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Tour de Email

July 28, 2008 by Loren McDonald

I love watching the Tour de France every year. I find that there is such an amazing combination of factors that determine the ultimate winner of this three-week race. This year’s winner Carlos Sastre won for many reasons, but most experts site that a crucial factor was that he was on the best team – CSC. Winning the tour requires experience, a great bike, superior physical conditioning, strategy with your team during individual stages to out fox competitors, overall strategy to know where to gain seconds on top competitors, a great support team, some luck and many other factors.

And as you watch this race on television you have the added thrill of seeing thousands of miles of beautiful French scenery. But when I read the final story in my local newspaper this morning – doping got much of the ink. The headline: "Sour note for end of race" Rider is busted."

So what does all of this have to do with email delivery?

On the positive side, superior delivery to the in box is not a quick fix or one-time event. It requires a team effort, IT and marketing working together, guidance from your ESP, getting your email practices into top shape, great tools, a superior plan and many other factors.

But like these elite Tour riders who are caught doping, there are many "legitimate" email marketers who are still trying to game the system. Of course it is all in the name of winning the "revenue race."

The problem of course is that email is in fact a global village. The headlines in the general press about email are almost always going to be when negative things happen. Like many things in life, a few bad actors spoil things for the rest of us.

But the good news is that like the riders busted for doping in this year’s Tour, it is getting increasingly difficult to get away with cheating and gaming the system. Yes, there will always be new drugs that might go undetected for awhile, but eventually the authorities catch up.

The same is true on the email front. The spammers and "gamers" will always innovate – but the ISPs, spam filters and enforcement agencies are getting pretty good too. Time will tell, but I look forward to a future where the "cost" to cheat in the Tour and the in-box simply becomes too high to make sense (cents) anymore.