Portraits of Spammers
It’s been a long week, so enjoy some art (and spam). Next week we’ll get back to discussing the many faults of Gmail. And senders. And receivers. And, well, everyone has faults. And email is Dead. Tabs killed it.
It appears to be Google’s turn as the subject of most of my blog posts these days. Consumerist had a post up today talking about the new Gmail tabs. Interestingly enough, they’re quoting an Ad Age article that says the new tabs are not hurting engagement. Early results are surprising. Response rates have actually gone up or stayed the same for most companies. Mega-marketer Epsilon...
Chad White explains why you shouldn’t ask recipients to move mail from the promotions tab to the inbox.
Consumer Watch put out a press release yesterday about a court filing made by Gmail that says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy. I pulled a bunch of the docs yesterday, but have had no real time to read or digest them. For recap users everything I pulled (and stuff other people have pulled) are available at Archive.org. The initial complaint was filed under seal at the request of Google...
One of the big arguments various mailers make is that they make it easy for users to opt-out of mail, so it’s not a big deal. Users who don’t want to receive the mail, can make it stop. This was one of the guiding principles of CAN SPAM. The sender can make the decision to send mail to any recipient but they have to offer an opt-out. The problem is there are a lot of major companies...
Lavabit is a secure mail system. Today their CEO announced he was shutting down the service immediately. I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with...
I’ve seen lots of opinions over the last few weeks about whether or not the new ads in the Gmail promotions tab are email or not. Google is using its latest inbox redesign to stick ads in the holiest of places: Right inside your Gmail inbox. Under the promotions tab — one of three sections in the new tabbed version of Gmail — Google has started sticking ads disguised as emails, as first...
One of the features of the new Gmail tabbed inbox is email-like ads placed by Gmail. When you click on an ad, it opens up into a new window, behaving very similarly to an email. People can even forward the email to another person. This new ad type and the placement in the promotions tab has generated a lot of discussion on a number of different things related to email, abuse and spam. Is this an...
Getting to the inbox is becoming a greater and greater challenge for many marketers. According to Return Path, 22% of opt in mail doesn’t make it to the inbox. The challenge to marketers is that a lot of opt in mail isn’t important to the recipient. Sure, they’re happy enough to get it if they notice it, but if it’s not there then they don’t care. They’ll buy...
Last night I was cruising through our local news website. I see the headline New SPF guidelines coming our way. My first thought was, “Wow, SPF made the paper?” Now, I live in the SF Bay area so there are a lot of technology related stories that hit our paper which might not see the light of day in other areas. But, still: new SPF guidelines hit the local paper before I’ve heard...
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