ArchiveDecember 2011

On Hiatus

I have my final call of 2011 in 6 minutes, so I decided to take a break from packing and wish everyone joyous and festive holiday, whatever you celebrate. We’re on hiatus through Jan 8th, but will return full of energy, single malt and ideas. We didn’t get a tree up this year, so I have no photos of our cats playing tree ornament. So I share with you my friend Joanna’s cat, in...

Don't spam filter your role accounts

A variety of “amazon.com order confirmations” showed up in my inbox this morning. They were quite well done, looking pretty close to real Amazon branding, so quite a few people will click on them. And they funnel people who do click to websites that contain hostile flash apps that’ll compromise their machines (and steal their private data, login and banking credentials then add...

Spamming ESPs: the followup

Campaign Monitor contacted me about yesterday’s post. The phrasing I picked out of the spammers AUP matched their AUP quite closely. In fact, if you plug the AUP into Google, Campaign Monitor comes up as one of the first hits. It was not Campaign Monitor I was talking about. In fact, the ESP I received the mail from is not on the first 8 pages of Google hits for the phrases I posted. A...

Spamming ESPs

In my mailbox there is a definite uptick in spam from ESPs advertising their services. Today’s email was from a company that has the following in their anti-spam policy: To send email to anyone using [ESP name], you must have clearly obtained their permission. We consider qualifying methods for obtaining permission are as follows: An email newsletter subscription form on your web site. An...

Put a fork in it

When FB messaging was announced email marketers had a total conniption. There were blog posts written about how FB Messaging was going to kill email as we know it. Now, slightly more than a year later marketers have declared FB Messaging dead. Sometimes I think people spend way to much time believing their own press. FB messaging was never designed as a marketing platform. I said as much back in...

Political insanity with email

In one of the more boneheaded email related moves I’ve seen from a political group ever the Obama / Biden campaign has announced that people can go to their website, enter in the email address of a Republican friend, pay some money, and the campaign will send an email to your (soon to be ex-) friend on your behalf. This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at...

Email marketing OF THE FUTURE!

ISPs are continually developing tools for their users. Some of the newer tools are automatic filters that help users organize the volumes of mail they’re getting. Gmail released Priority Inbox over a year ago. Hotmail announced new filters as part of Wave 5 back in October. All of these announcements cause much consternation in the email marketing industry. Just today there was a long...

Court rules blogger is not a journalist

Last week a federal judge ruled a blogger, Crystal Cox, was not a journalist and not subject to first amendment protections. I haven’t been following the case very closely, but was a little concerned about the precedent and the liability for people like me who blog. Reading some of the articles on the case, though, I’m less worried. This isn’t a blogger making some statements...

Cyber Monday

There seemed to be a surge of email marketing trumpting Cyber Monday Sales in big, glossy lettering in the week before Cyber Monday – so much so that I was bored of the whole thing long before the sales actually started. I wondered whether there actually was a big increase in volume of mail, or whether it was just louder, pushier and more noticeable. So I went through my inbox and...

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