A note on vendor blogs

The need to be brief, yet speak to a wide audience, has its downside online. Most media articles on a topic tend to avoid detail or special issues of limited interest.

So you have to search industry forums, message boards and blogs for answers to nitty gritty questions.

The many vendor blogs play a good role here, if we ignore the inevitable sales agenda that creeps into some of them.

Matt Vernhout's EmailKarma is a positive example. Matt has a Q&A feature which draws on his experience in the vendor world to offer advice on specific questions.

Like these three recent Q&A posts on how you actually build a sender reputation:

• What's the best way to build reputation on new IPs?
• Follow-up on reputation building
• Are IP addresses portable?

Here's another good example...

It's not unusual for test messages sent to yourself from your email marketing service to end up in your spam folder. Which can cause some consternation, since it suggests your actual campaigns may suffer the same fate.

Not so. Exact Target's Phil Schott explains why you needn't be worried.

While some vendor blogs (the ones I don't quote!) are purely sales messages, others are vehicles for some of the vendor's email specialists to show off their knowledge in a way that benefits us all. The classic example is Campaign Monitor's posts on email design.

You'll find a list of the top vendor blogs here.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing services, email reputation, test messages

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