The Problem Might Not Be What You Think
22 April 2010
Today is the second day on some lessons email marketers can apply from learning some basic emergency medicine. Today’s lesson deals with squeaky wheels, grease, and problem diagnosis. My sister-in-law is a nurse. She spent several years as a ER nurse and sometimes takes part in emergency preparedness drills at our local hospital. Once, a…
“The recession has forced us to drop this etiquette.”
22 February 2010
semantics definition se·man·tics (-tiks) noun the branch of linguistics concerned with the nature, the structure, and the development and changes of the meanings of speech forms, or with contextual meaning semiotics the branch of semiotics dealing with relationships of signs and symbols to the things to which they refer, or with referential meaning the relationships…
The hard truth about email
30 November 2009
Many clients expect email to be sort of an automatic thing. The thinking is “I should hit ‘Send’ and it should arrive within moments.” So, sometimes those of us who work in email hear comments like the following: I understand that these delays may not be your fault, but we can’t have delays. and: It’s…
Pottery warriors are standing by…
19 October 2009
…but they’re impotent and broken. On Saturday, I took the kids to the Houston Museum of Natural History to see its exhibit of the famous Chinese Terracotta Army. One of the things that I keep stressing to my kids as we have started homeschooling them is that history is all about the stories, not the…
Something that authentication can’t help
9 October 2009
The email said, “Our last mailing had 30 complaints at AOL. Will signing with DKIM and SPF help with our reputation there?” In some ways, that is a fair question. We do talk about reputation a lot and how authentication ties into that. But, really, this is something that authentication can’t help because, for all…
Listen to your unsubscribers
30 July 2009
When was the last time that you took a good, long listen to the people who are asking you to stop sending them email? If your ESP doesn’t provide an opportunity for your unhappy subscribers, you should ask them to create one. Your now-former subscribers have a story to tell that can help you retain…
List Rental Is…
28 July 2009
Peter Roebuck of AllWEBeMail (a division of All Web Promotion, Inc.) recently left a comment on Laura Atkins’ blog: rented email addresses, if done properly, should be no different from renting physical mailing addresses. With over 25 years in direct mail catalog experience, we know that catalogers are sending fewer catalogs and moving from print…
The Email Marketer’s Syllogism
10 July 2009
I get to see a number of things on a daily basis which indicate that people may not have the best ideas when it comes to understanding how engaged their subscribers are. One such example reads: There are tens of thousands of people in our database with whom we communicate and who clearly want to…
IP relisted despite no more mail being sent
25 June 2009
On June 6, 2009, a client sent a mailing. After it was sent, their (static, only-used-by-them) IP was listed by a particular list that is generated by the creator of a large, well-known anti-spam appliance and seems to be used by default in that appliance. I didn’t notice the issue until I started checking all…