No man is an iland

December 23, 2004

Understand ISP-Level E-Mail Filtering
Article offers an overview of the techniques used by ISPs to weed out unwanted email.

December 21, 2004

The E-Mail Text Vs. HTML Debate: Readers Weigh In
Jeanne Jennings offers a summary of reader thoughts on the format issue she raised in an earlier article. A lot of good advice is mixed in with the comments.

Spam Slayer: 2005 Inbox Forecast
Tom Spring at PC World makes some predictions on how inboxes will look come 2005. One of them is that more people will turn to web-based email services - fire up those Hotmail and Gmail test accounts everyone.

December 20, 2004

By the way...
...if anyone's counting...apologies for a week's worth of missing posts - I had family visiting from the UK. Normal service will probably resume around about January 3rd.

In Virginia, Ohio, and Maryland, Kingpin Spammers Go to the Slammer
Associate Professor of Law Anita Ramasastry steps up to shine some light of understanding on those state laws regulating (unsolicited) commercial email.

How to Design & Copywrite Email Postcards for Maximum Results
EmailSherpa with recommendations on who should send them and what to put in them.

December 10, 2004

Is it the time of year?
Are standards slacking because we're all in "end of year" mode? Yesterday, I saw a press release from a well known company reporting on tests which "showed" how much lift an email campaign gets from different types of promotions. The test was so flawed (at least, as presented in the release) that I would have been embarassed to report it.

Then today I saw an email marketing case study on a top media site which basically could be summarized as "we decided to build a house list and send people email and it worked quite well." That's an interesting story, or it would be if this was 1998.

Bah humbug.

Welcome Messages Get Highest Open Rates of All Email Campaigns: How to Improve Yours
Four real-life examples of how to best exploit the potential of the much underrated list welcome message.

RSS: Show Me the Money
A commentary piece in Wired News on how people might derive revenue and marketing benefits from RSS feeds.

December 09, 2004

Emailgarage.com
Not an article but a resource subsite provided by a European email marketing vendor. Book reviews, article pointers, local reports and similar. Another one to bookmark.

How to create e-mails people love to read
A month old, but I only just stumbled across it. Lots of good ideas about enhancing the value of your (B2B) newsletter.

December 07, 2004

The Identity Crisis and E-Mail Authentication: Finding Your Identity
David Daniels works his way through the alphabetical minefield of authentication techniques and looks at how the whole topic is developing.

E-Mail Creative: The HTML/Text Struggle
Jeanne Jennings cites some of the arguments-that-refuse-to-die against HTML mails, offers a response and invites debate on the relative merits of both formats.

I've never understood why some marketers are so anti-HTML (or anti-text for that matter).

Every half decent email marketing software or service provider gives you the tools to test, measure and compare the two formats. So you can choose the one that works best for your audience. Not to mention that it's not necessarily an either/or debate - you can offer people both.

Let the test results speak for themselves.

Most of the people who are negative about HTML do use the "I don't read html email personally" argument. Yet how many times are we taught not to assume that our preferences apply to our customers. And what people say they prefer isn't necessarily reflected in real behavior and response rates.

It's a non-issue for me - as marketers we should find out what works best for us and dump our assumptions and personal preferences on the chair outside the testing lab.

DoubleClick's Q3 2004 Email Trend Report
I always approach such aggregated statistics with extreme caution, but whichever way you look at it, the report continues to demonstrate the potential of email as a marketing vehicle.

December 06, 2004

My 2005 Predictions for Email
Michael Mayor looks into his crystal ball, mostly as regards list rental (that's his business).

December 03, 2004

Microsoft sues more spammers
One advantage of having Mr.Gates on the right side of the spam debate is Microsoft can throw a lot of legal money at spammers. The more they do to put people off spamming, the better for legitimate email marketing.

Video Newsletter Gets High Viral Pass-Along & Unusually Strong Clicks
EmailSherpa highlights how email campaigns can be adjusted to account for the many people who prefer to get their information in an audio or video format, rather than having to read something. Includes results and samples.

Reconfirmation Messages: Clean Up Your List!
Derek Harding has some advice on clearing out the older, perhaps unused or blocked, addresses on your permission-based house list. He includes a list of factors to consider when mailing people to reconfirm their membership/subscription.

December 01, 2004

Six Tips for Building a Great House List
Stephan Pretorius (there's a surname that I'd like) has some very sound and pragmatic advice on handling and boosting subscriptions to your address lists.

Use E-Mail to Sell Consumables
Paul Soltoff wonders aloud about using email reminders to sell things like printer paper. I vaguely remember a couple of companies that already do this, and it's a logical extension of the "you once bought a Robbie Williams CD so we thought you might like to buy his latest release" email that the likes of Amazon already send.

Spam Law Test
Tom Spring in PC World describes how they tested Can-Spam compliancy at 100 leading US websites. They signed up for newsletters and then unsubscribed after the first issue received. The results and subsequent discussion of the law make interesting and salutary reading.

Should Newsletters Take a Vacation?
Meryl Evans comes up with some reasons why you should continue to publish your newsletter through the holiday season.

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