It's been almost a full year of writing for ClickZ. Today, I'd like to reflect on the "best of" 2003. In other words, what points do I really want to drive home before moving on to another year? As a result of the new CAN-SPAM law, I've updated several previous discussions to consider CAN-SPAM in respect to compliance as well as potential industry impact.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 11:15 PM  |  Permalink

The majority of Americans would sign up for a do-not-spam list were the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to launch one, a new study has found.

"Eighty-three percent of Americans are either extremely or very likely to register for the list, making it more popular than the telemarketing do-not-call list launched back in October," said Andrew Davidson, vice president of competitive tracking for Synovate's Financial Services Practice.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 11:14 PM  |  Permalink

If It's Tuesday, They Must Be Sending: Study Finds It's Heaviest Email Marketing Day Of The Week - But Is Anyone Opening Them

Tuesday is the most popular day for companies to send emails to users, but it is Wednesday that most recipients actually open them. Those are among the seemingly logical conclusions of the Delivery Trends Report, the first in what is expected to be a quarterly series of email marketing reports from EmailLabs.

Weekday traffic aside, the report also reveals a potentially alarming development that may have gone unseen by many email marketers. While recipients are tending not to "unsubscribe" from their email lists, many are likely to simply delete unwanted emails. As a result, EmailLabs finds many email marketers are taking steps to eliminate names of subscribers who do not open a specified number of emails in a row, or are asking those subscribers to re-opt in.
Read email news >> Posted by: DTB at 9:17 PM  |  Permalink

If you market by email, you must read this. It basically states as long as you follow best practices you will automatically be kept on the AOL whitelist.
'AOL is focused on providing a positive user experience for our Members. While providing for the safety of our members' e-mail experience, we also want to allow our Members using AOL software to fully view emails they have indicated they want to receive. We recently instituted technology that will enable links and embedded images in email communications to our Members from certain bulk mailers. This full-email-view is being made available to certain bulk mailers through an automated mechanism we call the "Enhanced White List". '
Learn More about the AOL Enhanced White List >> Posted by: DTB at 9:12 PM  |  Permalink

I don't claim to have achieved the wisdom of my forefathers, but I've worked long enough in media to have learned from past mistakes. As the year ends, my thoughts (and wishes) turn to a simple, clear solution for the uppermost problem for media and ISP powerhouses over the past 12 months: spam.

Connecting Buyers and Sellers: A History Lesson >> Posted by: DTB at 9:08 PM  |  Permalink

How do you strike a balance between keeping your clients informed and pestering them to death with too much e-mail? It's a challenge many companies grapple with. Today, we'll look at one company's innovative solutions. Read email news >> Posted by: DTB at 9:06 PM  |  Permalink

This is one of those great tools that we use on a daily basis. It allows you to look at your costs, target audience size, response rates and come up with the ROI figures you have on each campaign. For those of you that do not use the emailROI Email Management Platform that measures these stats automatically down to the individual user (shameless self-promotion plug), this tool is for you.
eROI Campaign ROI Calculator >> Posted by: DTB at 9:00 PM  |  Permalink

That e-mail message may appear to be from PayPal or EarthLink, but is it really? To know for sure, e-mail needs an identity verification system, and there's a growing consensus among e-mail senders and recipients that one should be developed. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 7:23 PM  |  Permalink

Right now, most spam isn't coming from you or me or probably most ClickZ readers. Instead, it's coming from fly-by-night operators who utilize a variety of dirty tricks to get their messages out. Given the widespread use of offshore servers, hacked mail relays and Trojan horse programs, most of the truly malicious spam isn't going to be stopped by this law. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 7:20 PM  |  Permalink

I've been thinking about an old favorite that could quickly become another workhorse for e-marketers to lessen the load on e-mail campaigns. I'm talking about autoresponders. Are you using them as extensively as you could?
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 7:19 PM  |  Permalink

Despite cluttered in-boxes and unforgiving spam filters, e-mail marketers saw improved delivery rates in the third quarter, according to DoubleClick's quarterly e-mail trends report released yesterday.
The report, culled from the more than 2 billion e-mails sent through DoubleClick's DARTmail platform, found delivery rates improved 1.7 percentage points to 88.2 percent in the quarter. Open rates held mostly steady at 37.1 percent. Click-through rates were up 8.2 percent to 9.2 percent.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:37 PM  |  Permalink

Yahoo has proposed a tool that would establish e-mail senders' identity to weed out spammers hiding the origin of their messages.
The technology, known as DomainKeys, would be available to both domain owners and receivers. Domain owners would create a public and private key. E-mail sent from the domain would have a digital signature in the header containing the private key. Receivers would match up the private key with a public key registered with the Internet's Domain Name System.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:35 PM  |  Permalink

Yesterday The House agreed to the Senate's changes in a bill that would halt spam, and sent it to President Bush for his signature. The bill, which is expected to become law on January 1st 2004, wraps up a four-year effort by Congress setting policy for Internet-related commerce. Spam has grown to more than half of all e-mail traffic, driving up the technology-related costs.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:34 PM  |  Permalink

Soon we will have new federal anti-spam legislation, which preempts the patchwork of state legislation. Assuming the President signs it (which he will), life should get a lot easier for e-mail marketers next year. One law, not 37. No weekly trips to small claims court by corporate lawyers to settle lawsuits from "spambulance" chasers. This law is good for business. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:33 PM  |  Permalink

Thanks once again to everyone for submitting their newsletters for critique. We've run out of time to do them individually, so today I'll do a collective critique (see the scoring criteria), pointing out some of the most effective practices in each category. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:32 PM  |  Permalink

Coupons are common in the offline world, at least here in the United States. They're so popular, a journalism professor once told me the majority of daily newspapers sell the most papers on Wednesday, primarily because of the special coupons in that day's paper.

But online, coupons aren't as widespread. I began to wonder: Can a company entice customers to respond to e-mail coupons?
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:32 PM  |  Permalink

It looks like the CAN-SPAM Act will officially pass through Congress this week, and the President has indicated he'll sign it. Over the past couple weeks, we've seen both elated marketers and skeptical advocates speak their minds about this bill and its potential effects. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:31 PM  |  Permalink

As Internet service providers grow more vigilant in blocking spam, e-mail marketers want customers to add them to their address books in order to bypass some restrictions.

The largest ISPs are treating mail from senders in the address book differently. At AOL, mail from senders in a member's address book is not stripped of HTML images and links, a move AOL made to prevent spammers from sending pornographic images or using Web beacons to find valid e-mail addresses. (AOL promised marketers some relief from this with an enhanced whitelist that will display HTML images and links from senders that meet strict guidelines.) Microsoft made a similar move with MSN 8.5 and Outlook 11.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:08 PM  |  Permalink

As an interactive agency, we have taken advantage of all the venture capital money that poured into marketing technology/communications companies in the mid-to-late 90’s. Thanks to VC’s with a bit of the “irrational exuberance” bug, we are now able to license ad serving technology, Web analytics software and Email Marketing technology at pennies-on-the-proverbial-dollar.

However, what has amazed me and encouraged me are the incredible stories of companies that have grown “organically” (without venture-funding) in the last couple of years. Below are examples of two such companies - email marketing providers that are successfully navigating their way through an increasingly competitive space, quite often surpassing well-funded competitors when it comes to product innovation. These companies, and others like them, deserve kudos for hunkering down and building a company the old fashioned way. Read below to learn how they achieved their success to date…
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:06 PM  |  Permalink

Increasingly, clients are coming to me with requests for e-mail campaigns to drive traffic offline rather than on-. Though driving e-mail recipients online is more traditional, offline calls to action can work in e-mail if you think them through. Today, we'll look at when an offline call to action may be appropriate and discuss what to consider as you develop your e-mail campaign.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:04 PM  |  Permalink

Despite all the issues swirling around e-mail, you can still utilize outside e-mail lists. But with all the lists out there, how do you determine which to use and which to pass on? Which are legal and which aren't? Which will work? Which won't?

E-mail lists are compiled in several ways. Many were built by swapping and harvesting. Today, when considering any list, legal and marketing concerns must factor into any decision. Several things you'd better be darn sure of:
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:03 PM  |  Permalink

E-mail has revolutionized the way we work, communicate, and market products. But where will it be tomorrow? And how can you anticipate and capitalize on the societal and technological changes this rapidly evolving medium will bring?

We don't have to look further than across Karen's kitchen table -- where her husband, Jim, sits -- for guidance on how to predict change. A professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Business, Jim studied with media visionary Marshall McLuhan years ago. Today, he uses McLuhan's Four Laws of Media in his management and leadership classes, to stimulate thought about the effects of innovation.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:02 PM  |  Permalink

Another mutant of the fast-spreading MiMail 'phisher' virus has started bombing e-mail inboxes. Security experts say the latest version has been programmed to launch a denial-of-service attack (define) on anti-spam advocates.

The virus has been in circulation since August this year with variants appearing as fake PayPal alerts trying to dupe users into giving up credit card numbers and other sensitive information.

In a new twist, the virus writer has added an SMTP engine to launch a DoS attack against the anti-spam groups like the Spamhaus Project, SPEWS, and SpamCop. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:02 PM  |  Permalink

DoubleClick's latest e-mail trend report for Q3 shows that despite increases in spam and e-mail clutter, bounce rates are down and click-through rates are up slightly.

The advertising technology company's second-quarter e-mail trends report found bounce rates have dropped in most categories, and have declined overall year over year from 13.3 percent to 11.8 percent. Also on the bright side, average click-through rates have increased, from 8.5 percent in Q3 2002 to 9.2 percent for the same period this year. Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 1:01 PM  |  Permalink