No man is an iland

February 28, 2006

Tricia Robinson outlines the value of email for retention and then comes up with suggested ways you can use these marketing emails to increase loyalty and boost sales.

I get the feeling there are two trends going on right now. One is the increasing application of technology to allow clever segmentation and targeting of messages.

The other is a return to one of the original, basic promises of email, which was to build relationships using a soft sell approach. So you're top of mind when the customer is ready to buy.

Both trends still share a common basis. Namely that you need to deliver useful, timely, relevant, personable content. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

(Did you know that quote comes from the same Frenchman -- Alphonse Karr -- who gave his name to a variety of hedge bamboo?)

Jeanne Jennings has some pointers on testing some of the supplementary, yet vital, information that goes out with your emails. Like subject and sender lines, whitelisting messages and taglines.

Her general point is not only to understand what to test, but also to understand when things don't need to be tested. In other words, save your testing powder for the important stuff and don't obsess over changes that likely won't lift responses much.

Melinda Krueger runs over ten basic places and ways to get people to sign up to your email list.

Bet you there's at least one you're not yet using.

February 27, 2006

If you're looking for an introduction to the world of HTML design in emails, this is it.

MailChimp's free 50 page guide also addresses the mechanics of email marketing at a basic level for those relatively new to the field. But the meat of the publication is in the advice on HTML design.

It contains numerous tips on layout and coding, and covers the idiosyncrasies of different software and sites used by recipients to view their email.

A "must read" for do-it-yourselfers and a useful checklist for those with more experience.

Oh, and the MailChimp blog itself is worth reading for super email design insights and tips.

AOL's plans to offer a for-fee guaranteed-delivery option for bulk email sent to their members faces growing opposition from various sources.

According to ComputerWorld, a coalition of small business and non-profits is building to try and persuade AOL to change its mind.

Nice to see email bringing the world together; MoveOn.org and RightMarch.com are both part of the coalition, despite holding opposite political views.

February 24, 2006

Derek Harding stresses the importance of developing structured objectives for dynamic email campaigns. He explains why you can't be as relaxed about this as you might be with non-dynamic campaigns and he outlines the criteria you should use for setting goals.

Harding is almost apologetic about tackling what he describes as something sounding a little like Project Management 101.

But email marketing efforts often grow organically and without any rigorous structure, especially where they're an add-on to "standard" marketing activities.

So it certainly pays to sit back and bring a little more order into email marketing life.

This case study looks at the main tactics used by the company to add names to its opt-in house list.

It also looks at how different email address sources work out in terms of response rates to subsequent campaigns.

As always, not every tactic is eminently applicable to your situation, but "other people's ideas" can often trigger possibilities in your own mind.

February 23, 2006

MailerMailer just released their latest Email Marketing Metrics report covering the second half of 2005. You can get a copy if you sign up for their newsletter here.

Clickthrough rates declined slightly, compared to both the first half of 2005 and the second half of 2004.

As the industry matures that kind of trend, however small, is disturbing. Why? Because with time we ought to be getting much better at generating responses from email, thanks to more experience, better skills, better technology etc.

Clickthrough rates ought to go up, all other things being equal.

Now there may be some other trend at work here (for example, a shift away from direct response to more branding-type newsletter emails).

Or it may be an artifact of how things are calculated (if CTR is a percentage of the number of emails sent, then falling CTR may just be a reflection of an equivalent fall in real open rates).

But if there is a downward trend, we have to ask why? Too many and frequent commercial emails? Desensitized consumers? And what can we do to reverse the trend?

There are various other interesting stats in the report, as well. One I particularly like shows how quickly people open emails.

For example, 50% of all those who will eventually open your email do so within 8 hours of the send.

A reminder that you may have to spread out that send should you be worried about server overload or customer service issues when thousands of eager buyers suddenly come charging over the horizon following a mailout.

February 22, 2006

Hmmm...pause...look thoughtful. Here's an interesting summary from Epsilon Interactive regarding the results of their annual survey on consumer perceptions of email and spam.

There are lots of interesting little insights and tidbits in there, including such delights as:

...Consumers are actually paying attention to the authentication messages appearing in their emails at the likes of Yahoo and Hotmail.

...people also sign up for personal commercial email lists using their work address (which means B2C email marketers also need to understand B2B design and deliverability issues)

...attitudes and responses to commercial email are pretty good, or at least improving.

G. Simms Jenkins challenges those focused on email as a source of direct sales to consider incorporating a soft-sell e-newsletter in their approach.

After outlining the reasons why email newsletters can complement and enhance direct response sales campaigns, he provides a collection of best practices and things to look for when designing and filling each issue.

Newsletters are especially useful for big-purchase, long sales-cycle products and services, since they keep you top of mind throughout the decision-making process.

But they can also keep customers and prospects engaged if you sell standard fast-moving retail items. Because at some point, people have bought enough of your golf balls and won't need any more for a few months at least. Weekly coupon offers lose their appeal in that context. That's when the newsletter keeps the relationship bubbling over the non-buying season.

February 21, 2006

Melinda Krueger advises on how to develop your own benchmarking regime in the absence of relevant case studies.

She suggests sources of industry and competitor data, and has some tips for your own record keeping and testing procedures.

Information is power.

SmartBiz.com pinned down a few industry experts and got them to give their views on how AOL and Yahoo's use of Goodmail certification impacts on email marketing.

The general tenor of the comments is that it's no big deal and that each individual marketer simply has to do the numbers.

On the minus side of the financial equation you have the costs of certification. On the plus side you have some more emails delivered and a potential response lift from being marked as certified.

Of course, without any data, the equation is currently unsolvable. Everyone's waiting for someone else to do the case studies.

February 20, 2006

Oh joy. State-level "do-not-email" registries are spreading in the USA. Even though the FTC and pretty much everyone else say they are counterproductive and a big-time bad idea.

This MediaPost article has the latest info and reports on the legal challenges to the Utah version.

Interesting also to note that a court in Utah has ruled that an old state anti-spam law could not be applied to those out-of-state. Which suggests another reason that these state-based laws may fall if challenged properly.

February 17, 2006

It never hurts to think of how your email efforts can generate value outside of the actual email campaigns themselves. In this article, Laurie Hood comes up with various suggestions for repurposing newsletter content to generate more leads, buyers and/or visitors.

At the very least, make sure useful and timeless newsletter content is accessible online. It's grist to the search engine mill, it gives people something to link to and it can demonstrate the value of signing up for future issues.

Meng Wong worked on early email authentication standards. In this long post at CircleID he offers an analysis of where anti-spam measures and deliverability technologies are / might be / should be / should not be headed.

He wraps the thoughts up in vivid and eloquent imagery, with various sociopolitical and historical references. Wistful thinking? Wishful thinking? Provocative? Precognitive? You decide.

Nothing actionable in there but good reading for those looking for background on the issues.

Read through the comments, too, where there are responses from major organizations active in the privacy and anti-spam world.

February 16, 2006

The summary article on the AOL / Goodmail email certification issue just got updated, with new links to valuable overviews at ClickZ and iMedia Connection.

As an aside, it seems the certification criteria are going to be pretty tough. Which means a definite end to fears that it might lead to sloppy email marketing practices.

Just a nice little reflective post from Warren Corpus of Vayan Marketing Group, talking about how life has changed for publishers, advertisers, agencies and marketers since the Can-Spam law came out.

He also chats a little on the value and general impact of the legislation.

February 15, 2006

David Baker boldly goes where only physicists dare to tread, and tackles the email marketing equivalent to Grand Universal Theory.

Given that so many elements and skills contribute to success, he suggests truly understanding the value of an email address to your organization is the starting point around which to build your efforts.

If you haven't already done that exercise, this revelation can actually get you to fundamentally rethink your whole email marketing operation and approach.

Vertical Response's Janine Popick uses a blog posting to highlight the value of those second-tier holidays and event days (like the Daytona 500) that also provide marketing opportunities. And might just have a touch less competition for reader attention.

She then outlines a few ideas of how to use emails or postcards to make the most of those opportunities.

Even if not all the cited (mainly US) holidays resonate with you because you're, for example, in Sweden or Australia, the principle is still worth noting.

Did you know that today is "send flowers to a marketer" day? No, I didn't think so.

This news article at BtoBOnline.com reviews the current situation for renting email lists in the B2B marketplace.

Two competing trends seem to be emerging of late. On the one hand, companies are more aware of the value of an email address and are reluctant to open up their lists to others (i.e. rent them out), or can't do so because of privacy policies.

On the other hand, interest in the use of email for acquiring new leads is growing, particularly in the IT sector, where white paper offers to rented media lists, for example, are a well-established concept accepted by both sellers and readers.

February 14, 2006

Fascinating insights from Jeanne Jennings on testing and the benefits of personalization (and opening salutations per se).

She reveals how simply adding an opening greeting can both lift and depress responses to marketing emails, speculates why this is so, and uses the issue to explain some of the ins, outs and idiosyncrasies of testing.

Definitely worth a read.

I've no finger on the pulse of mobile messaging, but this news item about Microsoft does suggest your emails to corporate addresses will increasingly end up being read on a mobile phone or similar device. As confirmed by this earlier survey.

Will designing for PDAs and small screens be an email marketing trend in 2006/2007? There are some creative skill and service niches waiting to be filled there methinks.

This article at The Street.com is for small businesses new to email marketing (or who tried it and got their fingers horribly burnt).

Its "four important tips" cover permission practices, email headers and publication frequency, content, and copy.

This piece appears in Water Technology Magazine. It encourages readers to consider adding email to their marketing endeavors. All well and good.

Two points.

1. It's further evidence that the second wave of email marketing is reaching a wider business audience. Email has come through the doom and gloom era to enter the mainstream.

2. The article presents lots of persuasive arguments in favor of email marketing. It also emphasizes the need to avoid spam practices and perceptions. Super.

But it also encourages address collection and use without really clarifying the importance of getting *explicit* opt-in permission.

If too many businesses -- however well-meaning -- start sending out commercial email without full awareness of the implications of legal-but-poor permission practices, then we can start firing up the "email marketing is dead" headlines again.

February 13, 2006

Vendor EmailLabs present some data on the percentage of list addresses that are unresponsive (they neither open nor click over a six month period).

Now if you're guessing that's probably just a few percent of your recipient list, then you might be in for a nasty shock.

The bad news is the number is typically awfully high. The good news is there are things you can do about it, and the authors of this little report point you to some of their own thoughts on that matter.

Don't forget to check the way you use email before panicking on this issue. For example, say you send out a lot of email that is text-only, where the links are not coded to go through a tracking mechanism...

i.e. http://www.domain.com/ rather than...
http://www.fgt.com/trck12345?http://www.domain.com

If recipients block images automatically (as many do), then they will never show up as having opened or clicked on your emails, even though they may actually do both.

Jack Aaronson introduces us to the concept of clickstream analysis (monitoring user behavior at a website) and how this can be tied to email marketing (by sending email based on this data).

He then presents survey data suggesting it's quite possibly the most profitable form of email marketing.

But there's no such thing as a free donut, and he finishes with some warnings about the special management that this approach requires, particularly in terms of privacy concerns.

The folks at Emma Email Marketing have some basic guidelines on what to think about in your email layout and overall look.

Nothing new for old timers, but a good start for newcomers. Or for lazy people like me, who ought to count as old timers by now, but never get round to redesigning their emails.

February 10, 2006

The whole AOL/certification thing had my head spinning. Maybe yours, too. So I took time out to write an overview of what happened, what marketers need to do, why it's important for email marketing, and what other people think about it (with plenty of links for further information, opinion and insight).

Not a joyous way to end the week, but a necessary one. Now it's time to put my feet up, remember to put a beer in the fridge and think about something else.

February 09, 2006

If you're tired of the AOL/Goodmail rumpus, you have permission to ignore this post. Otherwise, ClickZ have assembled a collection of opinions on the whole issue from various marketers and industry players, and offer a long opinion piece from Al DiGuido.

Pragmatism seems to be gaining the upper hand, as the debate seems to be moving in the direction of "under what circumstances does it make sense to pay for certification and AOL's guaranteed delivery route?"

While AOL took a lot of criticism (eventually forcing them to backpedal) on the idea of replacing an enhanced whitelist with pay-to-get-delivered, Yahoo have kept quiet. This despite their own intention to implement Goodmail's certification system, too. DM News has some inside info on the Yahoo side of things. Looks like they've taken on board the lessons learned the hard way by AOL.

EmailSherpa reveals how a carefully crafted landing page and duo of invitation emails attracted high-level execs to a business event. Includes screenshots of the emails and associated web content.

A lot of good things come out of Belgium, and one of them is Tamara Gielen's (English-language) blog, which focuses on B2B email marketing. A collection of links to useful resources, little tips and notes, and pointers to relevant events.

Unlike many business blogs, Tamara has no sales agenda and she posts regularly. Definitely worth a visit.

February 08, 2006

Kudos to DMNews and Pivotal Veracity's Deirdre Baird for producing an objective overview of the AOL "pay to get delivered" issue.

She knocks a few holes in the myths and misinformation flying around at the moment in the mainstream media, explains the different procedures used and planned by AOL for delivering and/or certifying email, and makes it clear whether you need to be worried or not (you don't, at least in the short-term).

An excellent article to forward to colleagues, to friends in the industry who don't know that AOL have part-reversed their initial announcement, and especially to mainstream journalists.

An older article freshly published at ClickZ. This looks at how the hotel recorded data from visitors to its trade show booth, and then followed up with a series of three emails to generate leads and sales calls.

There are details of how the data was captured and what was in the emails they sent out. And some very clear numbers for those wondering if it all made financial sense.

(The only thing I wonder about is whether it's the email component that makes the lead generation work, or just the fact they offered some nifty prizes to get people's attention.)

Brian Livingston uncovers an important issue for those marketers taking the Can-Spam legislation seriously.

If you have affiliates promoting your products or services via email, and you've been telling them which email addresses they can no longer send to (because they unsubscribed from your house list), then read this article. You may have a privacy issue.

Livingstone also mentions a super tool you can use to see if your website has been flagged as hosting an "Untrusted Unsubscribe" form.

The cat is out of the proverbial bag, and he's carrying a sheet of stamps. Though the idea of paying for guaranteed delivery of email is not new, the whole Goodmail / AOL rumpus brought it to the attention of the mainstream media.

On top of that, leading voices in the marketing world are coming out in favor of an email delivery system that is based on a for-fee fast-track alternative (i.e. stamps). One of those is Seth Godin, a man whose opinion carries plenty of weight.

There are various arguments in favor of charging for email delivery, but the biggest practical one is that it makes money for the ISPs.

These are the gatekeepers. Until now, they've paid (in infrastructure) for the privilege of delivering other people's marketing emails. Any concept that turns that cost into a revenue source has strong attractions.

Whether it makes sense for anyone else or for society may be irrelevant. If changing to a for-fee delivery approach boosts the bottom line, that's what they will most likely do.

What might persuade them otherwise?

Arguing that it goes against some mystical spirit of the Internet is a non-starter. Like that's ever meant anything in the face of commercial realities. I'm old enough to remember the same argument being used against banner ads and pay-per-click search engine listings.

But the real problem may simply be implementation: finding a system that works. Here are just a few issues...

1. The system needs to make provisions for one-to-one non-spam email (from friends, colleagues, web visitors sending feedback etc.) This is a big one. Using my address book as a whitelist for incoming email won't work. Not everyone I want email from is in there. Not even all my friends are in there.

Do we require everyone to pay for all the email they send? That might be a little tricky to sell to the general public. (Though it would put an end to those annoying chain emails from my sister.)

What can work, then, is to have this stamp system tacked on to the current system. If you don't pay, then nothing changes. If you do pay, you get guaranteed delivery. Everyone makes their own decision about paying and nobody loses. That's the situation we seem to have now with AOL.

The only problem there is that there's an enormous incentive for ISPs to make the current system as "unreliable" as possible, at least with regard to commercial bulk email, in order to get mailers to switch to the pay-for-delivery version. Ooops, turned the anti-spam filter up too high again.

That's an issue touched on in this leader at silicon.com, suggesting paid email effectively downgrades those not using certification.

What if we could reach a point where everyone has to pay for their email to be delivered? Even then...

2. There must be provisions for non-commercial bulk email (charities etc.) who may not have the economic justification or commercial skills to go the full-blown stamps route.

(In this whole debate, nearly everyone forgets that not every sender of opt-in bulk email is doing it to generate direct revenue.)

3. The system has to be widely applicable. Postage stamps work because there is one basic source and their stamps are accepted everywhere in the world. It's no good if every ISP uses a different certification and stamp system.

And if there is one system, who controls it?

4. The certification criteria applied to those wanting to get the stamp need to ensure spammers do not get certified and that the very highest permission standards are followed. Otherwise you just add to the spam / inbox clutter problem.

And these criteria need to support a level playing field.

The post office doesn't require you to be a US resident to send a postcard to the USA. Goodmail's AOL certification process, for example, requires "business headquarters located in the United States or Canada."

5. The solution has to be simple. Not everyone is an email marketing giant with a dedicated IT team.

Tom O'Leary expands on this implementation problem and Bill McCloskey raises some more questions about the impact on (and reaction of) marketers, lawyers, agencies and consumers.

It seems very unlikely that a working solution could be found to all these problems, at least in the medium term. But the debate is not over and presumably there are more alternatives likely to appear as the conversation continues.

February 07, 2006

So it all turned out to be a storm in an electronic teacup. Or did it?

Contrary to original reports and statements, AOL's whitelists and email delivery practices remain more or less the same as before. But there is an additional for-fee certification process that guarantees delivery with working images and links, provided you can meet the certification criteria.

So far so good. Now for the problems.

1. Email's credibility took a hit, which nobody needs. Why this damage? Because people don't read articles properly. All over discussion boards you'll see people who think certification means *spammers* can now pay to bypass spam filters.

That's not true, of course. Certification implies a checking procedure which spammers, by definition, cannot pass. But reality is irrelevant - it's what people perceive that counts.

2. Related to this inability to read is the return of the "email marketing is dead" fraternity. They think certification means your emails are not delivered if you don't pay.

Also not true. While whitelist criteria may get tightened etc., not a lot has actually changed for those who don't want to go the paid certification route.

But there are career pessimists and the vendors of alternative delivery systems (like RSS) who stupidly or conveniently misinterpret the situation to poke a stick at email marketing.

3. Though the "paid" system is not replacing the "free" one, the idea is now out there. It may have received public rejection and forced AOL to backtrack. But the seed is planted.

Next time someone suggests it, the shock factor is less and acceptance is easier. People will eventually follow the money. This is the most important issue. Economic reality says that charging for email delivery will increase. And I'm not the only one saying this.

Interesting times...

P.S. There are now hundreds of media reports of the AOL / Goodmail situation. Check out Google News and enter AOL as a keyword to find them.

February 06, 2006

Last week, it was reported that AOL were phasing out their enhanced whitelisting system and replacing it with a for-fee certified email system run by Goodmail.

This is no longer the case. According to this report, the enhanced whitelist remains in place for 2006 at least, albeit in a more restrictive form. And the situation is officially confirmed here.

What we do know is that senders with an appropriate certificate from Goodmail are automatically routed to @aol.com inboxes with all links and images displaying normally (the same is true at Yahoo, by the way).

The original suggestion (from AOL) was that this certification would replace the enhanced whitelist, which would cease to exist by June 2006.

Certification guarantees delivery with all links and images intact. However, not being certified does *not* mean non-delivery. You can still get on the basic and enhanced AOL whitelists. And you can still get delivered if you pass AOL's anti-spam mechanisms which can see you filtered out, etc.

The wider issue is whether this switch to a "pay to guarantee delivery" alternative is an exception or the thin edge of a wedge. If the latter, then the economics of email marketing begin to change.

How they change depends on pricing (Goodmail certification costs money on a per email basis) and the benefits of guaranteed deliverability. The NY Times article below has some figures on costs.

Another key issue is how Goodmail's certification process stands up to scrutiny from a consumer perspective.

Here some links to explore...

News reports and articles, usually with quotes from both sides...

>> Background on the whitelist situation
>> NY Times article
>> Direct article (includes quotes from Goodmail)
>> Mediapost report
>> DM News report
>> Second DM News report
>> ClickZ report

Commentaries from industry leaders

>> Overview of different commentaries
>> Matt Blumberg (ReturnPath)
>> Follow-up from Matt and another one
>> Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras (quoted)
>> eROI
>> Bill Nussey (Silverpop)
>> L-Soft (with a different angle - the impacts on large senders who are *not* commercial)

Misc

>> Comment in the Goodmail FAQ
>> Goodmail CertifiedEmail Service

This is an area which seems to stay under most people's radar. But this article reports on a survey suggesting mobile email is hotting up.

For B2B email marketers in particular, the number of people using mobile phones to read their email has implications for how you segment your list and design your emails.

...which is a lot better than the other way around. JupiterResearch forecast on Friday that spending on email marketing would rise to $1.1 billion in 2010, from $885 million in 2005. They also suggested spam volume (per consumer) would drop by 13% each year over the same period.

Forget the numbers themselves. The point is that this kind of positive independent forecast itself gives a boost to email marketing as an industry, irrespective of the validity of the numbers themselves.

February 03, 2006

MarketingSherpa just made available the one-hour audio transcript of a recent teleseminar presentation of their new Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. Accompanying the audio file are a collection of relevant charts.

Various data points are presented (clickthrough rates, open rates, conversions, send frequencies, eyetracking data, list growth etc.), together with interpretation from Anne Holland and Stephan Tornquist of Sherpa. It's not just a discussion of numbers, but also has practical recommendations sprinkled throughout the presentation, too.

So you can turn the speakers up, annoy your colleagues and happily claim it's work.

Heidi Cohen provides an overview of how RSS can work for online retailers.

She works her way across four areas, including strategies, implementation, analysis and "other issues."

Email marketing should be part of an integrated business approach. Exploring alternative content distribution methods reveals new opportunities, but it also sparks off ideas about how to better use existing ones.

Tom's on a roll (see post from yesterday), and here he has a nice introductory article on databases and how you can use subscriber information to personalize your outgoing emails.

What he does is focus on how you set up your database fields and how you ensure that the information you collect can be used properly. So you avoid silly errors like capitalized words in the middle of sentences.

He does this with the help of enlightening examples and screenshots. If you've been scared at the prospect of using data for personalization, this article might just take away the fear.

February 02, 2006

Tom O'Leary takes an admirably holistic approach to online messaging at his blog. Here he provides a comprehensive overview of various elements that go into building your house list, including the design of sign-up forms, coregistration, subscription incentives, permission levels and what data you should collect.

Especially useful for those at the beginning of the email marketing learning curve, but also with ideas for those more experienced at list building.

I would only debate the suggested use of prechecked opt-in boxes on, for example, order completion forms. It gets you more sign-ups, but unless you're using confirmed or double opt-in, a proportion of those will not realize they were signing up, which can lead to unwelcome spam complaints. In other words, it's a trade-off, and you need to understand the risks.

Loren McDonald completes a hat-trick of mentions in one day with this article over at ClickZ. Together with Kirill Popov, the two outline a basic approach to take when you can only get to sleep by counting bounces, rather than sheep.

It's a step-by-step action strategy, indicating what you need to do or investigate further to bring some order and understanding into your deliverability world, and thereby improve your chances of getting through to your recipients.

Loren McDonald (yep, him again already) turns his attention to the "from" header in your emails.

This time it's not a question of coming up with catchy, encouraging, engaging headlines. Instead, it's about ensuring recognition and trust through proper configuration of this header.

He has some straightforward advice on what not to put in there and how to go about finding the right alternative.

(NB. I dislike promoting vendor writing explicitly, as that's their job and not mine. But EmailLab's newsletter is consistently useful in a non-salesy public value way). It's a source you can put on your trusted list (see yesterday's post on this issue).

Loren McDonald has 15 Rules to help you design and choose the right subject line for your email missives.

As well as covering tips on the actual contents, he has advice on evaluating the subject line's impact, related deliverability concerns and strategic issues.

A checklist to keep handy while preparing your next campaign. After all, it's the from and subject headers that pretty much make or break promotional email efforts.

February 01, 2006

Jeanne Jennings offers up some ideas on how to get more people to sign-up to your e-newsletter offerings.

She considers such issues as the permission model, value proposition, positioning and content strategy.

She also receives extra bonus points for getting Immanuel Kant into an article on email marketing. He said a lot of wise things, but my favorite is..."If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on."

This comprehensive look at the beta version of Microsoft's impending new web browser (Internet Explorer 7) includes information on the built-in RSS feed reading capabilities.

RSS comes of age when major browsers, operating systems and other bits of software make it easy for your average consumer to make use of feeds. IE7 is a big boost in that direction.

George Bilbrey suggests there are no shortcuts to building a good reputation as an email sender. And with reputation a key factor in deliverability, it's an issue you need to stay on top of.

He highlights three specific areas you can address to keep your reputation high, and has a little dig at "pay to play" certification systems while doing so.

The AOL announcement ruffled a few feathers - expect to see a lot of debate on the subject of reputation and certification in the next few days and weeks.

Email marketing is hotting up, and there's a lot of money (real and potential) available for related services.

This means vendors are (understandably) fighting harder than ever to get on your radar, and the volume of vendor-authored papers and articles is increasing.

Some are very useful, filled with unbiased information, advice and insight. Some -- including a few published in respectable media -- are valueless attempts to plug the vendor's products or services.

The following rules are kind of obvious, but they're worth repeating...

1. Consider where the author is coming from when interpreting an article. Say an author suggests that certification systems are the only solution to deliverability.

The inherent credibility of that statement falls if the author is the CEO of a company selling email certification systems. It doesn't make the statement wrong, but it should encourage you to be more circumspect about the article's contents.

2. Remember that media reports on email marketing issues (especially of surveys) are sometimes written by journalists forced to rely entirely on vendor sources for interpretation.

They may not have the background experience or skills to spot flaws in arguments, numbers or opinions. That's something you have to do yourself. Don't rely on journalists to do the thinking for you.

3. For vendor-written articles, you can usually tell who's offering real value and who's just trying to make lead generation or sales quotas. If you read a lot over time, you can soon learn which vendors and names you can trust. Keep a note of the good ones and watch out for their work.

(Personally, I think those that offer real value do more for their sales and brand than those who just produce self-serving sales literature, but that's another issue.)

4. Be especially careful with numbers quoted from surveys. Few people have a grasp of concepts like sample sizes and statistical validity. So always consider (where possible) such issues as...

>> who produced the number and why? Do they have any business interest in supporting a particular trend or result?

>> how did they get the number and from where? Is the survey truly representative?

>> what assumptions did they make? Are these assumptions valid?

>> is the number and its context relevant to *your* situation?

>> do other surveys or commentators or your own experience support this number?

Information is fast and mostly free online. Anyone can publish their opinion and anyone does. Reader beware!

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