No man is an iland
...daily blog with email marketing advice, news and best practices
Feed | Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow
Brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing
Case study from MarketingSherpa. The headline kinds of tells you all you need to know about the content.
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A very detailed look at the different sides in the spam wars, with a focus on the situation in Australia. Lots of good background information on email blocking and who the players are.
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Hmmm...on my eternal quest for cross-fertilization (stealing ideas from others), here's a short article on how libraries send extracts from books to email subscribers in order to get them into the library and borrowing more texts. Surely something in there could be adapted to a business environment?
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Pamela Parker looks at the state of RSS technology and asks whether it's ready for marketing prime time, i.e. can you track and can you serve ads?
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My friends over at MarketingSherpa have some insights into AOL's whitelist, site blocking and dynamic blocking email activities, plus tips on how to up your AOL deliverability rate.
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Uplifting (depending on your perspective) stats from AOL, who are seeing less spam reports from their members, attributed to their agressive anti-spam measures and policies. Mind you, the poor IT folks there still get millions of spam reports a week.
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According to JupiterResearch that is. They reckon it will hit $6.1 billion in 2008, mostly retention email, but they expect a recovery in the use of email for acquisition as well (meaning list rental I presume). Oh yes, and, "...marketers must manage their campaigns with skill to obtain the full benefits of online direct marketing." So any of you thinking you can obtain the full benefits by managing your campaigns badly need to think again.
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In a data memo, the organization reported rises in the numer of people who have reduced their email usage because of spam, who are less trustful of email (because of spam) and who find the online experience increasingly annoying (sigh...because of spam).
Add to that suggestions that people are getting more spam and there are few bits of good news for Can-Spam advocates. Some analysis of the survey:
* Junk E-Mail Is Unabated Despite Law, Survey Says (New York Times)
* More Unwanted Messages Since CAN-SPAM (ClickZ)
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EmailSherpa highlights the inadequacy of most marketers' attempts to ensure Can-Spam compliancy, and offers some practical recommendations and an overview of what some big mailers are doing to get their operations lawsuit-proof.
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Janis Mara explores the possibility that the big anti-spam lawsuits filed by the top ISPs might be as much about PR as stopping spam. She's insight from experts, the FTC and some of the ISPs involved.
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Jeanne Jennings reports on the above, highlighting three interesting tidbits, including the importance of those email recipients who respond to a marketing message, just not right away, an acquisition case study and rich media.
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Most people (myself included) tend to preach that e-newsletters are a long-term approach to increasing sales. Debbie Weil takes a slightly different stance in this article at MarketingProfs.com, and offers advice and examples on how to use your newsletter for a more immediate sales impact.
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Report on an Ipsos-Reid survey of internet users in Canada. Among the insights, the frankly frightening news that 1% of people have actually bought a product advertised through spam. (So men really are that insecure?). In better news, the study also found that 77% of users had signed up to receive permission email from a website. And those that do are signing up to more website email lists than last year.
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ClickZ News reports on some baddish news in a deliverability report put out by Return Path. Seems the inadvertant blocking of permission-based email by the big ISPs is getting worse, rather than better. Of particular concern to consumer marketers, who'll have more of these generic Yahoo, AOL addresses on their lists.
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Anne Holland describes some of the early issues she's encountered even before launching a desktop application as a possible alternative to email newsletters.
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If you have something to say about the legislation, now's your chance. The FTC has a form where you can submit opinions on a whole host of Can-Spam related issues, not least of which is a proposed do-not-email register.
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This one's for trivia fans among you. Jim Meskauskas reveals the identity of probably the world's first unsolicited bulk email (back in 1971) and the world's first example of bulk email marketing (back in 1978 - also unsolicited unfortunately).
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Due to the above, I'm not updating this section this week. Once the antibiotics kick in, expect a return to normal service.
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Some background info on email usage from Information Week. They report, for example, on a survey of email usage among business-technology professionals. And throw in the little tidbit that large companies are handling an average 4 million emails a day. And you think you had problems...
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And another scary article from imediaconnection.com. Not so much for the description of how a site is being sued for Can-Spam violations, but for the report on an Interland survey which suggested that 62% (of small businesses) have either not heard of CAN-SPAM or are unaware of how the Act affects their business.
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Dave Chase with a must-read article at imediaconnection.com. He identifies various capabilities and features that your publishing system should have, so you can move to the next level of email marketing success. Bit of a wake up call for anyone sitting on their email laurels. You just can't sit still for a moment in this game. Exciting? Frustrating? You decide...
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EmailSherpa offers some statistics and real-world examples to highlight the value of collecting email addresses at the offline point of sale. And then weighs in with some practical suggestions on how to make the most of the opportunity.
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Windows and Net Magazine has a brief overview of some of the promising technological solutions on the way to deal with spam.
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Not strictly email marketing. But Derek Hewitt comes up with a bunch of practical suggestions on how to measure the impact of online promotions on offline sales. The more you know about such things, the better you can measure the ROI of your email camapigns.
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Ben Isaacson goes through the various options when it comes to deciding on what to put in the all-important sender field of your emails. All-important because many recipients decide whether to give your email a chance based on this very field. He covers the topic from both a legislative and best practice angle.
If you've never had an embarassing email moment, you've not used email. But for all those who found the mistake after they hit the send button on a campaign or email, the above article offers some consolation. There are people who have made far worse mistakes. Read, and feel guilty about the pleasure it gives you.
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