Tor cleans up their lists

Recently I got an email from Tor. Apparently they’re watching their opens and clicks and they noticed I hadn’t loaded any images recently.

We notice you haven’t opened the Tor.com newsletter in a while, and that’s okay: we know you’re busy. That’s why we create our newsletter from scratch each week, to highlight the articles we think you’ll love and round up some of our top stories.
It’s a great way to catch up on what’s happening on the site and get access to cool perks, like early looks at some of our original fiction. We want to let you know about some of the great content on the site, and give you the chance to keep receiving the latest science fiction and fantasy news.
To continue receiving Tor.com’s weekly newsletter, please: Confirm Now!

TorConfirmation
I like the Tor newsletter, and I do open and read it. But my mail client is not configured to load images, and Tor’s newsletter is readable without images on.  I’m always reassured, though, when I see companies acting on best practices in the wild.

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Confirming website registrations

Confirming email addresses during a website registration process is a good practice. It stops people from creating fake accounts, abusing  resources and using that site as a mechanism for harassment. But simply sending out a confirmation mail is not sufficient to prevent problems, particularly when everything about the process assumes that unconfirmed registrations are actually valid and not problem accounts.
I’ve had a couple recent experiences with companies attempting to use email confirmation, but failing pretty miserably. In each case a website set up a process where a user could register an account on the site. Both sites required confirmation of the registration email addresses as part of the process. But in each case there were some major failures that result in non-customers getting email.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about those two specific cases. I’ll also provide specific suggestions on how not to fall into the same trap and actually send opt-in email.

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Subject lines

There has been a lot of discussion in various places recently about subject line length and how it affects email marketing. There have been multiple studies done on how the subject line affects opens and clicks. (Mailchimp, Alchemy Worx, Mailer Mailer, Adestra). The discussion has even spilled over into Ken Magill’s newsletter today.
I’ve had a couple people ask me my opinion on subject line over the years. My general response is that subject line length is not directly measured by spamfilters and so don’t fret about the length. It is true that consistently crafting poor subject lines can indirectly cause delivery problems. Send mail few people open and that will hurt your reputation over time.
I think Ken really said it best, though.

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