When Art.com started selling prints and posters online six years ago under an earlier domain name, e-mail marketing wasn’t even in the picture. Today it’s a core part of the online-only store’s strategy, as Mitech Patel, director of software and technology at Art.com, will tell attendees at eTail 2004 East. Since Art.com started e-mail marketing in 1998, its e-mail efforts have resulted in a proportionately larger contribution to revenue relative to other online marketing efforts. That’s partly because of the increased penetration rate of e-mail and consumers’ increased comfort level with e-mail, says Patel, and partly because Art.com does e-mail more effectively.

Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 3:43 PM  |  Permalink

In part one of this series, I talked about the initial process of finding a broadcast e-mail vendor. Today, I'll cover evaluating different vendors' pricing.

I admit it. I usually do the price analysis first. Why? I think it's because I'm a bit of a spreadsheet geek. Also, I want to get a feel for where vendors are, pricewise, before I review the rest of their proposals. If one vendor is twice the price of its competitors, I'll expect more from the qualitative portion of its proposal.

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Posted by: DTB at 12:43 PM  |  Permalink

We talked about how e-mail blacklists and whitelists work last time. A receiving e-mail system interrogates one or more existing databases to determine whether the e-mail sender's IP address matches that of a known spammer or a known "good guy." If there's a match, the receiving system often makes the delivery decision based on that match. It rejects the e-mail in the case of a blacklist or delivers it in the case of a whitelist.

Today, we'll focus on blacklists. First and foremost: beginning a conversation with "What gives you the right...?!" is guaranteed not to have the desired effect.
Emai Marketing Blacklist Article >> Posted by: DTB at 12:41 PM  |  Permalink

E-mail authentication services have arrived, and they're taking hold fast. Both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA) of companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, EarthLink, and AOL have made their positions clear: The next major step in the coordinated war on spam must address the fraud-prone nature of current e-mail technology.

The e-mail-processing industry agrees authenticating e-mail is a good thing. The ability to conclusively determine where an e-mail originated has advantages to both senders and receivers. An ISP can detect whether an e-mail was sent from an authorized source and, thus, potentially bypass a few layers of content filtering, saving processing power.


Authentication Is No Longer Optional Posted by: DTB at 12:40 PM  |  Permalink

When Karen talks about subject lines during e-mail training sessions, she holds up a tiny strip of paper to represent the space a typical subject line occupies in your inbox. This tiny line of text has a powerful job to do -- without the benefit of color, graphics, or different fonts.

Today, we'll take a somewhat unscientific look at some winning e-mail messages to see what we can learn from their subject lines. (In some cases, the subject lines have been shortened or modified, so as not to reveal the name of the product, company, or event advertised.)

Winning Email Subject Lines Posted by: DTB at 12:39 PM  |  Permalink

EmailInsider: The Last 30 Days of Email

Bill McCloskey's Emerging Interest released a month's worth of email tracking data to draw a picture detailing which companies are using email to sell product.

The top market sectors using email marketing proved to be coupons and promotion, home-based businesses, credit card companies, business services, home study, online universities and computer products. "
Big Brands Not Big Email Marketers Posted by: DTB at 12:34 PM  |  Permalink

How's Monday for you? According to a new study by email marketing firm eROI (released exclusively today to EmailSherpa), Monday might actually be the best day to send marketing email, even though Tuesday and Wednesday are now the prime days."
Read Article Posted by: DTB at 12:21 PM  |  Permalink

A new study from Arial Software, which makes email-marketing software, found 67% of businesses sending promotional newsletters didn't comply with CAN-SPAM rules, but that didn't automatically mean they were spamming their recipients.

The company spent six months subscribing to and analyzing the performance of email newsletters sent by companies of all sizes -- including brand-name, Fortune 500 companies -- and found that only 3 of the 1,057 it subscribed to engaged in what the surveytakers considered spamming: sending high-volume commercial email or emails with unsubscribe links that didn't work.

Although the survey didn't name the three apparent spammers, it did bust 12 that apparently ignored unsubscribe requests, including About.com, Backcountrystore.com, Knight-Ridder, Kraft Foods, Omaha Steaks and Camping World.

Some other findings:

-- 51% didn't offer an unsubscribe link

-- 93% didn't confirm new addresses. That doesn't break the law, but it does make an emailer more vulnerable to spamming claims by people who say their addresses were added without their permission. In addition, 72% of companies didn't send follow-up emails to confirm opt-ins.

-- 45% didn't identify themselves clearly in their email messages.

-- 36% sent no emails in the six months since Arial workers opted in to their programs. Posted by: DTB at 2:50 PM  |  Permalink

Several years ago, a muffler company had a slogan directed at customers in denial about loud sounds coming from their cars. "It's up to you; you can either pay me now, or pay me later."

A flurry of activity has surrounded recent announcements from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding the issue of spam reduction and the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance's proposal. The proposal states the major ISPs have agreed in principle on an e-mail authentication standard. Amid all the excitement, I worry we're once again raising consumer expectations. They're in danger of believing a panacea will cure all spam-related ills, as with California's SB 186 and the CAN-SPAM act.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:03 AM  |  Permalink

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank ClickZ for inviting me to write for you and tell you a little bit about myself. I'm an attorney (but please don't hold that against me), the president and CEO of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP), and a professor at Lincoln Law School of San Jose, where I teach Spam and the Law.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:01 AM  |  Permalink

E-mail authentication services have arrived, and they're taking hold fast. Both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA) of companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, EarthLink, and AOL have made their positions clear: The next major step in the coordinated war on spam must address the fraud-prone nature of current e-mail technology.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:00 AM  |  Permalink

When you're brainstorming about a business-to-business (B2B) brochure, Web site, or advertising campaign, someone will inevitably suggest, "Why don't we include case studies and testimonials?"

Then, a mad dash to collect them begins.

Here are some ideas for using e-mail to make the process a little easier.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 8:56 AM  |  Permalink

A Yahoo study of 37,000 email users found that Americans fall into two categories: those that ignore spam and don't care much about it, and those who are very knowledgeable and active in thwarting it. Four out of five delete their spam, and more than half employ spam filters. A third of Americans respond to spam, some just to vent at spammers, but 20 percent to actually purchase products.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 8:42 AM  |  Permalink

MessageCast will launch an email replacement mechanism for letting companies interact with potential customers without the stigma of spam-prone email. Its LiveMessage system lets users send messages via RSS, the web syndication format.

RSS has proven to be a flexible and useful standard, but is still hobbled by the fact that only an extremely small (and somewhat geeky) segment of the Internet uses it.

Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 8:39 AM  |  Permalink