Speaking in June

ActiveCampaign is hosting their very first user conference in Chicago in June. I am honored to be a part of their speaker lineup.
Early bird registration only $450 through April 30.

Related Posts

ESPC meeting

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my first ESPC semi-annual meeting. I was scheduled to talk on a panel  about list hygiene with a couple vendors. Because some folks didn’t make it, I also sat on the panel talking about blocklists.
It was a fun day. I got to meet and talk with some colleagues I haven’t seen in an age. And I met some new faces and had interesting interactions.
One bonus from the day is I really got the chance to talk with some of the list hygiene vendors that were on the panel with me. Afterwards, we spent a good hour just discussing the space and the players in it. I learned a lot from that conversation. Previously, I’d kept the list hygiene vendors at arms length. My experiences with them and with their products weren’t very positive. My experience has primarily been with clients who have used these services and not gotten what they thought they were paying for. I have also seen some internet-abusive behavior from a few. Many years ago a few of the companies approached me for deliverability advice as they were running into consistent blocking.
All of these things led me to the conclusion that it was a part of the email space I didn’t want much to do with.
Yesterday, though, I learned that there were vendors in the space that focused very much on being a net benefit to the overall network. Both Webbula and Kickbox, who were on the panel with me, have policies and processes designed to make it unattractive for spammers to sign up for their services. We did agree there were problems with some of the vendors in the space, but I realized that some is not all.
It was a good meeting, I’m glad I went.

Read More

Insight 2015 and upcoming talks

In about an hour I will be heading down to Monterey to give a talk at the MessageSystems Insight 2015 conference.
I really wanted to go to the whole conference, as I’ve heard great things about previous ones. It just didn’t work with my schedule. I’ll be around this afternoon and tomorrow morning, though. So if you’re there, do drop by and say Hi!
If you’re not at Insight, but are interested in hearing me speak, you can join us on November 12 at the 2015 All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo. Ken Magill will be interviewing me about email and delivery. The session is also very open to audience questions, so come with some of your own.

Read More

Industry news

Just some stuff going on around email that probably merit a mention but not a whole blog post.
talkingforblog
Next Tuesday at 1 eastern I’ll be giving a webinar on the subscription bombing and discussing what companies can do to mitigate the problem.
Google is working on new “invisible” captchas, that separate out humans from bots without humans having to do anything.
EmailonAcid created an interactive puzzle email.
Return Path acquired Email Copilot. Then laid off approximately 60 employees citing restructuring (no links for this one, but emails were sent to customers and someone forwarded me a copy).
Mailchimp sent 1.5 billion emails on Black Friday, and published stats and information about how well they delivered and performed.
 

Read More