Archive2011

October 24, 2011

Social media to improve email delivery

By laura

2 Min read

3 comments

24October

Mail delivered to the bulk folder is likely to continue landing in the bulk folder without intervention. Sometimes a sender can talk to the ISP involved and get mail moved back to the inbox. Sometimes a sender can make hygiene changes and get mail moved back to the inbox. The most effective way to get mail delivered to the inbox, however, is for recipients to go into the bulk folder and mark the...

October 21, 2011

Is there really one way to email successfully?

By laura

2 Min read

3 comments

21October

I’ve been watching a bunch of folks discuss someone’s mailing practices. The discussion has been fascinating to me.  I’m hearing from the conversation is that there are very specific rules regarding how every company should mail. And that anyone who deviates from those practices is heading down the path to failure. Doing it wrong. This theme has come up before, when I’ve...

October 20, 2011

Expectations

By laura

2 Min read

4 comments

20October

One of the themes I harp on with clients is setting recipient expectations. Senders that give recipients the information they need to make an informed subscription decision have much higher inbox and response rates than senders that try to mislead their recipients. Despite the evidence that correctly setting expectations results in better delivery and higher ROI on lists some senders go out of...

October 19, 2011

Persistence of unsubscribes

By laura

3 Min read

3 comments

19October

It’s really, really frustrating when an unsubscribe request doesn’t take. And it happens a lot more than many people expect. Most of the culprits are marketing companies. United Business Media is a huge problem, for instance. I never even signed up for their mail, but they bought an address I’d used to register for a conference. I unsubscribed at least a dozen times, but the...

October 18, 2011

Where do you accept reports?

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

18October

One of the things that is most frustrating to me about sending in spam reports is that many ESPs and senders don’t actively monitor their abuse address. A few months ago I talked about getting spam from Dell to multiple email addresses of mine. What I didn’t talk about was how badly broken the ESP was in handling my complaint. The ESP was, like many ESPs, an organization that grew...

October 17, 2011

Not lazy, just annoyed

By laura

2 Min read

2 comments

17October

I don’t usually send in spam reports, but I submitted a couple in the last few weeks. Somehow an address of mine is on a bunch of rave / club lists in London. You want to know what is happening at London clubs this week? It’s all there in my spam folder. This mail finally hit my annoyance threshold, so I’ve been submitting reports and complaints to the senders the last few weeks...

October 14, 2011

More fun with visualization

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

14October

The Yahoo visualization tool has been a lot of fun to watch. You can see how mail changes, see how subject line changes and even see when commercial mailers do major blasts. One marketer described it to me as “Total marketing porn.” I even took a screen shot of someone doing a drop of their “September Account Statement” to customers. I even thought about trying to do some...

October 13, 2011

Yahoo email visualization tool

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

13October

This is pretty awesome.
Visualize Yahoo! Mail
Make sure you click on the “Trending Keywords” on the left hand side of the image.
 

October 13, 2011

Engagement based delivery makes testing tricky

By laura

2 Min read

Add comment

Yesterday I wrote about how important recipients are to achieving good delivery. The short version of yesterday’s post is that delivery is all about engagement, and how the ISPs were really focusing on engagement and proving custom user experiences. This is great, for the user. Take the common example where a commercial list has some highly engaged recipients and a bunch of recipients that...

October 12, 2011

Recipients are the secret to good delivery

By laura

3 Min read

Add comment

12October

Many, many people hire me to educate them on delivery and fix their email problems. This is good, it’s what I do. And I’m quite good at helping clients see where their email program isn’t meeting expectations. I can translate tech speak into marketing. I can explain things in a way that shifts a client’s perception of what the underlying issues are. I can help them find...