Showing posts with label Collaboration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collaboration. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

EEC: Good Intentions Gone Bad

Before you read remember this - I like the EEC, I like the things they do, and I like the people involved with running the organization. But this story goes to show even leaders make mistakes from time to time.

It started with an article from the EEC explaining their Earth day exercise, and what their intent was when they were sending these electronic Magazine messages to their members. Ken Magill, then followed up with a post stating that the EEC had spammed its members. Truly a case of "Good Intentions Gone Bad".

Here is my take on how it should have gone down...

  • It should have been branded EEC, with the Magazine Content in the body of the message.
  • The messages should have been sent "From" for the EEC, not the Zinio system
  • There should not have been three copies, with two different content pieces, if this was a one off mailing.
  • Messages should have been Gender neutral, or better targeted... Women's Magazines are just not my favorite reading choices. ;)
  • If these are for Earth day and on behalf of the EEC - you should mention that in the content of the message somewhere (see below).
  • While the intentions were good the execution get an "F" - as leaders these things should be checked and double checked before letting the message out the door.

Over at BeRelevant!, Tamara had this to say.

View the messages here:

  1. First message - lacking Personalization (Dear Reader)
  2. Second Message - Same as first (personalized this time), sent 3 hrs after first.
  3. Third Message - New content

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Email Marketer's Club Milestone

Soooo soon (like tonight or tomorrow soon) the Email Marketer's Club will break ONE THOUSAND Members... All this in less than a year.

Come on out and join online marketers from around the world discussing things like:

Outlook 2007 testing and design, Putting Adverts in Email Marketing Campaigns and Forward to a Friend, e-cards, and other messages sent on behalf of user.

Network, connect and discuss...

View the Wiki, the job board and find others in your area (regional, local language discussion groups).

See you there!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Revised: MAAWG Best Practices for Volume Senders

Announced today the MAAWG Senders Best Practices Document (Version 2.0 - pfd) has been officially released.

Updates to the documentation include:

  • New guidelines for legitimate email avoid being mistaken for image-based junk mail
  • List permission and opt-in recommendations have been amended to reflect current best practices
  • User-unsubscribe processes have been clarified
  • along with a number of other updates to the document

This is a great document to read as a marketer, and should set the bar for your marketing programs.

Friday, April 18, 2008

MSFT Live Mail | We ARE Listening

More and more ISPs are getting in on blogging as a way to comunicate with customers, end users and other members of the email comunity. Reciently the Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support team released these two postings about updates to their mail platforms:

Microsoft Announces Changes for Accessing Hotmail with Outlook Express - announcing changed to the Outlook client and how it will interact with Hotmail.

and

We ARE Listening - Comments and posinting are being reviewed and passed back to the Product team. Get your comments ready!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

What's happening in Feb

A few events of note to talk about in the second half of the month;

* EEC's Email Evolution Conference running Today and Tomorrow (Feb 12th and 13th).
* MAAWG will be held in San Francisco, hosting their 12th General
Meeting
(members only) from Feb 18th to 20th, at the Mark Hopkins
* Online Marketing Summit is taking place in San Diego from Feb 21st to 23rd
* MarketingSherpa's 3rd Annual Email Summit will be in Miami on Feb 24th to 26th

Happy Networking.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

BUZZ | Hey Gmail!!!

The Group over at the Email Standards Project (ESP) is looking for help getting the Gmail developers attention and they are asking for your help.

Here is a quote from Mathew Patterson over at the ESP:

The idea is simple - play off the well known Gmail collaborative video with
our own video. Theirs was people passing the
Gmail 'M' from frame to frame.

They are asking for your images - expressing pain at the rendering issues experienced in the web client - to be posted to a Flickr group dubbed Project Grimace.

These guys have pushed the envelope in the hopes of achieving email rendering standardization globally, already getting the attention of both Yahoo and IBM.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Are you missing out, join the EMC

Some great discussions are happening over at the Email Marketer's Club, are you missing out?

Today's topics include:

The club has also added a number of new features like; a Job board, Chatroom, Wiki, Events calendar, regional discussion groups like "Canadian eh?" and a fan page on Facebook.

Common out and join your peers, get involved and share your experiences.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

In ad serving news...

Today Google announced that they have been given the go ahead from the FTC surrounding the purchase of DoubleClick.

Google Points to six main factors in this decision:

  • Transaction was cleared with no conditions
  • Google and DoubleClick are not competitors
  • Third party ad serving markets are highly competitive
  • Privacy not a part of the merger review
  • Data combination wouldn't pose problems
  • Advertisers and publishers aren't concerned

Read the full review if these items on the Official Google Blog. The last hurdle in this process is the go ahead from the European Commission, expected in the Spring on 2008.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Habeas Launches ReputationWiki.org

Habeas Launches ReputationWiki.org to Serve as Industry’s Leading Collaboration and Education Resource

Thought Leaders to Address Topics Related to Reputation, Compliance, Deliverability and Policy through First-of-its-Kind Global Community

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Habeas, Inc. (http://www.habeas.com/), the world leader in email reputation services, today announced the launch of ReputationWiki.org which will serve as a focal point to define and advance the growing field of reputation management.

ReputationWiki.org is intended to be a primary resource on topics pertinent to the ever-growing online ecosystem, including reputation, compliance, deliverability and policy. Through industry support of this collaborative initiative, marketing, sales and brand professionals can expand their knowledge, contribute to relevant topics and interact with their peers on issues that are important to them.

Read the full press release here.

Yahoo! and JetBlue - email SMS and IM

Yahoo! and Jet Blue partner to offer email, SMS and IM during your travels.

Service to offer some very cool features are available:

  • WiFi-enabled laptops will find baisc email and messenger functionality is available
  • Access to your Y! Address Book, text messages, and Yahoo! - Windows Live Messenger
  • Updated status links to a map that lets friends on the ground track your flight
  • and if you have a WiFi-enabled BlackBerry's will be able to assess the Y! services as well (without the celular feature active during flight).

Currently access to the BetaBlue service is on a limited (if your lucky type) access, watch for the Y! logo to know you have access to these services.

Happy flying...

Monday, December 10, 2007

OneDegree | Optimizing Your Email List For Better Campaign Results

My Second article is up on OneDegree today and answers these questions:

  • “How do we know that we have a good list?”
  • “How do we maintain our list?”
  • “How can we repair our list?”

Read Optimizing Your Email List For Better Campaign Results

Friday, December 7, 2007

AOTA | Email Authentication Survey

The Authentication& Online Trust Alliance (AOTA http://www.aotalliance.org/), is publishing an industry wide survey of solutions, services and products which support email authentication. The goal is to demonstrate leadership and commitment to this best practice as well as to serve as a directory for business and technical decision makers. We need your input by Dec 30th to be included in the report. The objective is to reinforce the importance of adopting email authentication technologies to enhance deliverability and consumer trust; and to emphasize the need for interactive marketers and brands to protect their properties from phishing attacks.

To be included in this directory, you will need to supply the following:

  1. Company name
  2. Product or service name (as applicable)
  3. Web site (with link to any page reference to email authentication)
  4. Support of the above mentioned solutions available as of January 1, 2008 (outbound as well as inbound)
    a. DK
    b. DKIM
    c. SIDF/SPF (Mail From vs. PRA)
    d. TLS

While the above data will be made public via the AOTA site, specific contact info will not be shared. A press released is planned to announce the publication of this directory along with other recommended best practices to improve and enhance the trust ecosystem.

If you would like to be included in the directory, submit the above data staff-at-aotalliance.org. The deadline to submit material is December 30th.

Please contribute to this if you can.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

When ‘Best’ Practices Become ISP Law

Today MediaPost ran this article, When ‘Best’ Practices Become ISP Law, commenting on many of the best practices and requirements that are published by ISPs and their required sending practices for mailers. As with most best practices they gradually become common practices, and then requirements.

The list includes the following items (all of which we have touched on in the past):

  1. Use double opt-in subscription
  2. Don't pre-check the subscription box
  3. Authentication
  4. Purchasing lists
  5. List hygiene

A handy list of ISP Postmaster and security pages are also included, we recomend you review these on your own and ensure your program conforms to each of the respective requirements.

Friday, November 30, 2007

The term "Delivered"...

How do you define it? The Email Marketers Club wants to know (login required).

Join us for the conversation surounding the use of these words, as we try to determine if there is a 'standard description' for these terms, and others:

  • Deliverability
  • Email Delivered
  • Email Inbox Delivered

This sounds very similar to the task set out by the E-mail Measurement Accuracy Coalition which has been very quiet since launching, in the spring.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The tools you need...

Today the Email Diva wrote about "Tools for Email Marketers", and included a great list of items you should be reviewing, but several key tools for marketers were left out (some we talked about before).

A few other to add to your list include:

There are several other great tools available - care to share one? Email them to contact or leave a comment.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Advanced Email Marketing Checklist

Anna Billstrom, over at Adventures in Email Marketing, published this great checklist on the features included in an advanced email marketing system. The list includes check boxes that actually work - print this list and tick them off as you add them to your program.

Key items to include in your program:

  • Preference center
  • Lifecycle emails -Welcome to Sunset
  • Emails render well with images off - This is a must
  • Automated email hygiene process

Read the full list here

Friday, August 17, 2007

Email Marketing Experts

Thanks to BeRelevent! for inviting EmailKarma to the Email Marketing Experts Feed Network.

Check out the other great email marketing resources in this network:

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Al Diguido and the EEC

Al Diguido, formerly of Epsilon Interactive, wrote an article today in ClickZ that has the Email Experience Council's (EEC) hackles up.

Don't get me wrong the EEC has a number of good qualities and programs running, but a call to action over something written by Al is not necessarily needed. It almost feels like a scene from Frankenstein, you know the one where the villagers are after Frankenstein's monster with pitchforks and torches.

Al comments "Seems the EEC is working on guidelines around e-mail list growth, deliverability, rendering and enhancing user experiences. I would have hoped by now -- fully 7 years since I got started in the e-mail communications business -- the conversation and insights we'd be discussing would have gone well beyond guidelines on around issues such as e-mail list growth."

The biggest issue here is that there are still marketers and email senders out there that just DON'T GET IT... That is why these issues are still around, also the sheer number of best practises for each of the topics need to be formalized across the industry - the EEC is stepping in here... Last time I checked things like "e-mail list growth, deliverability, rendering and enhancing user experiences" were still very high on the importance list for most marketers.

Al also mentions the formation of the "EROI Council", focusing on helping marketers drive incremental sales and profits for their companies.

I hope the eROI (tm) is ok with this name ;)