ArchiveNovember 2009

November 30, 2009

Irrelevant emails drive unsubscribes

By laura

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30November

A new study published by the Chief Marketing Officer Council and and InfoPrint shows that nearly 50% of all unsubscribes were driven by a lack of relevancy. A study conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and InfoPrint reveals that of the 91 per cent of consumers who opt out or unsubscribe to emails, 46 per cent do so because the messages they receive are simply not relevant. How...

November 30, 2009

Cyber Monday inundation

By laura

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The cyber monday inundation of mail has hit my mailbox. There’s been a clear increase in marketing mail over the last week. Unfortunately for those marketers, it’s too much and I am just scanning subject lines and marking as read. I don’t have the time to read all this mail.

November 27, 2009

Legitimate email marketers need to take a stand

By laura

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27November

I was reading an article on Virus Rants and the opening paragraph really stood out. you wouldn’t think this needs to be said, but apparently it does – being a whitehat means taking sides. more than that, it means taking the side aligned (more or less) with the general public’s interests – doing things for their direct or indirect benefit. In the ISP world most sentences...

November 25, 2009

AOL EWL: low complaints no longer enough

By laura

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25November

This morning AOL announced some changes to their Enhanced White List. Given I’ve not talked very much about the AOL EWL in the past, this is as good a time as any to talk about it. The AOL Enhanced Whitelist is for those senders that have very good practices. Senders on the EWL not only get their mail delivered to the inbox, but also have links and images enabled by default. Placement on...

November 25, 2009

Sending too much mail

By laura

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Not having policies restricting the amount of mail any customer or recipient receives may lead to higher spam complaint rates and blocking warns the DMA Email Marketing Council.
HT: Box of Meat

November 24, 2009

New Blog Design

By steve

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24November

After a little more than two years and 500 posts we thought it was time for a redesign of the Word to the Wise blog. While we were cleaning up the design we also fixed some functionality that was broken and added some new features: Everything should render cleanly in most any browser Search works! The archives, over on the right hand side, are a lot easier to navigate If you visit the blog from...

November 24, 2009

The nightmare before Christmas

By laura

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Over at the Exacttarget blog, there is a guest post up from Annalivia who handles much of the sender support (and about 15 million other things) at AOL. On the nights before Christmas… when the relays are groaning under the loads and ISP admins start to turn into toads they tear out their hair and cry in despair “why’s all this mail coming out of thin air?” Head over to...

November 23, 2009

Cox and the FCC wireless list

By laura

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23November

On Nov 20, Cox added a number of domains to the FCC Wireless domain list. One of the domains added was cox.net. This caused understandable consternation among a number of senders, as the opt-in requirements for wireless domains are much more stringent than for sending to non-wireless domains. Earlier today, Tom Bartel, from Return Path tweeted: “We pinged them – likely error -they are...

November 20, 2009

Troubleshooting the simple stuff

By laura

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20November

I was talking with one of my Barry pals recently and was treated to a rant regarding deliverability experts that can’t manage simple things. We’ve been having an ongoing conversation recently about the utterly stupid and annoying questions some senders ask. Last week, I was ranting about a delivery person asking what “5.7.1. Too many receipts this session” meant. This...

November 19, 2009

More on best practices

By laura

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19November

Mark Brownlow took my post about best practices and expanded on the theme. He is absolutely right and I encourage everyone to go read his article. The takeaway here is not to rush out and start ignoring best practices. Without the background understanding, that way lies email marketing hell. But if you can gain (or hire) a more nuanced understanding of issues, you might be able to break selected...