ArchiveAugust 2009

Email as a PR problem

Email is a great way to connect to and engage with people. It is also a medium where the sender doesn’t get to control the message as well as they might in other media. This means that sometimes email campaigns go wrong in a way that drives a national news story about how you are a spammer. In the stress and flurry of dealing with public accusations of spamming many companies overlook the...

Changes at Comcast Postmaster

Two changes at the Comcast Postmaster page that I think are worthy of mentioning. They have set up a RSS feed for updates and changes. Visit and click on the RSS feed link in the right hand column. They have implemented changes in their unblocking script at . This form will only assist in unblocking if the error you received contains the error code BL000000. For all other blocks, please follow...

Subscription practices in the wild

It’s always interesting to look at what other email marketers are doing and how closely their practices align with what I am recommending to clients. Today’s example is a welcome message I received from Marriott. During my recent trip to visit a client, I gave Marriott my email address. They sent me a welcome message, primarily text that looked good even with images turned off. The...

Blocking specific domains

Multiple times in the last few days people have asked me the question “What do you think about blocking domains owned by anti-spam companies as a way to prevent blocklisting?” The question is not necessarily a bad one, and there are cases where blocking mail to specific domains is a good decision. Often, though, if a spam prevention program consists solely of avoiding sending email to people that...

Spam that's not spam

Steve and I were talking this evening and I mentioned to him that I got “a lot of spam that wasn’t really spam. Know what I mean?”
He did. But if I tell that to you, what does it mean to you?
More on this in a couple days, but I’m onsite at a client’s for the next few days so it may take me a plane ride home to put all the thoughts down.

You might be a spammer if…

… the best thing you have to say about your email practices is “They’re CAN SPAM compliant.”
… text to .gif is a vital part of your email generation process
… you have to mail from multiple ESPs in order to get good delivery
Please contribute your own in the comments.
I’d also like to thank Al for guest posting 2 days this week. Thanks, Al!

E-Postage Just Won't Die

E-Postage is back! Wired covers a report from New Scientist. Here’s what they have to say: “Yahoo’s researchers want you to voluntarily slap a one-cent stamp on your outgoing e-mails, with proceeds going to charity, in a bid to cut down on spam. Can doing good really do away with spam, which consumes 33 terawatt hours of electricity every year, not to mention way too much of our time...

Beware: Phishing and Spam in Social Networks

Trend Micro warns us today about how spam and phishing can hit you even in the closed ecosystem of a social networking system such as Facebook. Malware abounds. And in the social network arena, just like anywhere else, “using your account to send spam” is a common thing for the bad guys to want to do. In Rik Ferguson’s investigation (which I read about on CNet News), he came...

White House spamming: update

There’s quite a discussion about the White House spam going on over at Bronto Blog. Ken Magill wrote about the controversy today in Magilla Marketing. Anyone who’s followed his newsletter for a while knows he’s been reporting on politicians buying and sharing lists for the last few months. He has some data that may help clarify where the addresses aren’t coming from. As...

Yahoo and Verizon

Mickey at Spamtacular has information about Verizon’s email system that will have relevance for anyone working in delivery. Verizon has partnered with several megaportal sites depending on which Verizon service a subscriber is using. FiOS customers can pick between AOL and Yahoo while DSL customers get AOL, Yahoo, MSN Premium, or Windows Live to select among. The portal site that you select...

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