Tag-Archive for ◊ Email ◊

Unsolicited Commercial Email

More affectionately known to the public as “spam”, unsolicited commercial email (UCE) is one of the most infuriating things facing mankind today.  Worldwide, it is estimated that there are approximately 183 BILLION spam messages sent DAILY.  Yes, BILLION and yes, DAILY.  Even though we may only spend a few seconds on each piece of spam, all those seconds add up to some staggering amounts of lost time, productivity and money.  Google has a nifty tool to help you find out what spam might be costing you.

In 2003, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enacted the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act” in an attempt to curb the rapidly growing spam problem. Who thinks it worked?  Since then it has been revised a few times, but as far as controlling spam goes, it remains just as ineffective.  We’ll get to why I think that in a bit. more…

Every facet of internet marketing has its own vocabulary, and for beginners it can be difficult to effectively communicate your wants needs without a proper understanding of the terminology.  Terms like “Open Rate”, “Click Rate”, “Conversion Rate” and “Cost-per-Click” can be a little intimidating for people when they are just getting started.

Without at least a basic understanding of the language of email marketing, it can be difficult to know what you need to track and what the measurements can tell you about the success or failure of your campaign.

What follows is a list of ten terms that are commonly used with email marketing campaigns, what they mean, how they are normally calculated and why it’s important to you. more…

Rarely is the easiest solution also the best

As a professional email marketer, it really irks me when I see companies, both small and large doing it badly.  I’ve ranted in the past about other failed e-marketing I’ve been subjected to,  and unfortunately, I suspect this won’t be the last time I do it either.  I blame the surveys.  It seems barely a week goes by when yet another survey comes out showing how fast, easy and cheap e-marketing is; that anyone wanting to survive the economy better be doing it soon.  Please, somebody stop them.

All images in email = e-marketing fail

Because of the wide variety of computer systems, email client software and human languages on the Internet; it is a practical impossibility to ensure that what you send will look the same to the reader as it does to you (even when sending plain text).  One of the most abused methods bad lazy uninformed email marketers attempt, is to create the message entirely from an image, or group of images.  Seems like a simple solution,  right?  WRONG!  While sending your email as just embedded images could make it look the same to the reader as it does to you, it does not guarantee they will ever even see it, or understand it.  more…

A while back I wrote that email marketers need to do their homework about to who and when they are sending messages.  To say I am shocked that these companies did not read my article and immediately change their processes would be…an exaggeration.  If they paid any attention to the world of e-marketing they would have already done the research and I wouldn’t be ranting (again).

Now I’ve decided to name names.  Hopefully they have the sense to at least have a “Google alert” set up and will read this.  If you are one of THEM, congratulations for getting here.  The messages listed below were all received within one week, Sunday midnight to Sunday midnight and arrived outside of regular business hours (CST). more…

I Do Not Need a 4 A.M. Wake-up Call.

I’ve been getting more and more Email marketing from large companies lately.  I won’t call it spam since I have done business with each of them at some point, even though it has been a while with some of them.

I’m a bit perplexed at the delivery schedule of a few of them as they seem to be following suggestions from the pre-spam era and are sending in the middle of the night.  I have two problems with this.  First, like a lot of people,  I get my mail on a Smart Phone when not at my desk. In my case a Palm Treo 750.  Why is that a problem you ask…because whenever I get new Email, my phone it lights up and announces in a rather loud voice “You have new mail in your in box.”  Of course I could just turn it off, but being the paranoid parent of two daughters that do not live with me, I’d rather leave the phone turned on.  Besides, you never know when Terry Francona might call seeking advice for an upcoming game.  The second problem is that most mornings I have so much junk in my mailbox I really don’t have either the time or the desire to even skim their Email to see if it is of interest to me or not. more…