Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 3, 2007

E-Mail Campaign Formula 101

Before you look at deliverability, open rates, and recipient-side metrics on a campaign, it's important to look at how your e-mail campaign is constructed and know it can improve. Blue-chip focused ESP e-Dialog created the Relevance Trajectory to offer its clients a benchmark for e-mail programs. The program looks at factors like segmentation, lifecycle management, triggers, personalization, interactivity, and testing or measurement.

The concept began informally at a client conference held by the company last year mapping where clients fell in the relevance trajectory. The response was positive, and at this past year's conference e-Dialog followed up by asking clients to rate themselves and see how they measured up. Most companies were too hard on themselves, but regardless of score, e-Dialog president and CEO John Rizzi said there is always room for improvement.

Relevance Trajectory can be used as an annual or semi-annual checkpoint, and a strategy toward making sure your e-mail campaigns don't contribute to the inbox clutter, but are meaningful messages for recipients.

While the Relevance Trajectory is seen as an effective benchmark for e-Dialog clients, it only rates the components of an e-mail practice and campaigns, it doesn't have anything to do with the messages once they're sent to recipients. It's the first half of the proposition, and doesn't replace diagnostics on bounce rates and open rates, among other metrics on e-mail senders' minds.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 18, 2007

E-Mailing Moms - When's the Best Time?

Just got through moderating a panel on New Media Platforms at the HBA Expo. BSM Media's Maria Bailey shared some interesting insights about marketing to moms on the Web, much of it based on research she's publishing in a forthcoming book.

According to Maria, fully 30 percent of moms are online between the hours of 8-10 p.m. If your e-mail targets moms, forget blasting at 4 a.m., she implored the crowd. Send between 6-8 (after the kids are tucked into bed) so your message will be at the top of the inbox.

And speaking of e-mail, hope many of you can make it to our own e-mail marketing event in New York on October 2.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 14, 2007

ClickTracks and Lyris ListManager Come Closer Together

A year following the J.L. Halsey acquisition of ClickTracks, the parent company said it will tightly couple ClickTracks Web analytics data with its e-mail marketing platform Lyris ListManager. Clients will be able to track user behavior across e-mail and their Web site to gain more insight into conversions. Measured activity includes open rates and subsequent visits to the e-mail sender's Web site.

Email senders can learn to better target messages. An example given in a company statement said "An e-mail campaign drives 10,000 visitors to a landing page and only 3 percent convert. A marketer can then analyze the behavior of the 97 percent that didn't convert and target that segment with a follow-up offer."

The next generation of e-mail marketing innovation looks like it will be in more closely integrating online marketing and e-mail, breaking down the silo between the two categories, and sharing ad management and resources across the platforms. A statement from J.L. Halsey said, "This milestone moves the company one step closer to its goal of providing marketers with a platform that integrates the core technologies of e-mail marketing, Web analytics, and Web content management." Expect to see more new products and enhancements to the three core areas on J.L. Halsey's roadmap in the months to come.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 14, 2007

Yucky Spam From Our Competitor

Ewww. Gross.

A direct ClickZ competitor is behind a new wave of soft core spam. No less than three copies of the top example arrived in rapid succession last week at the unique e-mail address I use to subscribe to their list only. Not only is there zero indication of how the sender obtained the e-mail address in the message, but the content is in no way, shape or form appropriate to a B2B online marketing publication. One that runs e-mail marketing events, no less.

Difficult as is was, I resisted the temptation to blog Episodes 1-3. Then today, another example landed in my inbox -- promising recipients they can meet the "American Curves Featured Model" and avail themselves of an open Champagne bar for "the ladies":

OK, so it's inappropriate content. And renting lists to third-parties (particularly with zero disclosure) is a nasty idea. I decided to check our competitor's privacy policy. Nowhere does it disclose e-mail addresses will be shared or tented to third parties, or so it appears from this very vague, semi-grammatical excerpt:

"We use this individual company information to deliver member only newsletters, and other service-related purposes only your company contact information is made available to other members in the member directory."

It's always a delicate situation to slam a competitor in print. I'm not naming names, but I would caution marketers to be very, very selective when selecting a source for e-mail marketing advice.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 25, 2007

Double Opt-Out

I was a bit surprised this morning to get a newsletter I unsubscribed from recently. Then I scrolled to the end to view the unsubscribe information and read: "To unsubscribe please send an e-mail to xxx_unsub@news.xxx.com. If you have tried to unsubscribe and are still receiving the email, please reply to this message with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line." Is this standard for the publication, or was there a problem? I guess I have to wait and see if attempt number two to unsubscribe will be successful.

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 11, 2007

McCain E-mail Image Off the Mark?

What does an early primary season McCain supporter look like? Well, I don't want to resort to using stereotypes, but I guess the "type" or "types" I envision aren't exactly young chicks with trendy bright red hair. Anyway, I was perusing Email Data Source's archive of e-mails recently sent by John McCain 2008, and one sent on June 11 to promote the campaign's fundraising "Call Day" features the image below. Hmmm....

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 11, 2007

Goodmail Expands to an Inbox Near You

Goodmail, the CertifiedEmail trusted class e-mail provider that raised industry reaction when AOL partnered with it to filter out unwanted messages, announced CertifiedEmail support for Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon customers. Each ISP will enable the service's blue ribbon envelope icon to signify mail sent through the system. Goodmail now serves seven ISPs, which the company said represents 60 percent of consumer e-mail users.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 1, 2007

Election '08: Edwards Site Link in Freebie Email

I visited with my old pal Bill McCloskey the other day; he runs Email Data Source, a firm that tracks e-mails sent by marketers. He's also been tracking what the political campaigns have been sending out. Well, he stumbled upon an intriguing link in a newsletter sent by FreebieSwamp, a service that sends e-mails filled with links to free stuff online. A recent FreebieSwamp e-mail included -- buried within a virtual quagmire of links to free Reynold's Wrap samples and a free CD from General Tire -- a link to the John Edwards campaign site.

So, my initial reaction was, "Wow, I wonder if the Edwards camp is using affiliate marketing to drive traffic to its campaign merchandise." Well, that's a "no" according to the campaign. A spokesperson told me, "Our campaign had nothing to do with the URL ending up on this list. The newsletter creator must have found the bumper sticker online and added it."

After thinking about it and getting a better sense of FreebieSwamp -- which appears to be a list of free offers put together by a woman named Julie who sells candles on Ebay she promotes thorugh JuliesCandleCottage.com -- I figured that is most likely the way the URL ended up there. But, who knows. I still haven't heard back from Julie or anyone else at FreebieSwamp.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2007

AOL Tests Vista Gadget

Windows Vista has the ability for content owners and marketers to build desktop widgets to make their platforms more accessible. AOL just released its early version of the AOL Social Mail Gadget at dev.aol.com/mail. The widget gives users one-click, desktop access to e-mail, AIM, photos and video. The top five contacts float to the top so users can immediately message their friends and family.

The widget give AOL desktop visibility to all users. It won't immediately run advertising, but it's not out of the question. "As part of AOL's audience and monetization growth strategy, we are going to look at optimized monetization opportunities surrounding the gadget," said an AOL spokesperson.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 17, 2007

Hormel OKs Spamhaus' Trademark

At a dinner tonight in Boston, the evening before the Authentication and Online Trust Summit, I had the great privilege of sharing at table with Spamhaus Chief Information Officer Richard Cox.

He shared with me that Hormel, makers of SPAM (the tinned meat product), recently (and graciously) allowed Spamhaus to trademark their name. That's quite a breakthrough for the spam-fighting non-profit, and certainly a first for Hormel. The company awoke one day and found itself the owner of a household name -- for all the wrong reasons.

Richard was a delightful dining companion. He's colorful, articulate, and very amusing. Even if he weren't, it would have been exciting enough to meet a representative of the powerful, UK-based spam fighting organization. Historically, Spamhaus has kept quite a low profile.

"That's about to change," Richard smiled, enigmatically.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 9, 2007

Google Canvasses Students on E-Mail Habits

Google's asking university students to tell them their thoughts on campus e-mail.

The survey asks students about their e-mail habits and preferences, as well as poses questions about usage of other online applications.

"Since e-mail is such a vital tool for managing academic careers – used to coordinate study groups, organize campus activities, or communicate directly with their professors – this generation of college students includes some of the most knowledgeable consumers of online applications ever," said Jeff Keltner, Google manager of collaboration products for education, in a statement.

Looks like the search giant, which we all know is about to become an online-tool giant (think docs, spreadsheets, calendars, Gmail, etc.) is doing some in-depth research with a tech savvy, early adopter audience.

Hope they share the results.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 5, 2007

A Yen for Easter Eggs

Tokyoflash just e-mailed a mighty clever and very seasonal promotion: an invitation to an Easter egg hunt through its Web site.

Five egg icons are hidden on pages throughout the site, the online store for the cult watch brand. Each of the five eggs contains a letter. Once you've located all five, the letters can be rearranged into an Easter-related word, earning the diligent ¥1500 (US$12.65) off their order.

This is a smart promotion. Tokyoflash sells only one thing to a dedicated audience, many of whom collect the models. The goal of this campaign isn't just to get users to click through to the site, but to click through the site. Amazon couldn't get away with it, but a specialty merchant such as this one certainly can.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2007

Yahoo Mail: Space Is the Place

Yahoo Mail will begin offering unlimited e-mail storage in May. That's way up from the 4MB it offered consumers when its free service launched 10 years ago, and certainly an upgrade from the 1G it proffered in 2005, when all the free online mail services faced the 2G Gmail challenge.

Clearly, the portal is trying to build traffic and loyalty. That's good for consumers, and the advertisers trying to reach them. In reality, though, it's another step towards the new norm. Your Gmail account may say it's limited to 3G now, but fill it up and you're automatically accorded plenty more wiggle room.

E-mail is no longer just about e-mail. It's about your photos, videos and documents residing on the Web, not on a single hard drive or device. The portals want your loyalty. Increasingly, this means they want consumers to entrust them with their lives.

I remember when mine fit on a 5M hard drive. My, how you've grown.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 26, 2007

'From' Field: Have We Met?

The City University of New York's (CUNY) Graduate Center often has very good lectures that are open to the public. Buy tickets online and unsurprisingly, you wind up on their e-mail list.

Unfortunately for this non-profit, the mailings that don't wind up in the spam folder often tend to get spiked into the trash, and for no other reason than the 'from' field contains the oblique name "Science & the Arts."

Nary a trace of CUNY, not even in the full address, which comes from PatronMail's equally opaque domain: pmailus.com.

This may fly with CUNY-centric students and faculty members, but the university's goal is to get paying members of the general public into their talks. As a New Yorker, I tend to think of CUNY as CUNY -- there are more than enough science and arts institutions to go around.

Reminds me of a service provider I formerly worked with. His company had a name, but his e-mails all came from "Steve."

That's another instance of too common, too vague, and too spammy-sounding a 'from' field.' Above all, what these 'from' fields realy have in common is they reflect how the senders think about themselves, not about how clients and prospects think about them.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 15, 2007

Little Things Mean a Lot

An e-mail that just arrived from AKQA bore this little graphic in the footer.

It made me stop and think - in a good way. The message is a small but thoughtful one. It generates a warm feeling about the sender and the company.

E-mail is just as green as you want it to be.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2007

A Quarter of Fortune 500s Authenticate E-Mail

The Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) just announced a quarter of Fortune 500 companies now authenticate their e-mail and domains, an important step in combating phishing and other nefarious practices.

In the past 20 months, this group's Sender ID adoption has soared from a mere seven percent to over 25 percent..

E-mail authentication has been the subject of an impressive push from government and trade organizations including the FTC. It's also a requirement for members of the Direct Marketing Association and Email Sender and Provider Coalition, (ESPC). These groups estimate more than 85 percent of all e-mail marketers are now compliant. Authentication is also a best practice reccomended by TRUSTe, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).

AOTA's ">Authentication Summit takes place in Boston this year. I'll be speaking -- but mostly listening -- to a great lineup of industry experts as they discuss the very critical issues of online authentication, identity, and reputation.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2007

New Google Ads: Gmail Theater

There's a unique video campaign for Gmail running on The Wall Street Journal (ClickZ first noticed it yesterday). Introduced by "Kai, one of the engineers behind Gmail," the ads spin a handful of geeky-cute tales that use puppets made from office supplies to convey the e-mail platform's key features. One interesting thing about the WSJ placement is how it's hosted and tracked. While the unit does have some nice rich media features, including the ability to cycle through several ads and scroll through tips, it's fundamentally a YouTube-enabled widget. That means the videos are publicly hosted on YouTube, and can also be shared or embedded elsewhere on the Web. It's ad trafficking made transparent to the user.

Update: Amit Agarwal wrote in to clarify that this is an AdSense unit. Amit's blog, Digital Inspiration, has a screen grab and notes the YouTube player is 250x200 pixels and is embedded in an AdSense unit that's 300x250 pixels.

RSS readers: click through to see the video.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 26, 2007

E-Mail Marketing in a Box

In a box may be oversimplifying, but is a sense, that's what The E-Mail Marketing Kit is.

ClickZ's e-mail columnist extraordinaire, Jeanne Jennings, has just published this indispensable guide for e-mail marketers. It exhaustively covers every single step of the e-mail process, from developing strategy to getting messages into inboxes and complying with spam legislation.

The fact that the "book" is printed in the format of a tabbed binder makes everything you need to find almost ridiculously easily accessible. In an instant, it guides you through every e-mail related task on the table, from securing budget ("Why e-mail?) to tracking, reporting, list rental, design, and delivery.

The real value-add to this highly informational volume is a template-packed companion CD-ROM that will speed marketers through tedious processes such as creating RFPs, vetting and comparing ESPs, proofing, cost analysis, even templates for both marketing and newsletter e-mail messages.

If you're involved in e-mail marketing, you probably need this book.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 22, 2007

Buy This Or We'll Blow Up Your PC

To the list of menaces threatening the lowly inbox we can now apparently add exploding video offers. A new novelty application called BigString Marketer Pro lets marketers send e-mail blasts containing offers that can be programmed to self-destruct at a specified time. The tool attempts to "introduce a sense of urgency and excitement by creating time-sensitive video offers that self destruct,” according to a statement from BigString CEO and President Darin Myman.

Has anyone seen this in action? Do clouds of smoke fill your inbox, blacking out competing offers?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2007

Press Release or Spam?

Scanning my e-mail includes the compulsory activity of deleting spam on first sight. It's second nature. Which is why when I was scanning the wires a press release with the title "1,600 Per Cent Increase in Revenues Could be Yours" made me go for the delete button. Maybe you've got a service to sell, but the first step the marketing guys at this company should have done was to make the differentiation between the pitch and the multitude of spam. How is this different from the pure junk titled, "Play and make big money.," "Develop your business using our company MHII.OB now" or simply "reputable" I'm about to trash from my e-mail?

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EEC Releases E-Mail Rendering Report

The E-mail Experience Council just released results of a report authored by co-founder (and ClickZ columnist) Jeanniey Mullen.

The study examined 1,000 messages, both B2C and B2B. Twenty-one percent of the e-mails appeared completely blank when images were turned off (or stripped) inside a variety of e-mail clients. An additional 28 percent did show at least some relevant copy, but had no working links.

The report concludes over 70 percent of marketers are struggling to get their mailing rendered on the receiving end, and virtually none have begun to grapple with how rendering issues translate to mobile devices.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 10, 2007

Time to Change Your E-Mail Templates?

ESP EmailLabs says it's time for B2C marketers to through out their old templates and replace them with longer, narrower versions.

The betas of both Yahoo's and Microsoft's online e-mail clients enable the preview pane by default but these spaces are much smaller than what consumers were hitherto used to. Hence, e-mailers are advised to put calls-to-action and other critical information at the top of messages.

“B-to-C marketers who want big results had better start thinking small,” said Stefan Pollard, the company's director of consulting services and ClickZ's e-mail deliverability columnist. “Many are completely unaware that preview panes and automatically blocked images can make their current design templates virtually unreadable. If they were to use a third-party rendering tool to actually test how their e-mails look in consumers’ inboxes, they might be shocked.”

More reasoning is in a press release, but I'm guessing Stefan's going to provide additional insight in his next column.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 15, 2006

Are you using the right criteria to choose an ESP?

It seems that many marketers are not looking at the appropriate criteria when it comes time to choose an e-mail service provider (ESP).

A recent JupiterResearch executive survey found that most e-mail executives shop for an ESP based on reputation of the provider (55%) and overall cost (51%). After that, the next most important criteria are industry expertise and deliverability services, each chosen by 43% of respondents.

None of those choices is surprising, but what is a bit unexpected is that things like number of e-mail marketing features (22%), integration with other applications (16%) and multi-channel marketing services (14%) were not important to many of the respondents.

When it came to features, the only one that a majority of respondents could agree on was usability of the application, chosen by 61% of respondents. After that, the most mentioned basic features are ability to use multiple lists (36%), basic personalization (36%) and content management (34%). Advanced features that respondents most look for include customized reporting and analysis (39%), multiuser support (29%), and subscriber-level response data, surveying tools and segmentation capabilities, which all tied at 20%.

"Usability is critical and has impact on production costs. However, marketers must ensure they are properly focused on features such as list management, reporting, segmentation, and content management in the ESP selection process," writes JupiterResearch analyst David Daniels.

If marketers are not focusing on these features because they consider them "table stakes," thinking all ESPs have them, they'd be wrong. While 96% of ESPs have segmentation capabilities, only 86% offer definable fields, dynamic content, or A/B testing. Only 82% offer image hosting or renaming of links, and a mere 64% offer list hygiene, and 50% offer frequency caps, all of which are basic features, according to Daniels.

For advanced features, 86% offer multiuser support or message throttling, 79% offer event triggers or a preference center, 68% allow rules-based content, 64% provide tools for continuity mailings or polls, and only 29% offer animated testing.

But picking an ESP with the most available features is not the best way to choose, Daniels said. Instead, marketers should develop their e-mail strategies and map them to features they need for their program.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2006

An E-mail Marketer's To-do List

During the final session of the ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing conference, five panelists were asked a series of questions and given 1 minute each to respond. When asked, "What two things should e-mail marketers be doing, but aren't?", they came up with a varied list of action items:

Jeanne Jennings, online marketing consultant:
1. Really look at content to make sure it's relevant and does what you want.
2. Segmentation. There's so much you can do, but don't go overboard. Come up with logical groups.

Jordan Ayan, CEO of SubscriberMail:
1. Testing. Not enough e-mail marketers are testing their subject lines, creative, or content.
2. Make sure you're checking deliverability stats.

Jack Aaronson, CEO of the Aaronson Group:
1. Testing. Once you're done with the strategy and creative, you're still not done. You need to test, make changes, and test again.
2. Immediacy. Even beyond relevance, you should be looking at Web site clickstream data to see what people are interested in now, not just what their profile says they may be interested in some time.

Al DiGuido , former president and CEO of Epsilon Interactive:
1. Customer retention. Considering the time and money spent on acquisition, marketers should be spending more time on customer retention.
2. Think about how to react to non-responders, instead of focusing solely on those who respond to an initial e-mail campaign.

Jeanniey Mullen, senior director of e-mail marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide:
1. Landing page optimization. Marketers will see lots of attrition if they send users to a catch-all landing page.
2. Establish a corporate welcome campaign. Reach out to new customers, new subscribers, and set expectations for what you promise to deliver in the relationship, and what they can expect from you.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Four Tenets of Integrated Marketing

David Daniels, VP and research director at Jupiter Research, shared his "Four Tenets of Integrated Marketing" yesterday at the ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing conference in New York:

1. Begin with the End in Mind
Daniels said e-mail apps were designed incorrectly 10-12 years ago, when the process was to compile a list and send batch e-mail. The applications today are still tied to a linear production process, and don't provide adequate time to think strategically. Instead, marketers should be goal-oriented, testing their campaigns against the desired outcomes and making constant adjustments.

2. Gain Buy-in Within Your Organization
Focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) will help e-mail marketers show the value of their program to the wider organization, which in turn will net them more resources dedicated to them. It will also allow them to take advantage of opportunities across the company to create incremental acquisition opportunities within existing marketing efforts, but they must first be able to explain the value of each e-mail address.

3. Pay Attention to Customer Behavior
The e-mail marketer's focus should be on engagement. They need to come up with some sort of engagement quotient, measuring the effects of clicks, opens, unsubscribes, delivery.

4. Create Leverage
This is done by integrating and automating as much as possible, such as using triggers to send out relevant messages or making the most of transactional messages.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 25, 2006

The Four Truths about E-mail as a Branding Vehicle

At the ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing conference today, Jeanniey Mullen, senior partner & senior director of e-mail marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide, shared " Four Truths about E-mail as a Branding Vehicle":
1. E-mail delivery and rendering is not only a critical but strategic aspect of your messaging efforts
2. Branding in an e-mail is = to Word of Mouth marketing. Caution is advised
3. E-mail can no longer be thought of as "a single communication vehicle" – e-mail has evolved into the backbone of digital communication
4. There distinction between direct and brand is disappearing. E-mail is the driver!

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 24, 2006

Plotting Your E-mail Strategy

No one needs more e-mail, but they do need relevant information. That's where your e-mail strategy should start, and then details like frequency can be worked out, Jeanne Jennings, online marketing consultant and ClickZ columnist, told the crowd at the ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing conference today.

Jennings suggested starting by reviewing your business strategy, and seeing where your current e-mail program fits in or doesn't fit. A look at strengths and weaknesses of your own and competitors' programs can help identify where the opportunities lie. At that point, you consider your target audience, goals, and content resources to determine what to send, who you're going to send it to, and how often to send it.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

Utah Leaks Minors' E-Mail Addresses

Just how is it that any combination of the state of Utah and Internet regulation leads to such moronic ineptitude? For years, the state has passed one bad law after another to protect its citizenry against the scouge of the Web.

Last year, the state's clueless lawmakers instituted the Child Protection Registry under the auspices of the Utah Division of Consumer Protection. The registry consists of the e-mail addresses of minors. Adult-oriented Web sites and e-mailers are supposed to screen their databases against the registry before mailing.

It should come as no surprise that the Consumer Protection bureau has divulged the e-mail addresses of several minors in the registry. It wasonly a matter of time. Perhaps the gaffe will induce Michigan, the other state with a similar registry, to reconsider the wisdom of maintaining a database that's a virtual goldmine for spammers and pedophiles.

And to think a do-not-e-mail registry was lose to becoming part of the CAN-SPAM Act. I can still recall Sen. Chuck Schumer banging his fist on the lectern at the FTC hearings in D.C., intoning "military style encryption!"

Do-not-e-mail databases are not safe, they're accidents waiting to happen. Except, of course, in Utah, where the accident already happened.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

Please Register for ClickZ's E-mail Conference!

Four years ago, ClickZ launched a series of truly groundbreaking e-mail conferences. They were the first such events for marketers that seriously educate them on issues such as spam, permission, and privacy.

With the passage of CAN-SPAM, interest in, and furor around, responsibly and effectively using e-mail as a marketing medium dwindled. We hardly think the discussion is over. E-mail trends and tactics change all the time, while issues unheard of just a few years ago, such as deliverability, are posing new challenges.

So we hope you can join us, along with many of ClickZ's Expert columnists, for ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing in New York, October 24-25. Register before Friday for a discounted ticket.

We hope to see you there!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cause-Related E-mail Address

Portal BreastCancerAwareness.com is offering their domain name as an e-mail address and a fundraising channel.

For $20 per year, users can get a personalized e-mail address at the domain. E-mail provider Everyone.net is powering the service.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 19, 2006

The Verified Sender Breakdown

Im trying to send an e-mail the head of corporate communications at one of the top-4 ISPs this morning -- to no avail.

I know he has my contact info, but probably not the new-ish e-mail address that came about when ClickZ was sold. His mailbox, meanwhile, will only shoot over an autoresponder asking me to click the link and prove I'm real.

But when I click, here's what's on the landing page:

!-- Addme
Missing required parameter: id
--

It's another variation on the infinite loop of non-communication such authenticaton methods can engender (the more common variation is the invisible and eternal conversation your autoresponder might have with my autoresonder, were we both to use that method of authenticaton).

In this case, however, I can't e-mail the head of communications. At an ISP! That's pretty bad.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2006

Gmail Plus

Yahoo's e-mail beta went alpha yesterday.

Today brings Gmail Plus.

And a lesson.

via Threadwatch

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Optimize for E-Mail First, Mobile Later

If you're not a journalist, you've probably never seen the e-mails of press releases PR Newswire sends to the media. But you're welcome to share our pain. Just click to enlarge the image.

Reproduced is the HTML dispatch. Text doesn't fare much better. Headlines aren't bolded. Worse, they run into the end of the preceding item without so much as a paragraph break. Just about the only thing that really pops for harried, headline-scanning editors and reporters is the useless "get" link which, if you click it, theoretically e-mails you the full text of the press release.

None of this has changed since...well, forever. It's not like we don't forward inquiries and complaints into the black hole that is PR Newswire's media inquiry service.

Oh, and unlike their major competitor, PR Newswire's RSS feeds aren't even customizable.

Yet the company keeps crowing about its digital updates. Yesterday, the announcement was news feeds for mobile devices optimized for both search and formatting.

"People using their mobile devices to search the web should be able to access news releases that are formatted for the small screen. We're committed to solving that problem,” said COO Dave Armon.

Dave, the media has a problem. We can't make heads or tails of your e-mails -- the ones you send multiple times per day. We delete them because we literally can't read them.

Do your clients know we can't decode the press releases they pay you to get in front of our eyes?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 25, 2006

Freenigma vs. Contextual E-mail Advertising

Freenigma is a free Firefox extension that scrambles your e-mail into gobbeltygook until you enter a password.

In a world of warrentless wiretapping and other forms of domestic spying, it's not at all hard to understand why a cryptography package might appeal to many e-mail senders and receivers.

But as usual, there are marketing implications, too. Gmail ads are likely to be pretty un-contextual when displayed next to what appears to be columns of random text.

via BoingBoing

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 11, 2006

ClickZ E-mail Problems

All you ClickZ readers who've tried to edit your e-mail subscriptions this week know we're having some hiccups in our system, the result of migrating to new servers and templates. The most egregious problems are failures of the site to subscribe and unsubscribe people on request, but we've also had reports of e-mail confirmations not received and e-mail coming from an unrecognized "elabs6" domain, instead of ClickZ.com.

Please accept our apologies for any frustration you may have experienced, and know that the breakdown is very temporary. We at ClickZ take your subscription preferences seriously, and we're doing our best to iron out the kinks as quickly as we can.

Finally, we're aware there are also a few problems with the Web site itself. All part of the joy of switching servers.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 7, 2006

Gmail Sees All, Knows All

Google probably knows more about you than anyone, or anything, in the universe. This new Gmail/Calendar feature has me convinced.

It appeared in the Gmail sidebar where the contextual ads go. I'd exchanged e-mails about meeting someone this Sunday. "Meeting you" wasn't in the subject line of either message, but appears in the first sentence of both. Neither of us specified the date or p.m., only "Sunday at 6:00." Google correctly extrapolated that information all by itself. OK, it does know my preferred time zone is EST. The person I'm corresponding with is not writing from a Gmail account, by the way.

Gmail has been doing this sort of thing with package tracking, but arguably a UPS or USPS tracking number is much more uniquely identifiable and templated than the exchange with the woman I'm meeting Sunday.

The speed with which Google has integrated Gmail and Calendar is marvelous -- and a little alarming, too.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nonprofits Fume over Congressional E-mail Barrier

Advocacy groups are up-in-arms over a new e-mail obstacle congressional offices have enabled. They're calling it "Logic Puzzle;" essentially, as detailed last month in the Washington Post, if you want to send your elected federal officials a message via e-mail, you've got to answer some simple arithmetic (3x1=x, that sorta thing).

A story/opinion piece on Personal Democracy Forum describes it this way:

While easy for most people to solve, the puzzle is designed to force you to go to the lawmaker's own website to send your message, rather than sending it from an organizational site where you have helpful background information and assistance drafting language. Nonprofits see this in terms of our basic constitutional right to freely petition government, and agree that blocking software must go.

Of course we should always be able to freely contact the folks we elect as our representatives, and solving a puzzle beforehand, though painless for many of us, seems uncalled for. The thing is, the steady onslaught in cookie-cutter messages sent through advocacy group Web sites is taking up more and more time to wade through.

Consider this: Last year, I wrote a piece for Personal Democracy Forum (I was associate editor there at the time) about the efforts by advocacy groups on the left and right to inspire supporters to contact key senators regarding John Bolton's nomination for UN Ambassador. I spoke with a few Capitol Hill staffers, and their sentiments were all pretty similar. The comments of Senator Lincoln Chafee's press secretary sum up the general consensus. He told me that although the staff gives some attention to emails and calls initiated by advocacy groups, "after a while when you have so many calls and emails and blast faxes from one phone number, impact subsides.”

One of the main problems is that a good chunk of these digital missives are sent by people outside a Congressperson's region or state. And, the truth is, they're not going to take someone's opinion into consideration if he can't vote for 'em.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 29, 2006

Google Checkout: Check Out of Commercial E-Mail

"Control commercial spam" is a Google Checkout value proposition. "You can keep your email address confidential, and easily turn off unwanted emails from stores where you use Google Checkout," reads my account page.

Didn't work at Starbucks, where I couldn't even find a Google Checkout option. But check out the new Buy.com checkout page (left). Bypassing all that merchant registration tedium really will be advantageous for e-commerce players. I've seen this functionality on some, but only a very few, Yahoo Shopping merchants.

This is a concept we'll be seeing more of in the future. How will e-mail marketing programs adapt? Under CAN-SPAM, businesses can e-mail existing customers. What happens when businesses no longer have their customers' e-mail addresses? (Google is, after all, calling this "commercial spam").

Merchants are going to have to get very creative at developing incentives if they expect to build their e-mail lists in the future.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 26, 2006

The Wrong Way to Grow An E-Mail List

After confirming a dinner reservation, the hostess requested my e-mail address "for our mailing list."

While complying would certainly qualify as an opt-in, telephone dictation is just too dangerous a tactic for building a list. Typos, misspellings and mis-hearing (was that 'b' as in "boy or 'v' as in "victory"?) will inevitably result in unhygenic lists. That, in turn, will negatively impact deliverability of the entire list.

They know I'm coming in for dinner anyway. Why not ask then, if they have to ask? Some restaurants are beginning to leave a card with the bill requesting an opt-in to e-newsletters. That has its risks, too (handwriting isn't always crystal clear). But it has to be better than a game of telephone.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2006

Candidate Creates Special Video for E-Mail

The Internet enables political advertisers unprecedented abilities to get their messages out quickly and unencumbered by media interpretation. And while political candidates have begun to show an interest in employing Web video, most have simply repurposed TV spots
for their Web sites and video ads.

Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick broke that mold recently with an attack e-mail linking to a video produced for that express purpose. In it, the candidate speaks from his campaign headquarters about his opponent Christopher Gabrieli's choice to not accept public funding in order to spend as much as he'd like on his campaign.

As a Boston Globe article described it, "The video shows Patrick sitting in his campaign office alongside busy campaign volunteers. He is slumped forward slightly, speaking directly, sometimes emphatically, to the camera. At the end, he asks the viewer to join the campaign's first canvassing effort this Saturday."

I spoke with Brian Reich, director of Boston Operations for political consulting firm Mindshare Interactive Campaigns about what he considered to be an innovative approach to video e-mail. "He could have put a TV commercial up, but instead he recorded something special for this e-mail."

There's very little cost for this type of effort in comparison to creating a TV ad, plus recipients have the ability to pass along an e-mail message to spread the word. It'll be interesting to see if other candidates this year take Patrick's lead here and use Web video in this compelling way.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 22, 2006

Yahoo E-Mail - Send Verification

Although this has apparently been around for a few months, I hardly ever use my Yahoo e-mail account, so it was news to me.

When I hit 'send,' a verification page intercepted the process. While we're all familiar with services from companies such as SpamArrest and Vanquish that ask non-whitelisted senders to verify themselves before a message can be delivered, this is the first time I've had to verify myself as a sender on my own e-mail provider's site.

Naturally, to get this far in the process, I was already logged in to Yahoo e-mail as a registered user. And my Yahoo e-mail account dates all the way back to practically my earliest days on the Web -- the post-Mosaic era.

Hey, Yahoo. Don't I get any credit for over a decade of good behavior?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

June 19, 2006

New Gmail Ad Position?

Most people around the office are still getting the usual news headline feeds, but a few minutes ago I was served an ad for a cat product (there's cat sitting related e-mail in my inbox, so I'm guessing this is contextual). When I hit 'refresh', an ad for Forbes popped up.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 2, 2006

French Used "Email" Term All Along

Does anybody remember when the French government decided to ban use of the word "e-mail," hoping to cleanse the language of English impurities? Well, it turns out it was a French word all along (sorta).

Here's how I discovered this: There's a calendar in my kitchen featuring 19th century French ad posters. Today I flipped it to June (not bad for me -- usually I wait till mid month) and noticed the word "email" in an ad for a paint brand called L'astrolin. The full text: "L'astrolin peinture email donne brilliant parfait inalterable." I won't do a parfait translation, but it means something like L'astrolin paint gives you brilliant, perfect color that doesn't fade, or change, something along those lines.

And that pesky "email" term? I've gathered from looking at a couple translation sites that it's like a stain or the kind or thing that's applied to ceramics before they're baked. Maybe like enamel? (I'm sure I'm off on this and my above translation, so if anyone wants to clarify, please comment!)

Of course, our "e-mail" isn't derived from theirs, but I thought this was kind of an ironic tidbit anyway.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 1, 2006

AOL Experiencing System-wide Outages

AOL is right now in the midst of a massive, system-wide e-mail outage, ClickZ has learned. Word of the problem, complete with tales of AOL asking ESPs to stop sending mail to its users, is flying all around the INBOX event in San Jose, where our own Pamela Parker is speaking on a panel today.

It was confirmed by AOL spokesperson Nicholas Graham:

"Late this morning, an e-mail software issue started to cause delays in the sending and receiving of AOL e-mails for our members and AOL.com users. We are in the process of implementing a resolution and investigating its cause," Graham said. "All e-mails sent by AOL members and individual Internet users during this temporary hiatus will be delivered to email inboxes. During this time, some e-mails will be able to be sent and received intermittently."

Graham was unable to say whether the outages were caused by any kind of malevolent attacks, but AOL has certainly not been making friends lately with its CertifiedEmail program.

UPDATE: According to Graham, the outage lasted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., when millions of messages were stuck in a queue. All the affected messages were successfully delivered, and this "rare and isolated incident" will not impact users again, Graham said in a statement.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 23, 2006

Dirty E-mail Politics in the Big Easy

If you're riveted by dirty politics, you'll dig this tale of e-mail intrigue reported by PoliticsLA.com (an affiliate of regional news network NewsHorn.com).

This past Thursday, an e-mail went out to recipients of New Orleans City Council District A incumbent Jay Batt's newsletter with the subject header, "[Jay Batt Campaign] Do Not Vote For Mitch Landrieu." Landrieu was the main contender running against embattled mayoral incumbent, Ray Nagin, of Katrina fame. (Landrieu lost in the close runoff, by the way. So did Batt.)

Here's the crux of the message:

Mitch Landrieu has retracted an endorsement he made of my candidacy. I am appalled that Mitch would do this and I call on all my supporters to refrain from voting for Mitch on Saturday.

Beychok speculates that Batt's campaign actually sent this out to stir up negative press against the Midura camp. Could be, but get this. I did some searches and discovered that this "kujione" person posted to the "Rebuild Lakeview" Yahoo Group (a forum for discussing the New Orleans neighborhood), regarding none other than Batt:

Oh My God! go to www.jaybatt.com and read his blog for today. He went postal - no offense valiant postal workers - on his opponents. Called Midura a "desparate housewife" and sal. That is kinda offensive language and insulting to all the women who are out there trying to do something to help rebuild like the Women of the Storm, Peggy Wilson, Jane Booth etc.

Guess he was having a bad day.

A political consultant I know says that a friend knows Beychok and that it's just like him to do this sort of thing.

Either way, the fact is that the Web not only enables new venues for nasty campaigning; it allows for super-immediate responses. The reporter for the LAPolitics story noted that the Batt campaign responded in minutes with an e-mail (and on his campaign site) calling the content in the "Do Not Vote For Mitch Landrieu" false and stating:

Real messages from the Jay Batt campaign can only come from someone with a jaybatt.com e-mail address and there are only three of those in existence....Several attorneys who have received this message have advised us that his hacking into our listserv and sending an unauthorized message is a federal crime. We are looking into that matter. It is too bad that the Midura campaign is so desperate that they have had to resort to illegal means.

Thanks to Mandate Media's Politics and Technology newsletter for the heads up on this sleazy Big Easy story!

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

E-Mail Senders: Get Personal

Phishing accounts for 1 percent of e-mail traffic according to security firm IronPort, and can be detrimental to the brand it pretends to be. David Harley from Ferris Research suggests that personalized e-mail is a good anti-phishing tactic.

Greeting a recipient with "Dear Customer" or an e-mail address uses information available to phishers. If the e-mail begins with the recipient's name is often more than an impersonal bot is capable of. Addressees are less likely to suspect a phony e-mail if it's got a little more than what a computer is capable of scraping.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 9, 2006

AOL Quietly Begins Accepting Goodmail Certified E-mail

Yes, it's probably happening right now. Goodmail Certified Email messages are wending their way to AOL subscribers. The first such messages began last week, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham tells ClickZ. So far it's just one (unnamed) sender whose messages are slipping past spam filters and getting marked with special icons, but Graham says other senders are queued up and ready to start soon. Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the rest of the DearAOL-ers are speaking up again in opposition of the system.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 8, 2006

Goodmail Adds 15 ESP Partners

Goodmail, the e-mail accreditation provider generating controversy through its partnership with AOL, has signed up 15 new e-mail service providers to implement its CertifiedEmail service, including BlueStreak, Acxiom Digital, e-Dialog, Epsilon Interactive, ExactTarget, Harte-Hanks Postfuture, Responsys, Yesmail and Zustek.

On the receiving side, besides AOL, Goodmail is expected to be implemented soon by Yahoo, though no details have been shared.

The reputation space is wide open, with differing methodologies competing to see which can gain ground. Goodmail's per-message fees strike some as the equivalent of e-mail postage, and has legislators and special interest groups whipped into a frenzy.

Other reputation providers, like Habeas and Return Path, take a more services-based approach, helping providers improve their sending practices instead of paying to send mail.

Which one of these methods will work best? Or will each find its own niche? Let me know what you think in the comments, or drop me a line at kevin-at-clickz-dot-com.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 2, 2006

Who's Authorized to Hit 'Send'?

I've wiped myself off another e-mail list. And because the organization offers no RSS feeds, consider us permanently incommunicado.

For years I've subscribed to newsletters and breaking news alerts from a non-profit community environmental organization. Problem is, their e-mails are increasingly sent by one particular officer who's treating the medium more like her personal blog than as a communications channel for the non-profit's members and the local community.

Recent dispatches have centered around Internet security, online privacy (a topic I consider myself a bit of an authority on), and yesterday, a missive about how this individual read a great article on "good pills, bad pills" (along with an invitation to contact her for a copy).

My unsubscribe request was accompanied by an explanation of why I no longer wish to receive the group's communications (no response since I sent it last night). The wildly off-topic messages from that one individual began to outnumber communications related to the group's mission.

Worse, they seriously damage the group's credibility.

Who's authorized to hit 'send' in your organization? Can they do so with no additional approval process?

You might want to rethink that.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple Wants You to Spread the Word

Go forth and podcast.

It's obvious why Apple would have a vested interest in promoting podcasting, but it was still a surprise to get an e-mail from the folks in Sunnyvale urging their users to explore B2B podcasting:

"Promoting your business just got easier. Create a podcast with GarageBand, post it to iTunes in minutes, and reach customers, clients, and partners in a whole new way. Chefs are sharing recipes. Maternity store owners are giving the lowdown on diaper bags. And other professionals are airing business discussions, marketing new products and services, and keeping people informed."

The penny dropped, apparently. Apple's selling plenty of iPods, of course, but now they're obviously working to leverage podcasting across hardware, software and e-commerce platforms.

The landing page disappoints, though. All it does is point to Apple's retail store locations.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 26, 2006

RSS Panel at Ad:Tech

I'm moderating a panel at Ad:Tech this afternoon, "RSS Deconstructed and Demystified." The speaker linup is stellar: Scott Wilder from Intuit, Jon Gib of Nielsen NetRatings, Ave. A/Razorfish's Mark Stephens and Skylist's Josh Baer.

Obviously, it's a very topical topic. We'll be looking at case studies, metrics and the impact RSS is having on e-mail. Hope to see you there -- if you're here.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 23, 2006

Verizon E-mail Blocking Continues

Despite a recently filed class action lawsuit against Verizon for blocking legitmate e-mail, the ISP's zeal for blocking appears to be unabated.

This weekend, Verizon began blocking some e-mail from Time Warner NYC's Roadrunner service, one of their chief broadband competitors in the New York market.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 21, 2006

Duelling E-Mail Visions in SF

A rollicking debate ensued when the Electronic Frontier Foundation put Esther Dyson (she of the pro-sender-pays editorial), Danny O'Brien and Mitch Kapor on stage at the Roxie Theater last night. Folks like Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras and e-mail pioneer Dave Crocker were in attendance, along with a pretty engaged crowd.

While the topic was almost certainly prompted by the AOL/Goodmail controversy, the debate was more theoretical, about whether a system in which the sender pays makes sense for e-mail. To make it brief, Dyson's point (which I tend to agree with) is that we should try anything and everything that seems to hold the promise of stopping the spam problem, and market forces will correct the system should things go wrong. O'Brien's main argument revolved around a few ideas: making people pay contributes to the digital divide; an "artificial market" creates perverse incentives (ISPs would have no incentive to develop their own anti-spam systems if they're making money from the likes of Goodmail); and that market forces can't necessarily work their magic in an environment where people have a high cost of switching ISPs (giving up their e-mail addresses). I'm sure I'm leaving something out here, but you get the gist.

All in all, a very satisfying and interesting debate. Considering the lengths to which anti-AOL/Goodmail activists have gone (accusing AOL of lying and deliberately blocking legitimate e-mail), I was surprised, but pleased, that it was so cordial and thought-provoking.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 20, 2006

Digital Impact to become Acxiom Digital

In a move that's likely to surprise few, e-mail marketing player Digital Impact is finally taking its acquirer's name, after it joined Acxiom last year. As of today, the division will now be called Acxiom Digital.

In addition, Acxiom Digital has a new president, Kevin H. Johnson, who was formerly VP of products and marketing for Digital Impact. The former CEO, William Park, now heads up Acxiom's InfoBase data business, Acxiom Direct, and Acxiom Digital.

On the product side, Acxiom Digital will continue to offer e-mail, search, RSS and landing page development. It's also branching out into lead generation, having recently launched HealthCareers.net. Johnson insists the company's sites will provide valuable content and utility for Web visitors, instead of being solely vehicles for lead gathering. The HealthCareers site, which lists only Sanford-Brown institutions currently, is the first in Acxiom Digital's first target segment, education. More sites and verticals are on the way, said Johnson, though he declined to elaborate.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 19, 2006

The International Spam Battle

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting behind new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommendations for international anti-spam efforts. It goes without saying that spam is a problem that has no borders, affecting consumers and marketers regardless of their physical locations. Here are a few of the recommended steps for governments outlined in a new "toolkit," as summarized by the FTC:

• Government enforcement agencies should have the necessary authority to take action against spammers located in their territory or against foreign spammers who target consumers in their territory.
  
• Government enforcement agencies should have the ability to share information with foreign law enforcement officials in appropriate cases.
  
• Government enforcement agencies should have the ability to provide investigative assistance to foreign authorities in appropriate cases, particularly in obtaining information or locating or identifying people.
  
• Government enforcement agencies should partner with industry and consumer groups to educate users and promote information sharing.
  
• Government enforcement agencies should cooperate with the private sector to facilitate the location and identification of spammers.
  
• Countries should cooperate in international enforcement efforts; efforts to reduce the incidence of inaccurate information about holders of domain names; and efforts to make the Internet more secure.
  

The toolkit Web site is really a fantastic resource -- sort of a jump-start for governments that haven't really thought about, or implemented, anti-spam regulations or enforcement efforts. International spam enforcement is a huge, complex endeavor, but efforts like these can certainly help governments make strides forward.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Authentication Adoption by the Numbers

E-mail infrastructure player IronPort, which monitors over 1/4 of global e-mail traffic through its SenderBase network, has some new statistics on the adoption of e-mail authentication technologies.

Key findings from the study include:
* 35% of all Internet email is now authenticated using the Sender ID Framework (SIDF)
* 9% of all Internet email is now using DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
* 75% of all Fortune 100 companies use SIDF for marketing related email, 45% use DKIM
* 9 of the top 10 most phished domains use SIDF, 5 out of 10 use DKIM

IronPort points to the results as evidence of critical mass, which it says signals that it's time for reputation services to emerge as the next step.

"Email authentication is a 'chicken or egg problem', with senders dependent on receivers and receivers on senders to get value from e-mail authentication. This study proves we have achieved critical mass and the benefits are accruing today," Patrick Peterson, IronPort's CTO, said in a statement.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 18, 2006

Anticipatory Marketing

A very smart e-mail just arrived from FreshDirect, New York City's online grocer.


A building worker strike is threatened in the city this coming Friday. "We anticipate a strike could bring delivery complications for your FreshDirect order," reads the message, "Since we may need to make additional arrangements during your delivery, please use the Your Account section of our website to make sure your phone number and contact information are accurate and up-to-date."

That's using your head. It's a great call-to-action for keeping customer records up to date. It's also going to stop a lot of customers from becoming disgruntled before the fact.

See? E-mail doesn't have to be sell, sell, sell. Often, it's better when it isn't.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

E-mail Authentication At Critical Mass?

In its 2003 Project Lumos white paper, the ESPC outlined the path to curbing spam, phishing, and other abusive e-mail practices. In it, the plan was made to push for widespread adoption of authentication services by senders and receivers first, and then to layer on reputation and accreditation services after that.

In a report released today, the ESPC found that 16 of the top 18 ISPs in the U.S. was applying authentication to outgoing e-mails, and eight of those ISPs were also checking for inbound authenticated e-mail and applying some sort of filter to the mail as a result.

Yahoo, Microsoft and Google were found to be the most assertive in their use of authentication. Yahoo and its cable and telecom partners are verifying incoming messages and signing outgoing messages using the DomainKeys cryptographic method, filtering e-mail as a result, and notifying users of passing and failing results. Microsoft performs similar functions using SPF and Sender ID records.

Google, whose Gmail is much smaller than Yahoo mail or MSN's Hotmail, is going all-out and matching Yahoo's use of DomainKeys, and also publishing SPF records for outgoing messages. Among other notable ISPs, AOL is publishing SPF and Sender ID records on outgoing messages, but not yet doing anything with incoming messages. Earthlink is signing messages with DomainKeys. A few other ISPs on the list, like Verizon, Roadrunner and NetZero, are publishing SPF records.

Now that the industry is nearing critical mass with authentication, the ESPC is beginning parallel efforts to promote the adoption of reputation services.

The full report is available at the ESPC's site.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 13, 2006

AOL Up to No Good? Probably Not.

The DearAOL Coalition are up in arms over what they're calling e-mail censorship by AOL, but AOL insists that's not the case.

Since February, the coalition has been railing against AOL's proposed e-mail certification program AOL is implementing with partner Goodmail, saying that the plan to charge for enhanced deliverability services threatens to undermine free e-mail as we know it.

The latest alarm being sounded by DearAOL is the coalition's accusation that AOL began blocking all e-mails that contain the DearAOL.com URL today, and stopped only after being "caught red-handed" by the coalition.

“Today’s events prove the DearAOL.com Coalition’s point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest in a free and open Internet,” Timothy Karr, campaign director of coalition member Free Press, said in a statement.

According to AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham, the blocked messages were the result of a "technical glitch" that affected "a range of URLs," and not just the DearAOL.com address.

"A number of companies and organizations contacted AOL today about this hardware glitch. Our postmaster and ops team identified the problem and it has been fixed," Graham said.

AOL's explanation makes more sense than the coalition's scenario. Given the volume of messages processed and the levels of filtering of its messages, there are bound to be occurrences like this. The DearAOL petition has been circulating freely through AOL's e-mail system since February, so it seems a bit odd that the company would suddenly decide to begin blocking them two months later. The fact that the "glitch" was resolved within hours indicates AOL was responsive to the problem, so it seems that the coalition is once again tilting at windmills.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

April 5, 2006

MoveOn Muddles AOL/Goodmail Issue

So, yesterday, while writing up a piece about a conference call with California State Senator Dean Florez regarding Monday's hearing on AOL's Goodmail's CertifiedE-mail service, an e-mail from Adam Green landed in my inbox. The civic communications director at MoveOn.org Civic Action wanted to be sure I knew that MoveOn, as a detractor of AOL's new optional paid certification through Goodmail Systems, thinks AOL and Goodmail have been lying for the past month since the DearAOL campaign launched.

"The blockbuster item," to come out of the hearing, as he put it, "was that Goodmail was forced to admit publicly that AOL’s pay-to-send system would do nothing to prevent spam. Goodmail’s admission debunked one of the prime lies that AOL has been telling the media and the public for the last month, and blew a hole right through AOL’s credibility and every single promise they’ve made to the public in this debate. Their days of saying 'trust us, we won’t hurt email' are over – their trust is gone.”

I have yet to see a transcript from the hearing, which supposedly will be available in a matter of weeks, so I have no way of confirming whether or not Goodmail debunked anything.

Green also sent me a list of links to stories featuring AOL and Goodmail saying, in his interpretation, that the certification system does fight spam (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,ABC News, USA Today, CNET, DM News)

Still, even Goodmail on its site notes, "The purpose of CertifiedEmail is to help email recipients identify authentic mail, not to prevent spam." And as most people familiar with the e-mail industry would agree, phishing, and all the other nefarious attempts at getting people to divulge sensitive information online via e-mail, fall under the spam umbrella. It's just that this added certification being offered deals more specifically with authentication in the hopes of gaining trust from users. Banks and e-commerce companies especially want to be able to use e-mail to send us account and transactional statements, which is where this added certification comes in.

"My understanding," I responded to Green, "is that the DearAOL petition is about something much larger than whether or not AOL called Goodmail an anti-spam solution," I wondered why this particular point was such a bone of contention. Here's what he wrote:

“AOL knows that preserving a free and open Internet is immensely popular with the public – so they manufactured what they thought would be an equally persuasive argument for their side. Pay-to-send is “anti-spam.” Everyone hates spam, right? The problem is, they were peddling lies – AOL’s email tax does nothing to reduce spam and their own partner has admitted it.”

I got a hold of AOL Spokesguy Nicholas Graham this morning and we talked about the issue. He said that MoveOn is "making very selective, unreasonable charges." He added that AOL has referred to the Goodmail certification as a "weapon" against phishing. "By tackling the phishing problem we do in a very real sense address the spam issue," he commented.

Honestly, I'm not sure why MoveOn is harping on this. The fact is that AOL has made a business decision to offer a product to clients that wish to pay for it. The concern regarding the potential for that product to harm the "free and open Internet" is legitimate. However, trying to out AOL and Goodmail as untrustworthy liars does nothing for the argument against the certification system. Not only does it muddle the issue; it makes the AOL/Goodmail detractors seem a bit petty.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Verizon Customers to be Compensated for E-Mail they Didn't Get

Marketers always say consumers will be angry if they don't receive e-mail they're expecting, and here's evidence of that. As part of a class action settlement proposal, Verizon Communications is offering customers of its DSL service payments for months in which it had an allegedly over-aggressive spam-blocking scheme in place. At the time, customers complained that Verizon was blocking mail from whole countries.

If a consumer failed to get mail from a European address from December 2004 to May 2005, the person can get $3.50 for each month in which that occurred. Same dollar amount for Asian addresses, but it covers October 2004 to May 2005. Verizon changed its spam-blocking policies in April of 2005, as outlined here.

The attorneys handling the case have set up a Web site at emailblockingsettlement.com to disseminate information and collect the data about potential members of the class.

Here's an AP story about the case.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 3, 2006

What's For Dinner? Not A Feed.

SpecialsByZip.com just launched an e-mail subscription service for New Yorkers. They'll send you a daily e-mail listing the daily specials at local restaurants.

Seems a no-brainer for a city with an estimated 60 percent of meals are eaten out-of-home every day -- the highest dining-out rate in the country.

But e-mail only? No RSS? C'mon guys, if it's about food -- feed us!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 31, 2006

RSS Means Change Your E-Mail Opt-In Model

The double confirmed opt-in e-mail subscription model has always been the highest industry standard. ClickZ's always been mighty proud to be the only publisher in our niche using it, too.

It's important to stay double-confirmed, but I see a change on the horizon the most ethical e-mails (ourselves included) are going to have to address sooner or later. And sooner is better, right?

After requesting a subscription on the Web site, a subscriber must first reply to an confirmation e-mail from the sender. This ensures the person didn't sign up by mistake, or were subscribed by someone else. In the case of ad-supported publications like ours, it proves our readers really want to receive our newsletters.

Now, thanks to the miracle of RSS, a bunch of early adopters (myself included) are migrating their e-mail subscriptions to their RSS readers.

Example: One of the most popular RSS services is Web-based Bloglines. It enables users to create a unique e-mail address for each subscription (e.g. username.27531127@bloglines.com). This helps keep your inbox clear and is a pretty good way to nail mailers who start spamming you or selling their lists to third parties, too.

Yet under this system, I'm unable to subscribe to ClickZ and other publications as my Bloglines address is receive-only. I can't confirm a subscription via e-mail under the subscriber address.

So we're going to look into modifying our double confirmed opt-in model -- without compromising its integrity. Perhaps we should give new subscribers the option of "reply to this e-mail" or "click this link to confirm your subscription."

Any other newsletter publishers out there grappling with this issue yet? My bet is you will be in six months to a year. What changes are your making to your own double opt-in systems?

We'd love to hear input on this issue. I'm moderating a panel on RSS at AdTech SF next month and this is a topic sure to come up.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Spam-Fighting Hardware for Consumers

It's disheartening to think there's a market out there for Spam Cube, a $150 appliance consumers install between their broadband modem and computer to block spam. David Pogue reviews it in today's "New York Times."

Enterprises have been using anti-spam hardware solutions for some time now. Pity to think that in the wake of CAN-SPAM and mighty efforts on the part of ISPs to fight the scourge, the spam keeps coming in volumes that impel regular people to fork over this kind of money for these types of solutions.

Moreover, Pogue got plenty of false positives, and the gizmo failed to flag his phishing messages.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 29, 2006

Advocacy Inc. Responds to Video E-mail Skepticism

I got a note from Maggie Duncan, Advocacy, Inc.'s assistant director of client relations, in regards to a post I made the other day. Basically, I questioned the impact of a video e-mail sent using Advocacy's system on behalf of Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman of California that linked to an interview of the candidate on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

I stated, "I get how this might make Sherman seem more hip to some voters, but to me it's just another example of political campaigns missing the point by thinking that goofy viral=votes. I don't think anybody's proved that yet, and I'd be surprised to see this sort of thing ever making a difference in terms of getting people to the polls or swaying votes."

Maggie wrote to me today in response and approved of me posting her message:

I saw your blog posting this week about the Brad Sherman for Congress video. Our point in sending out the video was as an example of successful video email, a tactic we're going to see more and more campaigns and elected officials using in the upcoming election season. From video newsletters to press releases and clips of (serious) political speeches, the impact of video email has shown itself to be immense. I included Rep. Sherman's campaign email to demonstrate how easy it is to embed a video image into the body of an email--thus making it much easier for people see it. With the technology our management system offers clients, recipients do not have to download video players onto their computers, and we're seeing very high click-through rates as a result.

The subject of the video is, of course, up to the campaign or official itself--I can't speak for the Sherman campaign on their strategy of sending out the Colbert Report interview through our system, except to say that it could be a good--albeit unique---way of getting their name out to thousands of young, plugged-in California voters.

....again, I think the really interesting aspect of all this isn't necessarily what works or what doesn't, but rather how fast and how successfully our capabilities are changing.


Another note: Though the e-mail is referred to one featuring "embedded video," it's not in actuality. According to Maggie, "most email clients aren't allowing streaming videos to be embedded in email bodies anymore--too many security concerns. So while the picture and link are embedded, the video itself is not. Many of our clients have the image pop open a new window that is hosted on our server, so it doesn't take the recipient to an outside website (like the Colbert Report site) but rather to a new, smaller window that pops up right on top of the image in the email and starts playing the video."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2006

Free Pot

The subject line in my inbox was pretty compelling. An offer like "Free Pot," after all, is hard to pass up... if you're into that kind of thing. Yes, Park Seed was offering a free pot if you bought any of five calla lillies. But, someone must have misunderstood. Today the company's e-mail subject line read "We Apologize, We Meant to Say Container." Inside, the text read: "We apologize for any confusion. This is the amazing deal we wanted to offer you." In case you thought they were dealing in some other type of product altogether.

P.S. Interestingly, they didn't change their offer code, so one still enters FREEPOT to take advantage of the deal.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Viral Email Featuring Goofy Porn Interview Misses Point

They say all publicity is good publicity. Still, I'm not sure why a Congressman running for re-election would want to send out an email promoting a parody interview during which Comedy Central's Reaganite-spoofing Stephen Colbert continuously insists that his district is a bastion of pornography.

I got a note from online political consulting company Advocacy, Inc. today promoting the company's email management services which were employed to send a message to over 11,000 people on behalf of Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman, who represents California's San Fernando Valley:



"We may not be as funny as Stephen Colbert, but we would love to talk to you about creating and distributing your own video email, expanding your list, or strategizing how else you can reach out to your online members in the upcoming months. Video email is too good of an opportunity for any campaign or official office to pass up--and Advocacy Inc. is here to help you maximize its potential."


Sherman's message linked to a TV Eyes transcript and video clip of the interview. Here's a bit of the interview as featured in the transcript:

Colbert: Are people ever shocked when they find out this mild-mannered man represents the largest porn industry in the united states?

Sherman: Sir, I don't know what you're saying. If you're claiming that the San Fernando Valley's had a pornography industry, I have no idea where you got that.

Colbert: Oh, no, I'm not claiming. I'm just repeating it….I've seen this t-shirt before in the movie "Hot Young San Fernando Valley…." The San Fernando Valley has seen more tail than a toilet seat.


OK, I get how this might make Sherman seem more hip to some voters, but to me it's just another example of political campaigns missing the point by thinking that goofy viral=votes. I don't think anybody's proved that yet, and I'd be surprised to see this sort of thing ever making a difference in terms of getting people to the polls or swaying votes.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

Esther on Goodmail

Tech investor Esther Dyson weighs in on the AOL/Goodmail debate with an editorial in the New York Times (registration req.) today. Venerable blogger Dave Winer calls the editorial "spot on" and gets a bunch of comments (including some from Goodmail). This is a debate that probably won't die down soon given the involvement of MoveOn.org and, now, a California legislator.

UPDATE: Esther's really got people talking:




• Fred Wilson says: "Is money a good solution to spam? I don't think so because spam is not limited to email. It is the scourge of every open system on the Internet. You get Google spam, blog spam, comment spam, trackback spam, etc, etc."
  
• Jason Chervokas says: "Tacking on fees (and taxes in the case of municipalities) as a means of changing business or consumer behavior rarely works, always engenders anger and inconvenience, and drives up cost of living for everybody."
  

Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2006

EFF Reports Sharp Growth of Anti-AOL Coalition

Non-profits are scoffing at AOL's invitation to join its Enhanced Whitelist for free.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which organizied a cabal of "unlikely bedfellows" to protest what they dub an "e-mail tax," say the ranks are swelling. The group's DearAOL.com coalition has swelled from 50 to 500 organizations in one week, and 30,000 e-mail users have signed the group's petition.

"I don't take bribes," the EFF quotes Gilles Frydman, executive director of the Association of Cancer Online Resources, as saying. "The solution is not AOL offering a few of us service for free in exchange for our silence –- the solution is preserving equal access to the free and open Internet for everyone."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 3, 2006

Email Bomb Them out of the Stone Age

Get this: According to today's Wall Street Journal Washington Wire column, the inspector general's office at the Homeland Security dept. can't widely distribute new watchdog reports electronically. John Harwood writes, "A spokeswoman explains the department lacks capacity to create a mass email list, and 'We don't have a fix at this point.'"

OK, let me get this straight, some spam slimeball in his parents basement in Buffalo can compile a mass email list and slam us with it, but Homeland Security can't?

It's probably a security-related issue, but who knows. Consider the fact that at this point, most Members of Congress don't like to respond to email with email.

Still, looks like an opportunity for an enterprising email marketing firm....

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 24, 2006

"Strange Bedfellows" Draw A Bead on AOL

Brace yourself, AOL.

This is getting really interesting, and really, really weird.

Close on the heels of MoveOn.org's petition earlier this week, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), together with media policy group Free Press, will announce on Tuesday a coalition of advocacy groups is uniting to oppose what's been dubbed AOL's "e-mail tax," or Enhanced Whitelist.

And oh boy, it's some coalition. So far, it includes Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.org Civic Action, and the Association of Cancer Online Resources.

"Dozens of other concerned groups will be announced on the call," promises the EFF.

I can't wait.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

MoveOn Moves Against AOL

MoveOn.org is accusing AOL of threatening "the very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it."

How? It's because of the ISP's recent Enhanced Whitelist agreement with Goodmail to institute what MoveOn calls an "email tax."

Here's the "emergency petition" MoveOn is urging its members to sign.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

GoDaddy Woos the Ladies

Maybe it's hoping to win back the women it's alienated with its adolescent Super Bowl ad campaign. Whatever its motivations, GoDaddy has turned up the romantic music, lit the candles and spared no expense on the red roses in a special Valentine's Day message it's sent to customers via e-mail. Don't know if their list is segmented by gender (or how they'd know this), but I'd say it's a good move to try to woo the ladies. Those other ads certainly aren't going to accomplish that objective.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 7, 2006

AOL CertifiedEmail Is Not E-mail Postage

AOL is not charging postage for e-mail.

There's been a lot of misinformation about that point in the past week, as a result of competitors' intentional misrepresentation, AOL's missteps in talking about its plans, and -- dare I say it -- misunderstandings of journalists.

The implementation of Goodmail's CertifiedEmail announced last week is a paid service that provides additional benefits to senders, like automatic display of images and links, adding a "trust symbol" to the message in the user's inbox, bypassing content and volume filters for guaranteed inbox delivery, and enhanced reporting.

An e-mail from a legitimate sender, who follows best e-mail practices for permission and list maintenance, will not need to pay to have their messages delivered. What they will have to pay for is those added features.

While many news stories get the facts right, they still mislead with headlines screaming about e-mail postage. The same thing happens when Goodmail's competitors, and their customers and investors, blog about it, or get the attention of a harried journalist with their version of the story.

Adding to the confusion, AOL changed its plans in mid-stream, first announcing that their enhanced whitelist would be discontinued by the end of June, and then backpedaling and saying that was only one of many possibilities.

The official stance from AOL is that the enhanced whitelist will continue to be maintained for as long as it makes sense to senders and AOL members -- but they still think their new CertifiedEmail program is going to emerge as the best choice.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Are Your Advertisers Impacting Your Delivery Rate?

Do you publish an ad-supported e-mail newsletter and worry about declining delivery rates? Consider this: maybe it's not you. Maybe it's your advertisers.

It could happen to even the most upstanding publisher. The one who adheres to all the best practices including confirmed double opt-in subscriptions; running copy and design through spam filters and tests; the one who engages the top ISPs to manage their lists and mailings.

If that e-newsletter runs ads from purveyors of ad- and spyware, porn or online gambling -- you get the idea -- that newsletter stands a good chance of getting blocked at the gateway.

It's not that I'm advocating censorship here, but it's certainly worth considering whether accepting those ads (and ad dollars) may ultimately torpedo your business.

Proceed with caution.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 20, 2006

Finally - A Gmail Delete Button!

It appeared! At last!

Gmail has a 'Delete' button -- finally. Life feels that much more complete.

Google, what on earth took you so long?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hong Kong Considers Spam Legislation

According to news reports, Hong Kong is considering enacting anti-spam legislation. It looks as if the opt-out approach is what's in favor, as is (interestingly) a "technology-neutral" approach to encompass all types of electronic messaging, not just e-mail.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 10, 2006

Supremes: Institutions Can Block Legal E-Mail

Direct reports on a Supreme Court decision holding that the University of Texas acted within its rights in blocking e-mails from LonghornSingles.com, even though addresses were obtained legally and complied with all anti-spam laws. The case sets a very interesting precedent. It seems institutions (businesses, governments, schools) can block whenever it suits their fancy.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 27, 2005

Spam Free or Die

Eventurally, spam would have to turn into a music video, right?

Herewith, Javier Prato's SpamFreeorDie.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:33 PM | Permalink

December 21, 2005

RSS Newsletters? Not So Fast...

This morning Steve Rubel points to a new service, Mailfeed.org, that purports to easily convert e-mail newsletters into RSS feeds.

Steve, a smart guy about Web 2.0 but not as marinated in e-mail best practices as most legitimate marketers and publishers, recommends not only converting all your subs into feeds, but also urges newsletter publishers to use the service to generate feeds from their newsletters.

This totally misses the best practices boat.

Double confirmed opt-in is the e-mail subscription gold standard (and what ClickZ practices, btw). Subscribers must first reply to an e-mail confirming they're intentionally subscribing to the publication before they'll receive it. MailFeed.org cannot accomodate this method.

And besides, most publishers concerned enough about honoring their subscribers' intentions already offer them the option of reading feeds.

Publications such as the one Steve cites in his post (and many others, unfortunately) sign hapless subscribers up for all sorts of stuff they didn't subscribe to, once they have that e-mail address. MailFeed would convert all this e-mail to feeds, sure. But at what cost?

I love the concept, but MailFeed in its current incarnation won't work for teh white-hat mailers. Instead, it would swap out your e-mail spam problem for an RSS spam problem.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

TRUSTe Trusts Yesmail

TRUSTe just named e-mail service provider Yesmail as the first company authorized to resell TRUSTe's Web privacy seals.

Yesmail can now review and certify their clients' Web privacy practices. According to TRUSTe, this eliminates duplication of efforts, as well as the number of relationships a Web site must manage.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 15, 2005

Zipcar Nails Relevant, Timely Customer Relations

With a NYC transit stike potentially looming, online short-tem car rental service Zipcar just e-mailed members. The company is offering free shuttle service from designated Manhattan locations tomorrow. The four spots will be festooned with uniformed Zipcar employees and banners.

Heck, they're even offering the service if there isn't a strike.

What could be truer to the company's slogan, "wheels when you want them," than that?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 13, 2005

Why Don't Half of E-mail Marketers Authenticate?

Nothing like myth-busting.

Today, Skylist published the top eight reasons half of e-mail marketers give for not authenticating their messages. If you're one of them, give the list a read. Your lame excuse is surely on it.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Burn the Spam!

I love how Yahoo!'s beta e-mail interface denotes spam. The icon shows a mail message aflame. Meanwhile "delete" is symbolized by a trash can. Some messages you just want to throw away... others you want to burn. The alpha version probably had an icon of little person -- representing a spammer -- on fire.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 8, 2005

E-Mail Consolidation Continues

E-mail service provider Quris, which was majority-owned by Charles Schwab Corp. (little did I know), has a new owner today. The company was bought by database marketer Merkle. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Quris, based in Denver, will continue as a standalone subsidiary with its 50 employees. Quris' clients include Charles Schwab (no surprise there), Blockbuster, Dex Media, Vail Resorts and Wynn Las Vegas.

The acquisition continues the trend of standalone e-mail shops being gobbled up by bigger entities. (See Rebecca's column: "Does Size Matter for ESPs?")

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 2, 2005

New Rule of E-Mail, Socially Networked

This week Microsoft introduced SNARF, an organization tool that groups e-mail by social networking conventions based on information available on your computer system. I expect there to be some backlash about Microsoft spidering desktops in the name of e-mail management, but there's another point that's more relevant to marketers. How will SNARF affect e-mail campaigns?

If the e-mail addresses you most correspond with get the highest placement, what does that do to the visibility of newsletters and e-mail campaigns that are typically one way communications? Will these e-mails be relegated to the folder above spam? If I visit Amazon.com often, will e-mails from them move higher up in my inbox and leave less frequently visited retailers drowning?

The advisory for newsletter recipients to add a newsletter's e-mail to their address book is already ignored not only by consumers, but many marketers who send these e-mails. New practices to get your e-mails noticed will become more important if SNARF becomes mainstream.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

Yahoo! Adds RSS to Mail Beta

Yahoo! announced today that RSS feeds will be integrated into its new (and very Outlook-y) version of Mail. Sure enough, a new a new "All Feeds" icon appeared below my mail folders overnight.

Feeds will pick up Yahoo! Alerts, blogs, news...and, of course, offers from brands and merchants, provided they're offering RSS and have successfully gotten customers to opt-in.

This could be a giant leap towards eradicating delivery problems -- eventually. There are hurdles along the way, including getting Mail out of beta and into consumer hands; merchants getting with the RSS program, and last but not least, getting customers comfortable with an easy feed sign up process.

Yahoo! took one small step toward that goal today.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

Amazon Touts Offline Local Films

Just got an e-mail from Amazon.com promoting the feature film "Bee Season's" opening tomorrow. It's also promoting a new opt-in service: local movie and showtime listings, e-mailed weekly.

They're certainly hitting a broad, broad customer base. I didn't buy that title on Amazon, but I've certainly bought books by women.

As someone who has purchased books by Myla Goldberg and novels by other women authors, we thought you might like to know that "Bee Season," the new film based on Goldberg's acclaimed first novel, is coming to theaters. Starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, the movie is opening in selected cities on Friday, November 11, and will playing nationwide soon--and Amazon.com Movie Showtimes will have showtimes and locations in your area.

Interesting, and very logical, way for the company to exapnd customer touchpoints, hook up with studios, and promote book and DVD titles at www.amazon.com/movies.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

Nigerian Spam Legislation?

Anti-spam legislation in Nigeria?!

"Any person spamming electronic messages to recipients with whom he has no previous relationship - especially the so-called 419 e-mails - commits an offence," said the draft presented to the legislature.

The proposed legislation also would ban child porn, phishing, identity theft and other electronic crimes. Violators would face fines and imprisonment.

My source? Her Royal Highness, the daughter of the former minister of finance -- just kidding! ;-)

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 7, 2005

ad:tech - Your Cred Is Slipping!

Jeez, guys - get it together!


ad:tech is burgeoning in size and global reach as the online advertising industry's all-encompassing (and theoretically, all-knowing) mega-conference.

But if they don't clean up their act -- and soon -- ad:tech will have to cancel their e-mail marketing sessions.

I've just received not the first, but the second e-mail blast for ad:tech NYC. The subject line is: TEST.

Once is a mistake. Twice? Inexcusable.

It's not just me, guys. People really are talking. Didn't anyone at your ESP suggest you maybe rethink this?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

Verizon Gets Personalized Messaging

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Verizon, "Verizon Wireless Get it Now on your Motorola V710." It didn't have to say, "Dear Enid," it showed Verizon knew who I was based on the phone it knows I use on my wireless plan.

The e-mail went on to highlight Verizon's Get It Now applications. Ring tones, downloads, and a tutorial to get me on my way downloading services and ringing up microtransactions. Because of the pitch, I get the feeling Verizon checked into the services and verified they are compatible with my handset.

This is an example of customizing done right. Customizing e-mail campaigns for the sake of addressing the recipient by his first name is nice, but including information specific to the recipient is relevant and effective. Verizon just demonstrated it got it.

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Using E-Mail to Train Customers to Be Unprofitable

So I ordered a bunch of trousers from EddieBauer.com (because every women's store on the planet has a 'petite' section, but it's a law of the universe that 'tall' is online only). Before the order arrives, I start getting e-mail about the EddieBauer.com summer sale. So I click. Most of the stuff I've ordered (which was already on sale) is now more on sale.

I call before even receiving the package (because the online form is broken). They cheerfully refund the price differential - about $30. And I mean cheerfully ("Honey, that's what e-mail is for!").

But wait -- it gets better.

One pair of pants fits so well, I order three more pairs. Then I receive another e-mail touting deeper discounts. Sure enough, new trousers qualify for a $50-plus credit. And because some of the stuff in the first order is now even further reduced, I get another $24 refunded...in addition to the $30 they refunded in Round One.

Over $100 refunded on merchandise I'd demonstrated I was willing to pay full price for!

I'm not only loyal now to EddieBauer.com now, I'm opening their e-mail.

But am I a profitable customer? Not yet, anyway. Jack Aaronson's recent series of columns on loyalty programs really got me thinking about just this sort of thing.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

Please Convey Can-Spam Sentiments

I'd really love to hear from e-mail marketers ASAP because this time, it really matters. (By marketers, I mean marketers -- not just vendors and ESPs).

On Tuesday, I'll be on an FTC conference call to discuss the positives and negatives of CAN-SPAM. It's a privilege to be asked to participate -- and a great opportunity to pass our readers' thoughts along to where it really counts. If you've got strong feelings about the Act, let me know in the comment section before Tuesday morning, EST. OK?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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