From Ken Magill on DM News. Worth the read. Will the state by state insanity ever stop? Can't they involve the marketers, ISPs and ESPs when they go to create a new bill? We all want it to stop, as it would only benefit our double opt in, above board clients.

Not Again: Anti-Spam Bill Being Crafted in CA A bill is working its way through the California legislature that supporters contend would strengthen its anti-spam laws and could go in to effect as early as this fall, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week.

Why is it that so many anti-spam activists refuse to understand that spammers are generally breaking about 142 laws every time they hit "send" already, and that a 143rd magical piece of legislation will do nothing to fix the problem that can't already be accomplished with existing law?

Click here to read about another misguided effort at trying to legislate spam out of existence.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 2:23 PM | Permalink

April 9, 2008

Updated: New Mobile Release

UPDATE: We released a new version of our mobile email marketing news RSS reader this past week. If you have the old version, please delete it from your mobile device and reinstall the new one. Works harder, better, faster, stronger....

Details below:

Now you can stay in touch with email and marketing news on the go, on us.

eROI wanted to give marketers a new mobile tool to help them stay connected to the sites and blogs that they should be reading on the go. We have brought together a collection of some of the top sites as a starting point for you. We have also allowed you to add your own content from a library of sites and blogs as well as given you the ability to add any RSS feeds you might find useful.

This is a way to start thinking about mobile and what it means to you, your brand and your customers as you start to dip your toe into mobile marketing this year and next.

We can warn you that this application is addictive and will empower you to follow anything you are interesting no matter where you are.

If you have not had a chance to check out our new mobile RSS News Readeryet, you owe it to yourself. As a blog reader and marketer we are giving you your own copy of the eROI Mobile RSS News Reader. We have aggregated feeds from blog like:

The Email Wars, Email Days, ReturnOnSubscriber, EEC Blog, Mail Chimp, Mediapost: Email Insider, Retail Email Blog, Strongmail, Marketing Profs, MIT Ad Lab, Engadget, Springwise, TechCruch, Bronto Blog, Campaign Monitor Blog, Denise Cox's Blog, Email Marketing Reports, Email Marketing Voodoo, Email Standards Project, ReturnPath Blog, Smith-Harmon Blog, Vertical Response Blog, What Counts Blog .... and many more.

Not only will you find these resources now on your phone, blackberry, treo or other mobile device, but you can add any others you would like to follow.

Go get a copy for yourself and move to the 3rd Screen today with the eROI Mobile RSS Newsreader.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:41 AM | Permalink

April 4, 2008

Make Your Email Campaigns Mobile-Friendly

Great article from Stefan in an easy to digest list of FOUR key things. I know we marketers love our numbered lists...

In this article, Stefan Pollard explains how to make your email campaigns mobile-friendly:

1. Reformat text
You should always offer a text option as an alternative to HTML for all readers. You can send this version to your mobile readers, but you might also have to reformat it to make it show up better on the smaller screen.

Most text messages have 60 to 80 characters per line. Mobile platforms will show 20 to 40 characters in 12 to 15 lines per screen, depending on screen width and type style.

Desktop-friendly line lengths can create long paragraphs in the mobile reader. If you use typographic devices as copy separators that also run 60 characters, for example, you'll give up four to five lines on the screen for something that adds no value.

2. Rethink tracking URLs
Same goes for URLs. Tracking URLs can also consume four to five lines per screen. If you can, use a simpler URL even if it means sacrificing some tracking ability. These long URLs can result from automatically reformatting HTML copy into text, so your text version may need some hand-tweaking in order to render better on all platforms.

3. Be brief.
Message size must come down whether you send in text or HTML. Messages over a certain size -- even as small as 12KB -- risk being cut off halfway through. In many clients, your reader can opt to click a button that will call up the rest of the message, but do you want to throw up that obstacle?

Personally, I hate it when I open a message and find "message truncated" right at the top. I need more to make me want to click the button that will deliver the rest of the message.

Another message I get that frustrates me to no end is "This message contains a rich-text HTML portion. Consult your mail client's documentation for information on how to view it." Uh, I don't think so. Delete! That means it won't be there when I get to my desk.

Also, rethink the content itself. Long sentences in long paragraphs force more and more scrolling. This also can be a barrier to conversion or another source of frustration for readers.

4. Validate your Web site, too.
Is your Web site mobile-friendly too? Probably not, if you haven't had it redesigned specifically for mobile applications. If you have to send readers to your Web site to get the most value from your email marketing, better make sure it will also render on their devices. You can check it easily by using a new validator developed by the World Wide Web Consortium: http://validator.w3.org/mobile/.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2008

What Else Do You Need in Email?

Email knits together everyone on the web, and yet there are some things missing from it that can be very useful in a business setting. Verifiable delivery, for example: how do you prove that someone got an email when you said they did? RPost has an answer to that: install their add-in, and their servers will optionally provide signed, verifiable proof of delivery for any email you send with notice to their "registered" service.

They've recently added another feature, which could also be useful in business settings: the "SideNote", which lets you put a little sticky note on emails that is only visible to cc: and bcc: recipients. That's a nice touch to let recipients know why they got copied on this mail. Pricing starts at 59 cents per unit of use. Unfortunately, at the moment the client side software is Outlook-only.

http://www.rpost.com/site/registered/registered_core.htm

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:00 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2008

Buying Remanent Email Space

Buying Remanant email at yahoo/msn etc? Have you ever heard about this? I heard this topic from an email marketing person that said that they do this every once in a while for clients through MSN and Yahoo. What this immediately made me think about is:

Does it have an impact on delivery? Does this help with getting more email from your brand into the inbox through these ISPs and help on your reputation with the links, domains and sender from lines you use?

Does it help protect feedback loops if timed with house lists? Why I thought of this was if I was dropping a massive double opt in confirmed campaign for a client from their house list, would there be an impact in delivery scores IF I had a timed drop with in house ISP remanent emails? I would think that in the grand scheme feedback, unsubs and other scores would be better balanced if I was doing this?

Is this a trick? Is is a way to leverage the ISPs to deliver 3rd party emails on your brand's behalf? Seems a little fishy to me? But then this is the first time I have heard of doing this?

Anyone have any experience with this practice?

Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink