CategoryBest Practices

November 28, 2007

Why does everyone tell you to avoid .biz in your emails?

By steve
6 Min read
2 comments
28November

… or Why do spam filters sometimes have some very strange ideas? It’s been dogma for a long time that if you’re doing email marketing you should avoid using a .biz domain in your mails. Even if your main website was in .biz, you should use something different in your messages, perhaps a website you buy solely for use in email that redirects to your real .biz website. Last year I...

October 31, 2007

Wired editor has enough spam!

By laura
4 Min read
3 comments
31October

Seth Godin links to a post up over on The Long Tail about spammers who send PR mail to Chris Anderson, an editor at wired. Apparently lots of people send automated email to the editor of Wired hawking their latest and greatest product, service or photos. In response to this overwhelming amount of mail, Chris has instituted a new email acceptance policy. He says So fair warning: I only want two...

October 30, 2007

Do open rates matter?

By laura
2 Min read
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30October

Ken Magill over at DirectMag has an article deriding the reliance on ‘open rates’ as a metric for the success (or failure!) of marketing campaigns. E-mail delivers a return on investment so high, it’s practically embarrassing. It doesn’t require getting fuzzy with the metrics. But as long as we continue to call the percentage of graphics displayed in a given campaign its “open rate,”...

October 29, 2007

DKIM "i=" vs "d=" and Reputation

By steve
6 Min read
5 comments
29October

This really should be part seven of a twelve part series or some such as it deals with an aspect of DKIM that’s really important, but is way down in the details of implementation. (dkim.org is a reasonable place to start for a general overview of DKIM). There’s an apparently endless thread on the DKIM-SSP spec development mailing list at the moment about the differences between two...

October 26, 2007

Experience as a recipient

By laura
5 Min read
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26October

One of the challenges of my job is to separate my personal feelings and experiences related to email marketing and spam from my advice to clients. I am here to make your delivery better, not to make everyone use email marketing the way that makes me the most comfortable. That being said, I get a lot of spam across my various email addresses. If I have an extra few minutes I’ll sometimes...

October 22, 2007

Consent does not mean confusing your recipients

By laura
2 Min read
2 comments
22October

Cam Beck on Marketing Prefs has a post today about presenting users with confusing choices in an opt-in process. Bank of America followed the letter of the law, but they did so with a method that can only be described as misleading since people typically don’t read those sorts of messages, and the action required to opt out changes from one email message to the next within the same form. I’ve...

October 18, 2007

What metrics are you measuring?

By laura
2 Min read
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18October

Marketers measure a lot of metrics about the email they send. But are they measuring the right metrics? Mark Brownlow talks about how marketers may not always know what their measuring. He also links to Email Insider where the Email Diva talks about what metrics can be measured. More importantly, she points out that asking questions and determining what you want out of your email marketing...

October 15, 2007

The key to inbox delivery: make your email relevant.

By laura
1 Min read
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15October

Following on from previous posts here, here and here, JD Falk discusses ways to get your email into the inbox. Tactics that will actually improve your deliverability, yet have no bearing on what the ISP staff thinks about you: Sending mail that your recipients actually want Keeping your list clean (such that you don’t send unwanted mail) Using good data sources (such that you don’t...

October 11, 2007

Viral Marketing by email

By laura
2 Min read
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11October

Matt talks about a new marketing report from the ThinData Newsletter. The Newsletter offers the following recommendations on using viral marketing as part of your next email campaign. State Your Purpose. Be very clear about your intentions with your viral program and about what you plan to do with the email addresses that you will be collecting. Respect Personal Information. Keep in-mind that the...

October 8, 2007

MAAWG: Sender Best Practices

By laura
1 Min read
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08October

The MAAWG Sender Subcommittee has published a Sender Best Current Practices document. This document details what the current best practices in the sending industry are. Summarized the document says: Senders must get clear and conspicuous consent from recipients. In other words, recipients should know what they are signing up for and what kind of mail they should expect. Senders must provide...

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