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Tracking consumers

In an effort to more closely observe the group’s buying habits and personal behaviors, a growing number of corporations are turning to tag and release programs to study American consumers, sources confirmed Friday. The Onion

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More on spam traps

A couple weeks ago I had a discussion with Ken Magill of the Magill Report about spam traps. He had moderated a webinar about spam traps and I publicly contradicted some of the statements made about spam traps.  He contacted me and interviewed me for an updated article about traps for his newsletter. The next week he had a rebuttal from Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, taking anti-spammers (and presumably me) to task for pointing out that some folks use typos as spam traps.  This week, Derek Harding of Innovyx continues the discussion about traps and how they are a reality that senders need to deal with.
Spam traps are a reality and they’re not going away at any foreseeable point in the future. No entity that actually cares about blocking spam is going to give up the information that spam traps provide them. Not A Single One. They are some of the original tools in the filtering arsenal and they have proven their use and reliability for people trying to keep inboxes useable.
Dela focused on typos in his rebuttal to Ken, but typos aren’t the real issue. The real issue is that any address acquisition technique (and I do mean any) is subject to errors. Those errors end up directing mail at people who didn’t ask for it. If there are too many errors or mail to too many of the wrong addresses, that will result in delivery problems.
Yelling at the people monitoring the accuracy of your email marketing doesn’t make your marketing any better. It doesn’t stop mail from going to the wrong people. It doesn’t actually help anything.
My focus is on helping marketers market better. My focus is on helping folks sending email get that mail to the inboxes of people who want it. I don’t really care if my clients hit traps, traps are, as Derek said, “the canary in the coal mine.” What I really want is to make sure every person who asked for mail from my clients gets that mail. Every trap on the list? That is a lost sale, a lost touch, a lost opportunity. The traps are just the addresses we know are wrong. If there are traps on a list, then it is guaranteed there are deliverable addresses that belong to someone who is not a customer. This generally means two lost customers, the one who isn’t getting the mail they asked for and the one who is getting mail they never asked for.
Traps are a way to quantify missed opportunities, but they’re not the only missed opportunities. If mail is going to traps, it’s not going to your real customers. That is why marketers should care about traps.
 
 

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And we're back

Happy New Year!
I am back and ready to talk email with folks.
December is always a busy time, both between the holidays and all associated personal stuff, but also for delivery consulting. There are senders that suddenly discover their email going to the bulk folder and needing help and assistance. But now it’s January and email marketing gets a brief break.
The beginning of the new year and the lull after the Christmas season marketing storm is a good place for folks to think about marketing and email goals for the upcoming years. Many senders get so wrapped up in the day to day details of email that they fail to think strategically about email and their business.
It works much that way for me, as well. I hate it when my clients have bad delivery and do everything I can to fix their problems. If their mail isn’t getting to the inbox, then it’s as much my problem as theirs. I’m thinking and working to get to the root of their problem and come up with solutions to get their mail sent. This sometimes means my own strategic planning gets pushed aside while I focus on client needs. January is a fun time of year for me, because it’s all a little more relaxed and I can look at the new year and how to improve services and share more of my knowledge with folks.
You’ll start to see some of those improvements in the upcoming months. I’ll also be blogging regularly. We should be getting some research and white papers out over the next few months. I’ll be catching up on the Google privacy cases and updating on some other email related lawsuits.
2014 is looking like a year of growth and excitement.

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