Upcoming Webinars

Reputation-Based Email and Web Operations Create Results (Recorded)
Joint Presentation: Habeas, LashBack and Publishers Clearing House
How being compliant and reputable online is a competitive advantage in any economy -- especially in a downturn, How to analyze, improve and manage email and Web operations with online reputation management strategies and tools, Case studies, best practices and tips you can leverage immediately for your business or clients

Are You in the Loop? (Register)
By DMNews
Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m. EST/10:00 a.m. PST
To learn how to effectively use customer data and behavior to refine marketing strategy and campaigns, join us for this complimentary webcast, moderated by DMNews editor-in-chief Elly Trickett. All registrants will receive a copy of the Aberdeen Group research paper, "The CMO Strategic Agenda: Automating Closed-Loop Marketing."


“Garbage In, Garbage Out: Catch Email Errors Before They Hit Your Database” (Register)
By Freshaddress
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
As a smart marketer, you’re already working hard to get email addresses for each one of your customers. But did you know that up to 20% of email registrations contain syntax, typo, formatting, and other errors?

BeRelevant interviews MarketingSherpa

Tamara over at BeRelevant interviews Stefan Tournquist from Marketing Sherpa on their latest metrics report that were recently published.

Listen to the interview here.

Several relevant Items are discussed; mailing frequency, removing inactive users and what are the largest concerns by marketers that responded to Sherpa's surveys.

Wisdom of 2007

Marketing Sherpa has released their annual Wisdom guide, the 5th to be exact, and its full of great tidbits on how to improve your campaigns and email programs. These are real examples of people making changes to their email campaigns and the differences that they saw.

Expect to read thing like;

• Donations are up by 50%, with very little effort
• Auto responders work, they gave us a 20% conversion increase
• and, Our Conversion was increased by 40%

Learn the lessons of Email Marketers, Bloggers and Podcasters, Search experts and Social Networkers.

Click here to get the 2007 Wisdom Report from MarketingSherpa. (pdf)

Gearing up for the 2007 holiday season

The holidays are rapidly approaching, email campaigns are gearing up. Are you ready for the season?

If not here are some helpful links to get you thinking about the next six to eight weeks of your email program:

• Email Marketing Reports Holiday email marketing advice - Offers practical advice on the holiday marketing season and links to other valuable resources
• The EEC's 2007 Guide to Gearing Up for the Holiday Email Season - Offers a helpful road map to the email holiday season and a downloadable holiday white paper
• Return Path's 3 Ideas to Boost Holiday Email Response - Gives three helpful tips on increasing response and user interaction with your program
• WhatCounts: Get the Most out of the Holiday Frenzy: The Best Holiday Loyalty Marketing Practices for 2007 - Provides ten ideas for your program this holiday season.

Do you have any other tips for the 2007 holiday season? Email them to contact or leave a comment.

Gmail talks about fighting spam and reputation

A look at the Gmail anti-spam team and the methods they use to combat spam.

Gmail has also recienly published the paper "Sender Reputation in a Large Webmail Service" for the CEAS (CONFERENCE ON EMAIL AND ANTI-SPAM - 2008). This paper discussed how a large webmail service can define and use reputation to identify and clasify authenticated sending domains to be spammy or not spammy.

Page 9 of DMN.ca

Ok it's not Front page but it'll do.

I have a story published in DMN's September issue (pdf) on Page 9, about ThinData's "The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery" (download) whitepaper.

If you have not read it yet, I'd recomend it - I might be a little impartial though, I wrote it.

What's your reputation?

Email reputation is currently buzzing all over the eMarketing landscape, in fact it have been for over two years.

Mediapost talks about five factors, or tricks as they are referred to, that cause your reputation to suffer. The problem is that many corporation's use these techniques everyday and many believe that is an acceptable practise. Here are some ideas to prevent abusing these solutions yet still have the benefits:

~ Email is inexpensive and has huge returns (DMA $49 ROI for each 1$ spent) so it is abused by many, this has cause organizations like CAUCE and MAAWG to lead the initiative to end spam. Organic growth and proper ad placement will build a much more targeted and active subscriber base. For more ideas on list maintenance read "Keeping your lists clean".

~ Before subscribing and assuming that your current users are interested in your new newsletters promote them via your existing communication channels and ask users to subscribe to your new publication. This is especially important if your new newsletter has different branding then their current subscriptions. Nothing damages reputation faster then a could dozen spam complaints against a new newsletter.

~ Over punctuation is very common in email. Remember your email etiquette - ALL CAPS is like shouting - Small fonts are hard to read and extra punctuation can distort your message. Remember the proper uses for punctuation like the question mark, exclamation mark and other punctuation.

~ Burying phrases in your privacy policy or user agreements that state users give permission to use their email for communications is another good way to damage your reputation. Think about this from the subscriber point of view, or even better ask from your mom's point of view "Would mom realize that she is going to get email?"

Monitor your email with these services offered by Habeas or Return Path.

Whitepapers, Case studies and research

The Dot Email Marketing Community is building a nice collection of Whitepapers, and research from a number of ESPs on various topics like:

• Why Email Marketers Must Care About Data Security
• What’s in the Mailbox? The Impact of One-to-One Marketing on Consumer Response
• What You Should Know About Deliverability
• Unleashing the Potential ofTransactional Messages
• The Opt-In Email Marketer’s Checklist for Inbox Delivery
• The Importance of Personalization

While your there join the Community and participate in the discussions.

HABEAS | The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success

Des Cahill had a great article today published in Imedia; The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success. This covers a number the email world roles from a number of different touch points; the ISP, to the marketer and back to the consumer.

Quote: "Despite persistent problems -- more than 90 percent of email network traffic consists of spam and phishing for private information -- email still functions extremely well."

This is thankfully due to the ongoing collaboration and best practises being written all over the world. One such group is MAAWG's (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group), bringing the largest senders and the Largest ISPs around the world together to discuss the right way of doing things when it comes to sending email.

Read MAAWG's Sender Best practise.

Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study

RetailEmail.Blogspot: has just releases the Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study covering a number of items and practises around; opt-in methods, communication preference setting and first points of contact with new subscribers.

Here are some interesting facts reported on in the study (how do you stack up?):

• 12% or major online retailers are providing a sample newsletters at time of sign up

• 28% of retailers offer multiple content selections

• Subscriber’s name and zip code are the most commonly asked for information by retailers

Find the full study in the EEC's Whitepaper room (login required)

The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery

ThinData Inc, Canada's leading Email Service Provider (ESP) has recently released a whitepaper titled "The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery" that covers a number of Best Common Practises (BCP) that anyone sending email in any quantity should read and review. This is not just for marketers, and is written to be easily understood by new hires and seasoned veterans of the email world.

This paper focuses on 5 challenges that most marketers face at some point in their email program:

• Making sure email can be authenticated
• Maintaining a good email reputation
• Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by recipients
• Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by third-party software
• Configuring email servers to meeting industry standards

Download now and let us know what you think.