My good, trusted, and long term friend David Romerstein (Romer) did an excellent piece discussing why your email was blocked and what to do about it on the Cloudmark blog. You should check them out...

BLOCKED EMAIL PART 1: “WHY ME?”

Everyone’s had it happen. You forward a joke to a friend or coworker, email a possible new vendor requesting a quote, or send out your daily/weekly/monthly newsletter and, a short time later, you get back that dreaded notification: “Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender”. Your first reaction is probably indignation. “I’m not a spammer,” you think to yourself, “so how dare they block my email!” Believe it or not, the receiving ISP probably doesn’t think that you’re a spammer.

BLOCKED EMAIL PART 2: “NOW WHAT DO I DO?”

In Part I, we talked about a few of the possible reasons that your email might be blocked. Today, we’ll talk about things that an individual end-user can do when they receive one of those dreaded bounce messages. Several of the tips here will also be relevant for small businesses.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

For a few of us in the industry, this slipped by us.

The Links:

• http://www.windstream.com/emailinfo/announcement.aspx
  
• http://windstream.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/windstream.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=413
  

Summary: 

• After May 15, 2009, you will no longer be able to use your @alltel.net e-mail address.
• Windstream has created a new @windstream.net address that is ready for use today.
• Messages sent to your current @alltel.net address will also be copied to the new @windstream.net address until May

What's going on?

The Alltel.net domains and email addresses have changed to the Windstream.com domain.

Why?

Alltel, based in Little Rock, Ark., will morph from a full-service phone/Internet company into one that concentrates on wireless assets. It has spin off its old-fashioned wireline business (DSL), merged it with regional telco Valor Communications Group, and created Windstream. This is similar to how Sprint Nextel spun off its regional wireline business, now Embarq.

How does this effect you?

Well you need to send a re-confirmation email or postal mailer out to any customers you have on these domains to get them to update their new email address in your systems. Here are some examples.

	Current Site	New Site
	www.alltel.net	www.windstream.net
	news.alltel.net	news.windstream.net (effective 3/11)
	business.alltel.net	business.windstream.net
	home.alltel.net	home.windstream.net
	authmail.alltel.net	smtp.windstream.net
	pop.alltel.net	pop.windstream.net
	webmail.alltel.net	webmail.windstream.net
	ftp.alltel.net	ftp.windstream.net (effective 3/18)
	alltel.net	windstream.net

To help you through this transition, Windstream has created a new @windstream.net address that is ready for use today. Your new address will be the same as your existing address, except that we've simply replaced @alltel.net with @windstream.net. For example, joecustomer@alltel.net now has a new address of joecustomer@windstream.net. As a further benefit, messages sent to your current @alltel.net address will also be copied to your new @windstream.net address until May 15.

This does NOT mean that you go into your database and just change people's domains on their email address. It is rumored that NOT all address/aliases will change.

This is also a good time to send a re-confirmation on why that person signed up for your email's, what their current preferences are, what you have to offer them as they stay on (by updating their email address), and maybe even offer them other newsletters of emails they are currently not on.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Remember the t-shirt from this blog post? Well, the fact of the matter is my wife does rock...

I've bugged her to do a blog post for me for a few months now and recently must have come across something that finally peaked her interest. While at my last conference the most popular question seemed to be about the uses of social media and video in email marketing. I decided to pose the question to the wife, stay-at-home mom extraordinaire.

Here's her email reply to me:

------

So, you asked for a blog post from me, but I'm hoping you'll settle for this email, because, well, I don't have a blog.  I'm too busy reading all of them to actually keep up with one of my own.

Tonight you asked me if a marketing email that contained a video would be appealing to me.  Sorry, my forward-thinking husband, but I've got to say no.  Quite honestly, most marketing emails that I receive are deleted before I really even look through them.  I find that most of them either:

1. Are not targeting the types of things I would be interested in, or
   
2. Are slamming me with so much email it becomes bothersome.  (You know, like the neighbor kids that ring your doorbell incessantly even though you've told them time after time you're not coming out to play?  Yeah, bothersome like that.)
   

It's unfortunate for them, really, since as the mom and wife (a.k.a. buyer of the household) I've got some good spending power behind me.  Anyway, when a marketing email does manage to catch my attention (usually with a good subject line that peaks my interest), I scan it for the item I might be interested in, similar to how I'd scan a book or an article.  I'm looking for specific content, and I don't often take the time to read through the email from start to finish.  A video wouldn't allow me that option.  Since you don't know what a video will contain next, you're forced to watch it in its entirety. Either that, or you could choose not to watch it at all, and realistically, that's the route I would go.  I mean, really, who chooses to watch a commercial?  (Isn't that what a marketing video really would be? A commercial?  An infomercial at best, I suppose.)  Isn't that why they invented TiVo?  To skip over the commercials?  Marketers, in my humble opinion, would be better served by taking the time to truly listen to what their customer wants and then trying to give them a good deal on the product they're interested in.  If you can do those two things, and catch me with a good email subject line, then I'm far more likely to actually purchase the product.

*An hour later.*

Okay.  I'm back after a little more thought on the subject.  I stand by what I said earlier - chances are, I wouldn't watch a generic video sent to me in an email by, umm, let's say American Airlines.  (Only choosing them since they send me TONS of email.  Snooze. Give me some good prices, American Airlines.  Then we'll talk.)  That is, unless they specifically targeted a location that I was truly interested in traveling to in the video.  I probably wouldn't watch a video from Oh My Crafts (which, by the way, sends me INSANE amounts of email with "BIG SALES!" for just about every occasion under the sun. Hello?  Oh My Crafts?  You can't extend every sale and expect us to be pleasantly surprised.), unless it was a "how-to" video on my latest crafting project.  If a video is something that marketers are considering, from my point of view, I'd rather an email (again, with a punchy subject line) letting me know that a selection of videos are available for viewing at my leisure on their website.  Then, I could choose to watch only the videos that interest me - I wouldn't have to watch the pre-selected email video about maybe, Costa Rica, if I would indeed rather travel to Paris again.  (Hypothetically speaking, of course.)  Now, I know nothing about all of the email/website technology available, but wouldn't allowing people to click into a website garner more information for the marketers?  Is there a way for the marketers to track the video I choose to watch so that they can then market more specifically to my interests?  I don't know.  That seems to make more sense to me. But, I'm not a marketer - I'm a shopper.

*Another afterthought.*

If you were going to post a video to a website (again, if that’s as effective as I think it could be), maybe it needs to be for a limited time.  Or, at least “featured” for a limited time before it’s sent to a less accessible archive, or something of the sort.  If I knew that I only had a week or so to watch a video of interest, I’d be more likely to immediately click over to view it.  If I knew that it would be available indefinitely, I’d probably choose to procrastinate (again, hypothetically!), and then it would move to the bottom of my priority list, and then, POOF!  Somehow your catchy little video falls off my radar.

I guess what I’m saying is this:  if a marketer isn’t careful, he’s going to get an introduction to my delete key far more often than he’s going to get my attention, or in this particular case, get me to push the play button.

So, it seems that if I did have a blog of my own, I'd need to learn how to edit my asides in a more effective way than by using parentheses.  They're a little overwhelming at times.  But, now you know what I'm thinking.  Hope I gave you the information that you wanted, babe.

Love you.

xoxo - wife

---------

To be honest and without any direction from me, this is the sort of thinking I was expecting from an average day user/mom of email. Not to many have time in their day to watch that many video emails. We already complicate marketing emails with to much information and frequency to the point where they become useless to many like my wife.

We all know what will happen if marketers get a whiff of the potential here. A good chunk of them will try this technology and cram even more information into an already overloaded email and not take the time even understanding its impact on the user. Are we REALLY ready for video in email? Most of us haven't figured out marketing best practices on what we have already in our hands.

1. Keep your emails short and sweet. Don't make them a full page.
2. Be clear on what the email means to the reader by using clear subject and from lines 
3. Run your points clearly and in the beginning of your email.
4. Don't lead the email with a large image. They are blocked default. 
5. Send the prospect to a website for the multimedia experience and full message. Also allows for better activity tracking v.s opens and clicks off an email which as most here know is hard to measure (Digital Body Language)

What sorts of questions do you have for my wife? Post your questions in the comments or Q&A section. We will see if she's interested...

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

A group of spammers targeting college students was recently shutdown and is facing a minimum of 10 years in prison. Goes to show how authentication, accreditation and a little bit of common sense are becoming critical for the general public to not find legitimate mail guilty by association from all the exploitative mail being sent.

I also wonder what the colleges are instituting now as measures against spam in the future. Every inbox, and thus receiver, has the same problem of fending off unwanted or even illegal mail. But, if they get overzealous in protecting the university's inboxes, I foresee a lot of legitimate mail getting hung up in the filters. Especially if the mail college students send around today is anything like that in my former academic years.

Perhaps more importantly, how were the 8 million student email addresses harvested in the first place? Mailing to random addresses would certainly have set off alarms on possible DHAs and have been stopped at the inbound servers. PII leak? Insider job?

Full story here.

Thanks to Sue Walsh over at AllSpammedUp for the original post.

Email is the easiest marketing communication channel to track and measure - so much so that all the metrics and information available can actually complicate the matter. Interpretation of the information may be different, calculations may vary and some can't even figure out where to start because the sheer volume of information available is more than they can comprehend.

One measurement that experts refer to is an Engagement Quotient. This is typically defined through a mathematical formula that results in attributing a score or rating to each individual recipient in your database allowing you to identify those that are most interested and engaged with your email program, those that are the least engaged and everyone in between. Depending on the number of recipients in your database, your access to database administrators and the amount of free time you have this could prove a daunting task.

You want to start measuring engagement but aren't able to execute on the individual level? Start by calculating a Segment Engagement Quotient (SEQ). This will give you a benchmark for success measurement when determining how programmatic changes or tests are impacting your recipients engagement. Here's the formula:

Segment Total - Unengaged Segment Total    X 10
Segment Total

• Segment Total:
  Total number of valid email addresses identified in the segment. This number excludes bounced addresses and unsubscribes.
  
  
• Unengaged Segment Total:
  Subscribers in the segment identified as unengaged. For monthly mailers we would recommend definition as anyone in the segment that has not opened or clicked a message in 6 months.
  

If the Segment total is 10,000 and the unengaged total is 2,000 the calculation would like this:

10,000-2,000   =     8,000   =   0.8   X   10   =   8
10,000                    10,000

So your Segment Engagement Quotient would be an 8/10.

By Stephanie Miller

VP, Global Market Development

The new chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission took office with the Obama administration in January. However, Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many of his key deputies have been with the agency for years, so much of the work continues seamlessly. In a DMA/Email Experience Council webinar last week, Peder Magee, Esq., FTC Privacy and Theft attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection said, "The FTC is bipartisan and works on consensus. Typically things are done with unanimous vote. We've had a fair amount of consistency from where we've been."

For now, that stance seems to suggest that the self regulation of the industry is working. Magee noted that some concepts "transcend the medium" when it comes to self regulation. "Transparency, prominent notice, use of personal data, and providing the ability to opt out easily" all are areas the FTC continues to watch....

--MORE--

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2009/05/ftc-comfortable-with-email-reg.php

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

In the past, we have discussed in much detail the ways in which email is examined for spam and phishing properties. Some of these emails and properties are contained in the things you might send out to your targets...

The AllSpammedUp blog recently did another good post on what's typically in these technologies to stop potential bad email from being received. It also explains that typically a combining effort of anti-spam technologies might be in order for some organization trying to protect it's users. It also shows how some of the older ways of stopping spam via content filters can cause issue.

To be honest, I would have loved to see this article address more detail towards the latest behavioral filtering technologies more commonly used today like Sender Score from Return Path.

----

Anti-Spam Products Are More Than the Sum of Their Parts

When you boil the spam problem down it becomes quite simple - someone is sending you emails that you don’t want to receive.  This makes the anti-spam solution a simple one too - stop unwanted emails from arriving in someone’s email account.  However, actually achieving this is a very complex task.

Any anti-spam system that is worth using will contain a range of preventative measures and features that are used to determine whether an email is likely to be spam or not.  As a complete solution they can be very effective, but taken individually and their weaknesses become more apparent.  Here are some examples...

--MORE--

http://www.allspammedup.com/2009/04/anti-spam-products-are-more-than-the-sum-of-their-parts/

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!