ArchiveJuly 2010

Freemail opens

Justin Coffey commented on my check your assumptions post pointing out his data on opens related to ISPs. He says:
I can say that users at webmail are easily as likely to click on a message that they have opened than users at pay-for ISPs.
Who else collects data on opens per ISP? And Monkeys, I’m looking at you, I know you have this data.

Spamhaus motion to reconsider

A few weeks ago, Spamhaus filed a motion to have the judge reconsider his recent $27,002 award to e360. Their brief hangs on three arguments. The Court Should Vacate The $27,000 Award Because The Court Previously Ruled That Plaintiffs Were Barred From Relying On The Putative Lost Revenue Data Upon Which It Was Based. The Court Should Vacate The $27,000 Award Because It Is Improperly Based On Lost...

Check your assumptions

One of the things that prompted yesterday’s post was watching a group of marketers discuss how to get subscribers to give them their “real” or “high value” email addresses. Addresses at free email providers are seen as less valuable than addresses at a place of employment or at a cable company or dialup ISP. The discussion centered around how to incentivize...

Ownership of the inbox

Marketers often treat recipient inboxes with a certain level of ownership. They talk about getting mail to the inbox with the underlying implication that inboxes are for use by marketers and they tend to forget that recipients use email for a lot of things, not just being marketing targets. This was crystallized for me a few years ago when I was running a conference session. The session had a...

Lycos delivery problems

Lycos has had some ongoing problems this week. Their alert on the issue says: Some Lycos Mail users may be experiencing poor performance of their email service, including slow loading times while viewing or responding to emails and slower than usual mail delivery. The Lycos team is aware of these issues and are working to resolve the problems for all users. […] Additional equipment for...

Thursday mini-audit part 2

A week ago you signed up for your mailing list using a virgin email address. (You didn’t? Maybe you should do that today – there’s no time like Thursday for a quick sanity check!) Check the mailbox for the account you signed up Is the mail you signed up for in the inbox? In the bulk folder? If it’s in the bulk folder, that’s something to look at – all the...

Don't forget to check out the forest

I have the #emailmarketing feed on twitter scrolling live across my screen while I’m working. It’s been an interesting experience as many of the people who tweet #emailmarketing aren’t part of my social network. Over the last week or so there’s been a lot of tweeting going on about Ben and Jerry’s GIVING UP EMAIL MARKETING!!! Only, come to find out, that’s not...

Standard Email Metrics

The EEC has been working on standardizing metrics used in email marketing. They have published a set of definitions for different terms many email marketers use. They published their Support the Adoption of Email Metrics (S.A.M.E) guide in June. Under the new EEC definitions an open is measured when either a tracking pixel is displayed or a user clicks on any link in the email, including the...

What does open rate tell you

There has been an lot written about open rates in the past, but there are two posts that stand out to me. One was the EEC’s post on renaming open rate to render rate and Mark Brownlow’s excellent post on what open rate does and does not measure. I’ve also weighed in on the subject. The issue is still very confused. If asked, most people will tell you that open rate is the number...

Getting removed from an ISP block

A question came up on a mailing list about how long it typically took to resolve a spam block at an ISP. I don’t think that question actually has a single answer, as each ISP has their own, special, process. ISPA takes 5 minutes. You fill out a form, it runs through their automated system and you’re usually delisted. ISPB asks a lot of questions in their form, so it takes about 15...

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