Email

E-Mail Suffering Because of Social Networking, Text Messaging
It comes as no surprise that e-mail marketing has been suffering because of the increasing popularity of online social networks and text messaging. More...

What to Look for in a List Management Company
Attention all Advertisers! By advertisers, I mean anyone who owns an internet property that sells a product, service, or creates leads online. How many of you have multiple revenue streams other than what sales are made through your web site? More...

Illinois is the Most Spammed State
A recent report released by MessageLabs Intelligence lists the top 10 most spammed states in the U.S. The top 10 list is: More...

Opt-In E-Mail Industry Now Closed to Outsiders?
Many e-mail marketers will remember a time not so long ago, when one could do very minimal work and reap huge rewards More...

Subject Lines Should be 50 or 80 Characters Long, Nowhere in Between
Make sure that your e-mail subject lines are around 50 characters long, or 80 characters long, but not 60 or 70 characters long. More...

Consumers Foresee E-Mail’s Continued Significance
A study conducted by market research company, Ipsos, for online reputation management service, Habeas, found that e-mail is the preferred means of communication, and is likely to remain so for the near future More...

Confirmed Opt-In Liked by Consumers, Sparsely Used by Marketers
A recent online survey of 523 e-mail marketers conducted by eROI, an e-mail marketing agency, found that just 30% of the respondents indicated that they use confirmed (or double) opt-in for signing up consumers. More...

ValueClick Smacked with CAN-SPAM
Picture this: you receive an email, or see a banner ad, that congratulates you for somehow being eligible to receive a free plasma TV or a free Nintendo Wii, if you would just take a few minutes to complete a survey, with no visible indication of any conditions. More...

Spam: Asia and Europe Overtake North America
The most recent figures released by enterprise IT security and control firm Sophos indicate that the U.S. remains the top spamming country in the world, followed by Russia, China (including Hong Kong), Brazil, and South Korea. More...

E-Mail Marketing: $2.1 Billion in 2012
According to a recent JupiterResearch report, e-mail marketing spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012. More...

Subject and From Lines Important for Open/Click Rates
Personalization in e-mail marketing efforts is key. Though this is logical, it might behoove marketers to remind themselves of this fact and to check to see if their e-mails appear too shady for the typical consumer’s tastes. More...

E-Mail ROI is Falling
Though the return on investment garnered from e-mail marketing operations is still healthy, there has been a downward trend in recent years More...

Spam is Huge in Q3 07
Commtouch, a company that "is dedicated to protecting the integrity of the world's most widespread form of communication, e-mail," released a report last week that indicates that spam reached a new record in the third quarter of this year. More...

FTC Stops International Spamming Enterprise that Sold Bogus Hoodia and Human Growth Hormone Pills
Agency Brings First Action Using US SAFEWEB Act
As most affiliate marketers have noticed by now, the internet has been flooded with offers for hoodia diet products and HGH type nutritional products for quite some time. More...

E-Mail Ad Spending Will Lag
E-mail advertising is expected to grow from $338 million in 2006 to $616 million by 2011, reflecting growth of 82%, according to eMarketer. This sounds great until you also see that total online ad spending is expected to grow twice as fast in that time frame. More...

E-Mail Sites Generate Big Revenue
According to a recent study conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings, e-mail sites are tops in terms of advertising revenue-generating Web site categories in the U.S. In July 2007, e-mail sites generated $260.4 million in ad revenue. More...

$111,440.00 Attorneys’ Fee Award - CAN-SPAM Plaintiff Slammed in Washington - The Trend Continues
For some time we’ve been watching the trend of anti-spammers getting slammed for their outrageous behavior, and celebrating the fact that in the United States, we live by the rule of law, and everyone must comply. Spam is a... More...

E-Mail is Addicting
AOL’s third annual "E-Mail Addiction" survey shows that e-mail has seeped into just about every crevice of our lives, including our vacations. More...

U.S. is Spam Leader in Q2 2007
The U.S. relayed the most spam during the second quarter of 2007, according to Sophos. This indicates that the U.S. is continuing its leadership position from 2006 for spam relaying. More...

Mobile E-Mail Users Not Ideal Target for Marketers
Marketing initiatives through e-mail may be an appealing and potentially rewarding venture, but shifting over to targeting mobile e-mail users may not hold nearly as much bang for the buck. This is because of the current limits to... More...

AOL Spammer Pleads Guilty
On Monday, Adam Vitale pleaded guilty in a federal court to filling the inboxes of 1.2 million AOL subscribers with spam e-mails in less than a week in August 2005, thereby violating anti-spam laws. The Brooklyn man was caught making... More...

Computer Users Take More Action Against Spam
According to a recent research report released by Pew Internet & the American, 71% of e-mail users utilize filters to deal with unwanted messages before they get into their inboxes. An additional 41% use their own filters to purge their... More...

iLegal - “Spam King” Arrested in Washington State
I’ve written quite a few columns lately about illegitimate anti-spammers getting shut down by the courts, but here is the other side of the picture. It seems that U.S. Prosecutors in Washington state have nailed one of the real bad guys... More...

Yet Another Loss for Anti-Spammers Who Don’t Play by the Rules
Though I’ve been closely monitoring anti-spam litigation, and I’ve been telling you things are shifting, even I’m surprised by the pace. It seems like new cases deciding against overly aggressive anti-spammers are coming down... More...

Spam Hurts: Limit Complaints to Improve Results
One of the top challenges of any coordinated e-mail marketing program is maintaining a "clean" reputation with ISPs. Indeed this task can consume so much time and energy that many companies choose to abandon e-mail... More...

Another Setback for Illegitimate Anti-Spammers
The legal climate surrounding anti-spam litigation appears to be changing. Recently a court awarded $2.5M in damages against anti-spammer Mark Mumma for defamation. It seems that at least one court has recognized that... More...

Strengthen Your Subscriber Base
More important than what you communicate through your e-marketing efforts, is to whom you choose to send it. Your list of email subscribers or recipients does much more than represent a core group of current or potential... More...

E-mail Lists Could Benefit From Segmentation
Recent Internet Retailer figures studied by survey software firm Vovici seem to indicate that online retailers who reach their customers through e-mail efforts could benefit from more targeted e-mail lists. More...

Email Marketer Strikes Back Against “Spammer” Claims
In an apparent effort to stem the tide of bogus spam complaints, email marketer David Linhardt and his company e360insight last week launched a salvo in the battle against people who claim "spam" and attempt to have... More...

Live From Marketing Sherpa
Compliance = Reputation = Deliverability = Profits: This week I had the pleasure of attending Marketing Sherpa’s Email Summit in Miami, Florida. I’m always... More...

Datran’s 2007 E-Mail Survey Findings
Datran Media, an e-mail and online marketing solutions company based in New York City, recently released their annual e-mail marketing survey, titled "The 2007 Email Marketing Survey: Looking Forward." The survey was... More...

MySpace Sues the “Spam King”
Scott Richter has been accused of being one of the world’s top three spammers and holds the auspicious moniker of the “Spam King.” He is also being used by the king of the social networking world, News Corp.’s MySpace. More...

Spam Grows Up in 2006, Eyes a Big 2007
MessageLabs recently released its 2006 Annual MessageLabs Intelligence Report, which discusses its analysis of the spam, virus, and phishing attacks in 2006, and looks forward to 2007. More...

E-Mail Marketers Challenged by the Same Old Concerns
If you’re an e-mail marketer who is finding the same old concerns popping up again and again, don’t worry, because you are not alone. More...

The Plan or the Trash Can II: An Email Marketing Guide
The first installment of this email marketing walkthrough covered dividing your email master list into targeted subgroups. This week you can sit back, relax, and learn how to increase the open rates of your email campaigns through sender name optimization. More...

Yahoo, AOL Show off E-Mail Makeovers
Yahoo made its beta version of a new version of Yahoo Mail available to the general public. It resembles Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail client with its use of reading panes and a preview window. The new Yahoo Mail uses an AJAX... More...

The Plan or the Trash Can: An Email Marketing Guide
There’s no doubt that email marketing has gotten a bum rap from abusive spammers. Several thoughts, such as long prison sentences for wide scale spammers instantly come to mind in a vague jumble when this practice is... More...

Saturday is Good for E-mail
Online marketing firm eROI recently reported that open and click-through rates for marketing e-mails in the U.S. were highest on Saturdays for the second quarter of 2006. This finding breaks the trend from prior quarters. More...

U.S. Still Leads ‘Dirty Dozen’ of Spam
In its most recent “Dirty Dozen” report concerning the top twelve spam-relaying countries and continents during the second quarter of 2006, threat management solutions leader Sophos indicates that the U.S., once again, is... More...

Image-Based Spam Makes a Comeback
Up until recently, image-based spam was all-but defeated. Anti-spam filters figured out how to detect those messages by utilizing mathematical formulas and unique signatures that software used to flag them, but with new... More...

Spam Eats Up One Hour Per Day
According to a “Spam Personality” survey conducted in May by Reflexion Network Solutions, a typical employee spends up to an hour per day deleting spam e-mails. This translates into about 12.5% of lost work time for someone... More...

Gmail is Still Beta for a Reason
I think it was the threat of a Gmail revolution that prompted Yahoo to increase the storage space parceled to its free email accounts last year. (Yahoo’s paid email at the time, of course, gave storage to spare. It’s an example of how the... More...

Bounced E-mails Cost $5B
When a marketer sends their e-mail campaign to a list, they usually use software that takes the message and creates individual e-mails for each recipient. These individual messages are then queued up for delivery. For... More...

Goodmail Fails to Charm Gmail
Much to the chagrin of AOL, Google broke its silence on Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail system last week and said that it would not be implementing any services that would compel senders to pay in order to ensure their e-mails’... More...

Return Path Introduces Sender Score Reputation
Last week, Return Path introduced its Sender Score Reputation Monitoring service, which is its response to Goodmail and Vanquish’s proposed solutions to unsolicited e-mail. The Sender Score Reputation Monitor will... More...

V for Vanquishing Spam
Yahoo! and AOL’s plan for teaming with Goodmail to offer a certified e-mail service has not been the most well-received news of the year. Nonprofit groups and small businesses in particular have voiced their disdain for these... More...

Goodmail Brings Opposites Together
Liberal MoveOn.org and conservative RightMarch.com are both political action committees. They usually find themselves pitted against each other on many issues of interest, but on the issue of Goodmail they find that they finally have... More...

AOL and Yahoo! To Test Fee-Based E-mail Service
America Online and Yahoo have partnered with Mountain View, California-based Goodmail Systems to offer a certified e-mail service for businesses. It would allow businesses to send emails to members and be guaranteed of... More...

Email - Then and Now
Six years ago, I was sitting in a hallway in a makeshift cube, trying to wrap my head around the business of Internet advertising. I joined this space the way many people do, as a media buyer. As I was “buying” on a CPC basis in a... More...

Tips On E-Mail Copywriting
In a typical subject line for an e-mail message you have about 45 characters to make an impact, and in a BlackBerry message you only have 15 characters to work with. So, it’s obviously of huge importance to get your message across More...

S. Korea Steps Up Spam Enforcement:
S. Korea is an economic and technological leader, which makes it an important example for the rest of the world. One distinct area of leadership is S. Korea’s success in dealing with Spam where recent policy changes seem to be effective. The new... More...

China Can’t Stomach the SPAM
In recent years international trade issues with China have been contentious. However, when it comes to controlling the international flow of SPAM China is very much on board. To be sure, China has a strong motivation to act on this problem. According to the... More...

Looking for a Third Party to Manage Your Database?
First of all, learn about their understanding and compliance with Can-Spam and applicable state and federal laws. Since database marketing has grown from its, somewhat modest, roots of the basis of the most direct marketing itself, advances in... More...

Digital Thoughts
Not too long ago, a MediaPost article spoke about the author’s trials and tribulations as a result of spyware on his machine. I don’t remember the exact story - I certainly tried finding it albeit not that extensively - but it certainl More...

How Authentication and Reputation will Impact Email Marketing
If your online marketing strategy includes email, you’re likely well aware of how spam filters can impact your results. More...

Trends Report: Spam Redux
The 2003 DMA’s in Orlando, Fl was inundated with talk of the impending California Spam Law that had just gotten through the state’s legislature. More...

Digital Thoughts: The Evolutionary Spiral of the Email Publisher
Yields are down. Data is non-responsive. Legal repercussions for sending commercial email are much stiffer than in the past. More...

Solo vs. Email Publications
When most people think of email marketing these days, they are more likely to think about the latest “Penis Enlargement” advertisement More...

Digital Thoughts: Pardon Me, Ma’am and Sir: The Netiquette Gray Area of Online Marketing
Virginia Shea’s intriguing work Netiquette, published in 1994, seemed to be completely ahead of its time. More...

Complying with the Can Spam act
Have you read the actual text of the law or have you relied on some other person’s summary of the requirements? More...