Yesterday LinkedIn announced they’re decreasing the amount of mail they’re sending to users. For every 10 emails we used to send, we’ve removed 4 of them. Already, member’s complaints have been cut in half. And this is just the beginning. Less Email from LinkedIn This is good news for a lot of people, as LinkedIn’s sending practices have always been aggressive. The send a lot of...
“We follow all the best practices!” is a common refrain from many senders. But what does best practices really mean? To me the bulk of best practices are related to permission, technical setup and identity. Send opt-in mail. Follow the SMTP spec. Authenticate your mail with DKIM. Publish a SPF record. Don’t hide you domain whois behind privacy protection services. Honor...
Groupon and other Daily Deals programs struggling to find a sustainable business.
Last night, the email practices of Facebook, Verizon and LinkedIn sparked something of a discussion on IRC. Rather than trying to summarize into a business language friendly post I thought I’d share the whole thing. Warning: Includes strong language and graphic descriptions of human on salesman violence. Huey: I may have just arrived at a Laura guest blog post. Huey: About...
Then you have to read this post by Dayne Shuda on EmailCritic. How to handle Email Frequency During the Busy Holiday Season.
Want to see a WWF style smackdown? Put a marketer and a delivery expert in a room and ask them to discuss frequency and whether or not more mail is better. The marketer will point to the bottom line and how much more money they make when they increase frequency. The delivery expert will point to inbox rates and user engagement and point out that too much mail drives users to ignore the mail. This...
For people who are on many discussion mailing lists, the first of every month is “Mailman Day”, and has been for nearly a decade. Mailman is the most widely used mailing list manager for discussion lists and, by default, it sends email to all subscribers on the first of the month reminding them that they’re still subscribed to the list and how to unsubscribe. This is really...
The Wall Street Journal reports that some large retailers are scaling back their email marketing. Benefits of sending less mail include higher open rates, lower unsubscribe rates and an increase in sales. Since cutting back its volume, Nicole Miller has seen the rate at which customers “unsubscribe”—or request to stop receiving emails—drop, and the percentage of recipients who open...
Those of us in the email space often have opinions about volume and frequency and opt-in and everything involved in email marketing. What we don’t always have is the luxury of receiving unsolicited feedback from recipients. Every once in a while I find a post online that is that unsolicited feedback from someone. Today a poster on reddit describes his experience with signing petitions and...
Mark Brownlow (who I haven’t linked to nearly enough lately) has insightful commentary on the frequency question. I really don’t think marketers should be afraid of sending email frequently. There are people who appreciate a lot of email. But I do think marketers should be careful when sending frequently. Good delivery is all about your audience and what you have to offer them. As...
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