Quotable quotes
Think about why you open an email in your inbox. Consider that when creating your next email campaign, would you open your email?— Informz (@Informz) June 8, 2009 That’s a great question: Would you bother to open your own mail if you had a choice, or would you toss it out with the rest of…
A CAN-SPAM Checklist
Today we’re going to create a checklist of things required for CAN-SPAM compliance. So, you want to make sure that you actually comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and not just say that you do. This post isn’t for you. You might learn something here and if you do, that’s great. But, instead, this…
When web experts opine about email…
you get incredibly dumb statements like this one: Like promotional e-mail, transactional e-mail by nature bypasses search engines.Maria Krueger, Transactional e-mail can help market your brand, Post-Crescent (2009), http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20090518/APC0701/905180463/1436/APC03/Maria+Krueger+column++Transactional+e-mail+can+help+market+your+brand (last visited May 18, 2009). Uh? What? My car also by nature bypasses search engines (although it does, in fact, have an engine of its own, thus…
Email is about relationships
Did you know that it’s entirely possible to learn the wrong lessons? Well, it is. I use Zemanta to suggest possible links for blog posts. As I was writing yesterday’s blog post, a suggested link came up dealing with CAN-SPAM and the definition of “spam”. That post by Roger Bauer shows how some people just…
Video in email
I am asked about embedding Flash or Windows Media files in email on a fairly regular basis. I always advise against it. It never seems to deliver well and it also suffers from degradation in service. That is to say that it doesn’t seem to get where you want it as often, and when it…
Bad Advice
The hallmark of bad advice is the “there are very clear guidelines” statement which appears without an actual reference to the “very clear guideline”. A great example of this is an Email Insider article entitled: “Transactional Email:” CAN-SPAM. There are very clear guidelines on how much marketing content is acceptable in a transactional email (no…
Prior Business Relationships are irrelevant
When people don’t want to get permission to send mail, they usually don’t want to do other things as well. For instance, they don’t want to offer a way to unsubscribe. They want to make it easy to start and hard to stop. Unfortunately, CAN-SPAM decrees it should be easy to stop mail. And so…
Sending email to wireless domains?
One question that I get asked a lot has to do with sending email to wireless domains. So, I’ll lay out the answer here for all the world to see: No unsolicited messages may be sent to a recipient on a mobile domain for any reason, period. Here’s the general rule from the FCC’s Order…
The Spock Trap
I’ll admit it, I’m a policy wonk. I have a bachelor’s degree in Government. And, I read the Dipnote, the US State Department’s blog. It’s in my non-work blog feeds in Thunderbird. So, sue me. Today, John Matel writes a post titled: “Hidden Prosperity and the Banana Index in Iraq.” John Matel, Hidden Prosperity and…