Forums for email marketers: behind the scenes

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on January 14, 2008

globeI've mentioned the Email Roundtable and Email Marketer's Club before as two excellent online forums for interacting with other email marketing folk. Both feature in the Top 21 resource list.

They are free, but you can't access them without having an online membership application accepted first. So to help you decide whether either makes sense for you, here some behind-the-scenes details courtesy of the respective founders...

The Email Roundtable


This is an email discussion list run by volunteers and founded by Justin Foster of WhatCounts.

There are just under 1000 members, the vast majority of which (>95%) are marketers. The only vendors and agency staff allowed in are those considered industry thought leaders. Sales pitches are expressly forbidden.

Sample discussion topics: Email rendering tools, image maps and AOL addresses, SPF headers, Can-Spam compliance, Yahoo connection limits.

Last year the members averaged around 170 posts per month (you can get these individually or batched as a daily summary.)

Although the discussion list is the focus of the Roundtable, there are occasional offline meetings in US cities, plus a collection of white papers and other documents at the list's homepage.

My comments: Full of experienced folk from the practical end of email marketing, including some big corporates and brands. Best place I've seen for getting help on specific problems, even those of a quite technical nature.

The Email Marketer's Club


An online forum and broader social network site using the Ning platform and founded by Tamara Gielen of OgilvyOne.

Also run by volunteers, the Club has just under 700 members, with a more mixed membership of marketers, vendors and agencies. Sales pitches are also discouraged.

Sample discussion topics: open rate tracking, Road Runner ISP update, using old email lists, text vs HTML readers.

The forum is just one part of the Club's many offerings, which includes a Wiki with links to resources, tools, services etc, a chatroom facility, events calendar, job listings, member profiles etc.

My comment: Pitched at a slightly lower expertise level than the Roundtable, but with a much more dynamic set of tools for those focused on networking as much as information exchange.

Bonus: Facebook groups

Tags: , , , ,

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | 0 comment(s) - add yours!
Get posts like this: as an RSS feed | as a biweekly newsletter
Sign-up for the Email Marketing Reports NEWSLETTER
Twice a month, free, packed with email marketing advice and all the posts from this blog.
Email:      First Name:     
    More info and sample

0 Comments:

Post a Comment