Last week Oracle announced they were buying Dyn. Interesting acquisition, but fills a spot in Oracle’s playbook to provide infrastructure.
None of the press releases I’ve seen about the acquisition mentions the Dyn email service platform. Oracle has at least two email platforms already (Eloqua and Responsys). It will be interesting to see what happens with email.
Two different people on two different mailing lists asked very similar questions recently. Are people who send individual prospecting emails required to comply with CAN SPAM.
My opinion (not a lawyer, don’t play one on TV, didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night) is that CAN SPAM does not mention anything about volume, and any individual unsolicited email that has a “primary purpose” of advertising is required to include a physical postal address and a way to unsubscribe.
My other take on it is for individual prospecting emails failing to comply with CAN SPAM is like speeding. It’s illegal, and you can get in legal trouble by doing it, but everyone does it and few people get caught.
The acquisition of email service providers continues. Last week Deluxe (yes, the check printing people) acquired Vertical Response. This appears to be positioning themselves to improve their collection of business services to include email marketing.
Read MoreBeing on the west coast, I’m usually not yet awake when the 9am eastern press releases go out. So I’m often late on BREAKING NEWS!! in the email industry.
This morning it was the news that Oracle bought Responsys. Most news reports seem to agree that the purchase price was $1.5B, although a couple places are putting that at a lower figure of “about $1.39B.”
In any case, congrats to Responsys shareholders for getting a premium on their stock price.