There was quite a bit of content I cut out on my rant about parasites in the email ecosystem earlier this week. I had whole section on people who ask to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately send a pitch or scrape your address and add it to their marketing automation software and start spamming. Generally, the only reason I will drop someone off LinkedIn is because they do this. Today, one of...
As a small business owner I am a ripe target for many companies. They buy my address from some lead generation firm, or they scrape it off LinkedIn, and they send me a message that pretends to be personalized but isn’t really. “I looked at your website… we have a list of email addresses to sell you.” “We offer cold calling services… can I set up a call with you...
I wrote a few days ago about permission and how it was the key to getting into the inbox. It’s another one of those “necessary but not sufficient” parts of delivery. There are, however, a lot of companies who are using email without the recipient permission. These companies often contact me to help them solve their delivery problems. Often these are new companies who are trying...
This morning I got spam from someone selling email addresses. The mail starts: Hi Laura, I am aware of your expertise in the field of marketing and how well you execute your campaigns. We specialize in customized email list services and provide global data. […] “You are receiving this email as you have shown interest in data related solutions. Occasionally you will receive brief messages...
We are finishing up another busy month at WttW. April was a little nutty with network glitches, server crashes, cat woes, and other disruptions, but hopefully that’s all behind us as we head into May. I’ll be very busy in May as well, speaking at Salesforce Connections in Atlanta and the Email Innovation Summit in Las Vegas. Please come say hello if you’re attending either of these great events...
Companies are always trying to find new ways to use and abuse email. My mailbox has been rife with mail from companies trying to sell me stuff for my business. It’s been interesting to watch the new ways they’re trying to get attention, while not honoring the most important rule of email marketing. Marketing Automation The advent of “marketing automation” has added a new...
One thing that catches me up with clients sometimes is their own spam filters block their own content. It happens. In some cases the client is using an appliance. The client’s reputation is bad enough that the appliance actually blocks mail. Often these clients have no idea they are blocking their own mail, until we try and send them something and the mail is rejected. Typically, the issue...
I’ve written about B2B filtering in the past, but I don’t blog too much about corporate filtering overall. The reason for this is that the corporate landscape is a lot broader and less consistent than the consumer space. That makes it much more difficult to tell senders how to handle corporate filtering, because each corporation is different. But as I think I about it, I realize...
Today’s question comes from Steve B. I wondered if you know much about hosted email providers such as google apps, Microsoft and yahoo. I have seen a rise in number of people using them to provide their corporate email service. I am using the same logic that the rules governing delivery to gmail will effect those using google hosted email for example. For Microsoft i have been using...
Harvard Business Review posted a blog earlier this week suggesting that all businesses should treat email marketing as an opt-out process. Unfortunately, the post seemed to me to conflate and confuse a number of things. She mixes in potential customers providing business cards to an exhibitor at a trade show with current customers that are using a product. She promotes businesses using opt-out as...
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