Guest post by Phil Schott I often have the pleasure of putting my four year-old son to bed at night and I’m usually exhausted afterward. It’s a never-ending string of questions and admonishments that goes something like this, “Daddy, is it a stay-at-home day tomorrow? “No, Joe, tomorrow is a go-to-school day, it’s Tuesday. Joe, stop talking and go to sleep and please...
Guest Post by JD Falk There was certainly some surprise in the room when I pointed out (yep, it was me) that Laura has been around since before there were ESPs. Part of it, I’m sure, was because Laura’s not particularly ancient — and part was because it’s a shock to realize that people sent and received email and everything was just fine long before the segment of the...
Last week I saw a tweet that quoted Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education at Exacttarget as saying less than 20% of ppl in #emailmarketing have more than 2 yrs experience I have this feeling that some of the industry wide issues with conflicts between “frat boys” and “utilitarians” is partly due to the lack of experience on the email marketing side. Contrast that...
I was reading an article on Virus Rants and the opening paragraph really stood out. you wouldn’t think this needs to be said, but apparently it does – being a whitehat means taking sides. more than that, it means taking the side aligned (more or less) with the general public’s interests – doing things for their direct or indirect benefit. In the ISP world most sentences...
Mark Brownlow took my post about best practices and expanded on the theme. He is absolutely right and I encourage everyone to go read his article. The takeaway here is not to rush out and start ignoring best practices. Without the background understanding, that way lies email marketing hell. But if you can gain (or hire) a more nuanced understanding of issues, you might be able to break selected...
I cannot tell you how many times over the last 10 years I’ve been talking to someone with a problem and had them tell me “but I’m a legitimate email marketer.” Most of them have at least one serious problem, from upstreams that are ready to terminate them for spamming through widespread blocking. In fact, the practices of most companies who proclaim “we’re...
The WSJ reports that politicians in Maine have figured out that the new Maine law prohibiting collecting information from teenagers without parental permission is badly written and has a lot of problems. The Attorney General has decided not to enforce the law as it stands. The law does contain private right of action, so there may be private suits filed against companies. I can’t...
Last week, the state of Maine passed a law prohibiting marketing using personal information to minors without verifiable consent from a parent or guardian. From what I understand, this law started out as a prohibition on using health information for marketing and expanded to any personal information. The law defines personal information as: 4. Personal information. “Personal...
Chad White of Smith-Harmon posted a report today on shutting down email marketing programs when going out of business. He looks in detail at how a number of companies handled their email marketing during the going-out-of-business process. There is a very solid mix of examples of how companies handle things. Some companies do things very badly, like never mention over email that they’re...
Stephanie Miller from RP blogs at EEC about a UK consumer survey with the take home message: “consumers notice what email marketers do. When we send something interesting and relevant at a good pace, they are happy to stay active with our programs. When we don’t… well, then we’ve lost them, perhaps for good.”
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