For those who monitor and suppress against the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Wireless domain list, it seems that verizonwireless.com was removed from the list. Not sure why, but you should be aware of this in case you have customers in that domain who have never seen email sent to them because of the past suppression. This could cause complaints, unsubscriptions, hard bounces, and other issues.

Thanks to Abe Wagner Co-founder and VP of Engineering for Eloqua for noticing this.

 

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

We have a custom blog design to make our site a bit easier on the eyes and would love your feedback on how we can continue make it better in the future.

Please take a look and let us know what you think! I know the email signup form is broken right now, but if you find any other problems please add them in the comments below.

So not sure how many of you here have been following this, but Microsoft has made an announcement saying that the rendering engine will CONTINUE to be WORD in the next version of Outlook. This of course will continue to heavily impact how your emails will render or not render for several years (did I mention I use a MAC).

I make the assumption here that many already understand the issues with Outlook 2007:

• no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
• no support for forms
• no support for Flash, or other plugins (not that this is a big thing and I don't advocate it)
• no support for CSS floats
• no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
• no support for CSS positioning
• no support for animated GIFs

This information obviously prompted an interesting grassroots use of social media (twitter) Fixoutlook.org where you can file a petition against this.

People like email-standards.org have been advocating a list of recommendation the Outlook team should consider and also posted some GREAT examples of what this will do to your email rendering.

The Outlook team themselves have even posted a response to all this titled "The Power of Word in Outlook"

Now, I know this might be a bit early in the development process and say specifically that this will hopefully NOT continue to happen, but my past experiences with a large company like Microsoft is that they will do what they want no matter how much of a cry is put out there. I for one am still not happy about their community involvment even over the past 10-15 years in email. Please visit http://www.fixoutlook.org and let the Microsoft Office development team know your thoughts.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

So my Chief Technology Officer/co-founder, Steve Woods, made probably one of the best posts I have seen this year about an overly used report that I too agree doesn't make much sense to produce anymore. Some of you who attended the Texas Online Marketing Summit (OMS) tour heard me giving a presentation that connected higher deliverability to understanding your customers Digital Body Language as Steve is discussing here.

As you know, Digital Body Language has transformed the buying process over the last 3-5 years by creating a new buying process for considered purchase in the online world. Digital Body Language allows for better segmentation and targeting of online buyers by understanding or measuring their likes and dislikes, their habits, and seeing their needs. Digital Body Language isn’t just batch and blast - not just putting up websites or doing print. It can help tie to privacy and deliverability issues together and help you get better results from your email campaigns by understanding your recipients needs and wants. Digital Body Language can help you send a more relevant message to your customers thus changing your old batch and blast habits to becoming a more finely tuned campaign that will have deliverability.

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Is Time-of-Day Sending Overhyped?

I can't recall the last time I waited in my inbox at 10:01 on a Tuesday clicking the "Send/Receive" button repeatedly eagerly anticipating the next edition of my favourite corporate newsletter. I'm not particularly bothered by what times emails arrive, as a recipient. I strongly doubt that I'm alone in that.

So why is the email industry enamoured by time-of-day sending optimization? I suspect it comes down to a combination of three factors:

1. Marketers are dying to find ways to improve their effectiveness at connecting with their audiences
2. As email service providers, we can easily build time-of-day sending control into our systems, and it seems like a compelling and simple answer to marketer's needs
3. Tactical metrics like open rates may even show a swing across emails sent at different times of the day, "proving" the effectiveness of this technique

--MORE--

http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-time-of-day-sending-overhyped.html

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

From the Washington Post :

Alan Ralsky, a 64-year-old Michigan man that federal investigators say was among the world's top spam kingpins, pleaded guilty on Monday to running a multi-million dollar international stock fraud scam powered by junk e-mail.
Ralsky...and his son-in-law and chief financial officer Scott K. Bradley, 38, also of Michigan, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and to violate the CAN-SPAM Act.

--snip--

Also pleading guilty in connection with the Ralsky case are:

John S. Bown, 45, of Fresno, Calif., the chief technology officer for the spamming operation. He faces up to 63 months in prison and a $75,000 fine.

William C. Neil, 46, of Fresno, who built and maintained a computer network used to transmit junk e-mails as part of the conspiracy. Neil is looking at as much as 37 months in prison and a $30,000 fine.

James E. Fite, a 36-year-old from Culver City, Calif., a contract spammer, who hired others to send spam. Fite is facing up to two years in prison and a $30,000 fine.

All five defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on Oct 29, 2009.

For further information, Laura Atkins has a post on her blog with links to other news sources.

Bottom line? CAN-SPAM, while rarely enforced, is still the law and if you knowingly and willfully break it, eventually you'll be caught. Let this portend, along with the other cases over the years, to anyone sending legitimate email that you don't ever want to end up in the same league (or court) as spammers so listen to your email staff and/or advisers when they lecture about the law!

So first, I'm not trying to take over my good friend Dylan Boyd's posts on The Email Wars where he regularly compares and comments on good and bad emails that he personally sees in his email box.

I think for this one, I just got excited to see one of my own customers succeeding with some simple, but yet effective tools (activty filters) and processes in managing their lists with the idea of quality over quantity. This typically is a difficult decision for many companies to decide to let go of their non-active customers, but as the year moves on I am seeing more and more companies seeing the benefit of doing such in controlled manner like this one.

What it was:

A reactivation email was sent to subscribers who have neither opened nor clicked Kings/Monarchs gameday alert emails after 2-3 weeks into the season. About 5 gameday alerts have been sent to subscribers when they executed the reactivation program.

In a nutshell, they wanted to make sure that they were delivering relevant communications to fans (= subscribers = recipients).

Why did like this so much you ask?

1. It was short and sweet. Not to much wording. Captures the attention (5 secs).Little images
2. Less than a page.
3. Not a lot of BIG images swung wherever it would hang. 
4. Gave the recipient a CHOICE (would make it blink if I could). Yes? or No?, O? or X?, Blue? or Red?
5. Has an option for mobile devices within the email

----------

----------

In the midst of my excitement, I called the person in charge of this and asked them to throw together their thoughts behind this campaign. I wanted them to have the ability to share the why's! Did it work for them? Why did they do it? What could they teach others who read this blog?

Here's what Ken Niwa their Relationship Marketing Manager at ARCO Arena had to say:

Reasons:

1. 82 emails in six months is way too many communications for even me, someone who works for the team
2. With Eloqua, (sorry about the pitch), we were able to automate the reactivation process

Success:

1. Inactive subscribers that we thought are dead aren't dead!. They clicked keep my active.
2. Felt comfortable sending 82 emails throughout the Kings season (34 for the Monarchs) since recipients are actively engaged (opening and/or clicking) or have asked to continue to receive gameday alerts
3. Minimized unsubscribe and complaint rates
4. Created a win-win situation --- we felt good about the high response rate (= 35.2% Email Group Open Rate) and fans were happy to receive emails from us.

I say kudo's to Ken and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs for their diligent work and good choices.

We would love to see comments if you have them.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

UPDATE
Latest news from SORBS is that impending sunset on blacklist may not be a sure thing afterall. See here for more.

The list master at SORBS announced that, due to contractual problems with the network provider, it may be closing soon. No doubt, you've experienced the love and/or hate relationship with the DNSBL over the years. Its largest receiver footprint was in the educational and non-profit email receiver space due to its no-cost and ease of use. The main point of contention senders generally have had with SORBS is the monetary penalty imposed to get IPs removed. Sender deliverability was affected depending on the mix of recipient addresses in the lists they used.

It comes with great sadness that I have to announce the imminent closure of SORBS. The University of Queensland have decided not to honor their agreement with myself and SORBS and terminate the hosting contract.

I have been involved with institutions such as Griffith University trying to arrange alternative hosting for SORBS, but as of 12 noon, 22nd June 2009 no hosting has been acquired and therefore I have been forced in to this announcement. SORBS is officially "For Sale" should anyone wish to purchase it as a going concern, but failing that and failing to find alternative hosting for a 42RU rack in the Brisbane area of Queensland Australia SORBS will be shutting down permanently in 28 days, on 20th July 2009 at 12 noon.

Continued here ...

One of the key points in the report that’s worth thinking about is that people still have misconceptions about their true delivery rates; don’t account for blackholing and junk foldering in calculating the delivery metric. Is that their ESP giving them that mis-notion? or that companies are just still batching and blasting and not caring about their metrics?

The complete Goodmail/Pivotal Veracity Q1 2009 Email Deliverability Benchmarks report is available for complimentary download at http://www.goodmail.com

Twenty Percent (20%) of Business-to-Consumer Messages to Qualified Email Addresses Don’t Get Delivered

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. & PHEONIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Goodmail Systems, the creator of CertifiedEmail™ and CertifiedVideo™, and Pivotal Veracity, the industry leader in cross-platform email deliverability and optimization solutions, today released co-authored research that found 20 percent of legitimate marketers’ email messages were routed to spam folders or blocked entirely in the first quarter of 2009. Five percent of messages were found in spam folders, with even more – 15 percent – unaccounted for.

“Deliverability remains a major barrier to email marketing success. A study we conducted with Forrester Research last year found that fifty-two percent of marketers called deliverability one of their top five challenges,” said Peter Horan, CEO of Goodmail. “This data confirms that their concern is justified – legitimate marketers across a variety of industries, even those who adhere to best practices and follow the law, suffer widespread junk folder placement and instances of missing or blocked email.”

--MORE--

http://www.businesswire.com

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

As a Director with CAUCE I'm happy to share this news - Original source CAUCE NA

Cauce North America Inc.--The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (http://www.CAUCE.org)--Today announced at The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group meeting (MAAWG) that it has received additional financial support from Return Path Inc.

The viewpoint of computer end-users is often one missing from the anti-abuse discussions, CAUCE works to ensure they have a place at the table and these stakeholders' unique and vital perspective is considered when formulating policy to help stop Internet abuse. As well, CAUCE actively works to assist training law enforcement agents in the investigation of illegal spamming.

CAUCE, after a decade of purely volunteer ad-hoc operations, officially incorporated in 2007 and began to accept paid memberships from individuals and sponsoring companies and organizations to help defray operating costs.

"The ongoing, and generous financial support of Return Path by way of their renewed corporate membership in CAUCE will help us to continue to advance the interests of the true victims of Spam 2.0 (the blended threat of spyware, spam and viruses), the computer end-users" said CAUCE president Dr. John Levine

Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path inc. said, "Supporting the interests of consumers is vital to the health of the email ecosystem, and CAUCE is uniquely suited to work in this area. Return Path is delighted to support CAUCE in its ongoing efforts to create a clean, well-lighted place where consumers can feel safe and confident interacting through email."

"This renewed corporate membership will allow CAUCE to maintain a demanding travel and conference schedule in the coming months, including ongoing discussions with lawmakers and governments, The London Action Plan/EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities conference in Portugal, and of course, having representation at MAAWG" explained John Levine

Levine continued "CAUCE was actively involved in the Canadian government's Task Force on Spam in 2004-2005, the end-result of which was the recent tabling of Bill C-27 in the parliament of Canada; memberships such as that of Return Path Inc. allow us to continue to directly involve ourselves in the legislative process".

About CAUCE

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email CAUCE North America was formed in March 2007 from a merger between the original CAUCE in the United States and CAUCE Canada, combining the strengths of the two sibling CAUCE organizations. CAUCE NA, as an all-volunteer consumer advocacy organization, has moved beyond its original mission of encouraging the creation and adoption of anti-spam laws to a broader stance of defending the interests of the average Internet user. CAUCE NA is led by a combined Board with a cumulative century of experience in the field of Internet advocacy.

CAUCE NA represents the interests of Internet end-users to the following organizations:

* The Anti-spyware Coalition (ASC)
* The Anti-phishing Working group (APWG)
* Digital Phishnet
* Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
* Internet Governance forum
* The London Action Plan / EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities
* The Stop Spam Alliance

About Return Path
Founded in 1999, Return Path helps commercial email senders get more email delivered to the inbox. Our tools and services give senders the insight and resources to diagnose and prevent email deliverability and rendering failures by improving and maintaining their email sending reputations. Our Professional Services division then helps our client improve ROI and response by creating consistent and compelling subscriber experiences across the email customer lifecycle. Return Path runs the internet's most widely used third-party whitelist, the Return Path Certification Program. Return Path also invented the Sender Score, an email reputation measure based on data contributed by ISPs and other receivers of large volume email into the Return Path Reputation Network. We offer free access to our Sender Score to any sender, receiver or consumer of email at our reputation portal: http://www.senderscore.org Information about Return Path can be found at http://www.returnpath.net

With all the different technology Obama's administration has been using during his first months in office (including Twitter, Facebook and blogs), their heavy use of email as a communication channel is no surprise. However, it was surprising to see their email updates subscribing to Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service. I saw the following on David Axelrod's announcement yesterday driving traffic to Obama's latest international diplomatic speech in my Yahoo! webclient.

(If you don't use Yahoo!, the Learn More link above takes you here.)

Now that the White House has implicitly backed one of these services, it will be interesting to see if this has any affect on the rest of the email industry. If it's good enough for the President...

GovDelivery, the White House's ESP, is hosting the services. It would be interesting to see if this new addition helps drive down what I could only imagine being a plethora of phishing or spam attacks claiming to be from Obama and his staff. Also, the email is very image/link light so it would seem this effort was less around enabling users to take immediate action and more about reinforcing the identity and inbox delivery of the email.

So this past week there was some internal discussion at Eloqua and on some of the industry lists asking the question, "Does having the company's brand name sending the email or the first name of recipient of the email in the subject line hurt or help opens". The discussions and "evidence" were ramped from all sides where some people showed improvement in email opens and other debated that doing such is a sign of spammers.

This of course had me wondering how the average user of email would view these ideas. So, time to ask the wife who is always right.

Here is her response (BTW, I am in the EU for a few weeks)

-----

I'm sensing a trend.  You travel, then I get an assignment.  (Better get me a good souvenir!) 

Here's my response to today's question:  How do you feel about personalized email?  Stick with me for a minute...

When I first meet someone, I call them ma'am or sir.  I use phrases like "excuse me," and if I can't get their attention, I might venture as far as a gentle tap on the arm.  Calling someone by their first name is something that seems inherently personal to me, and I think it should be reserved for the building of a relationship, not just a passing encounter.  For example, I don't like when I go to a restaurant with someone and they call the waiter/waitress by their first name.  They're virtually strangers to one another, and it's only the name tag that gives their first name away.  It seems assuming and insincere, if a quick interaction during lunch at Chili's can be looked at like that.  (I know, I know.  You're totally shaking your head at me right now.  You know you do that, right?)  Well, I'd say that's how I look at personalized emails.  My name was picked from a list. The sender of the email doesn't know me.  They don't know my preferences, my family, my habits.  It feels like the sender is trying to fake a personal connection with me. It's not until we've established a relationship, either as a friend or colleague or customer, that I'd actually feel genuinely comfortable with someone calling me by my first name.  Now, I'm certain that I could come up with worse offenses than this, but you gave me a specific topic.  In keeping with that, here's the short answer.  I don't care for personalized emails, but it wouldn't top my "complaints about email" list.

That's it for now.

xoxo - wife

PS - My friends and family don't ever write my name in the subject line.  Marketers know that an email that contains my own name in the subject line is a red flag (junk mail alert!) to me, right? 

------

Now I haven't had much time to chat with my wife this week on this subject, but what I would like to point out to her is that many email lists or companies she's deals with probably do have preferences on her. Now the question is are they using them? Probably not as well as they should be or is it possible that she doesn't fill out the entire form or preferences?

As she pointed out, I do call people by the first name in restaurants or stores, I'm guilty, but if they are wearing that name tag then obviously they want me to say hey Dave vs. sir (which I hate when kids call me that these days). I also believe this is a difference in the person's wants as well. I, as many of you know me, am by NO means shy... My wife is a little more reserved. So maybe that alone is a determiner in whether it's a good thing or not to be personal RIGHT out of the gate.

My opinion? Using personalization in the subject line when properly done can't hurt you in delivery, but if your already using the FROM with branding maybe you don't need it in the SUBJECT line if your company brand is strong and known. If your a small brand or need some strength, then try out the subject line.

You should also consider the amount of subject line real-estate you have to give to this if you want to do it and DO NOT EVER use the email address in the subject line as a personalization if your DO NOT have the recipients first name. Spammers do that...

If your looking at answer the same question, try some A-B split testing. Try some emails with personalization in the SUBJECT and some without. See where your brand and customers stand when it comes to that. Then give them what they want.

I should go through my wife's Inbox when I get home just to see how many emails contain a personalization in the subject line.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Deliverability continues to get worse
• Social media is fundamentally changing how people use email
• Email marketing must adapt for new technologies and the mobile future

View >>

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

It is reported today that Hotmail usage is being blocked by the Chinese government. Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services on today, two (2) days before the twentieth anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square which cost hundreds of lives.

This however isn't something new folks. Online access is typically restricted during sensitive times.

I am UNSURE and really don't believe this effects email delivery to HotMail in that region, but it will potentially effect opens and click-through's if your tracking that way because users can not access the websites.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Check out this GREAT article from David Baker, vice president of eCRM Solutions at Razorfish.

The market is forcing marketers to address more complex questions than most have the bandwidth, resources and budgets to address. There's a lot of talk about retention marketing these days. In down times many organizations constrict, focusing on retaining customers, maximizing profits and controlling expenses. In good times, companies tend to think about new acquisition options, testing new channels and expanding reach in the marketplace. Two years ago the major goal of most companies we talked to was growing their consumer/b2b database. Today, it's about making money with what you have....

--MORE--

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107072&lfe=1

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!