Mar
03
Opt outs are always a bummer, but they are a part of email life. People have changing interests, jobs and lifestyles and your email may not longer be relevant to them. Better to have them move on than...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Feb
25
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
Gene Raitt, Chairman of the DMA, has launched a new blog today called DM Unplugged. It's not an official DMA property. Gene won't be the only contributor -- over time, other DMA board members (including me) and thought leaders in the direct and interactive marketing communities at large -- will contribute as well.
This is one small, though notable, development in a series of things the DMA is working on as it transforms itself. Look for some truly "unplugged" commentary on this blog about both things happening in the industry and transparent views into things happening at the DMA as well as invitations to contribute to the discussion on both.
Tell me moreCategories: News
by J.D. Falk
Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services
Whitelists exist because spam filters exist. They are the exception policy, the safety valve. But beyond that simple truism, there are a lot of differences.
Because there's so much spam, filters have to rely on patterns derived from similarities between known spam messages. When a message matches the pattern, the filter notices and does something: reject it, put it in a spam folder, et cetera. Messages that don't match the pattern sail on through.
Similarly, if the message's source -- usually tracked by IP address -- matches the pattern, all messages from that source are noticed by the filter. This could be as specific as a single IP address, or could be a range of IP addresses. When a filter's pattern is broad, it catches a lot of spam. But it may also catch some non-spam messages; this is what's called a "false positive." To avoid those, you could (and probably will) improve the filters over time -- but by the time you find out, the damage is already done. In the meantime, you need a whitelist.
Most mail system administrators will whitelist their own network infrastructure; it's under their control (or under the control of someone nearby), so if any problems come up they can fix them. Also, it's generally a bad idea to block mail from your boss.
Next you'll want to whitelist companies and organizations you and your users frequently interact with. Do a quick mental inventory: how many is that? Did you remember your payroll company, your health insurance benefits broker, your local pizza delivery joint? What about the company your local pizza joint outsourced their email to -- how many other companies do does that company send for? Do they all deserve a free pass around your spam filters?
Pretty soon, managing exceptions to your filters becomes more complicated, more time-consuming, than managing the filters in the first place. And then the phone rings: some company you've never heard of, asking to be whitelisted so they can send their newsletter to a VP you've never even met -- but you've heard she thinks it's easy (and fun) to replace technical staff like you. Or maybe you work for an ISP, and the frat boy on the phone insists that hundreds of your users are just begging for this email. You can't call every single user in the middle of the night to ask if that's true. How do you decide?Tell me more
Categories: Email Deliverability
Feb
22
By Tom Bartel
VP Receiver and Certification Services
It's a new year - and if you are like me, you've read the many predictions about email for the year 2010. Initially we avoided jumping on the prediction bandwagon and instead released a report the trends that mattered most for email in 2009.
But, alas, we couldn't resist looking forward. As we head into March - it's too late for predictions, but not too late to underscore the imperative issues that face all of us in the email industry today. What trends will impact reputation and inbox placement rates? Regular interactions with our ISP partners give us unique insight into their issues and challenges and how they will influence email marketing in 2010.
Our Email Imperatives paper is an introduction to what will matter for email marketers this year. We're pleased to present this initial overview, and look forward to publishing more papers throughout the year - each paper to come taking a deeper dive into a particular imperative.
So, no lofty predictions here - just the straight story - what matters most for you for when navigating the choppy waters of email deliverability over the next 12 months.
Download the paper here.
Categories:
New York, NY - February 22, 2010 - Return Path, the leading email deliverability and reputation management company, today released its Email Delivery Imperatives guide outlining best practices for email senders in 2010. According to Return Path, email senders should be prepared to:
Categories: Email Deliverability | Press Releases
Feb
19
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
As an American living in the UK, there are a number of things I don't understand about my adopted home: the British obsession with regional accents that apparently indicates not only where you come from, but your class and status as well. Some accents are "posh" and others aren't. I have yet to figure out the difference. Then there's the surprising realization that while we may be speaking the same language we have very different ways of expressing ourselves. I won't go into why the Brits find the term "fanny pack" so hysterical, and if someone tells you that you've "lost the plot" or are "throwing your toys out of the pram" (two of my favourite British expressions), that's a poetically descriptive way of saying you've lost your cool. Then there's the spelling, with all those extra "u's" and "s's" instead of "z's, and I won't even mention the weather.
That being said, when it comes to email marketing, while there are some distinct differences between UK and US marketers there are also many similarities. Two recent Return Path studies analyzing US and UK subscriber experiences showed that 60% of US marketers do not send a welcome message (compared to 55% of UK marketers). Our studies also found that it took US marketers 9 days to send their first email message to subscribers (compared with 13 days in the UK); and 83% of US marketers neglected to personalize or customize their first message to subscribers despite collecting personal data at the point of sign-up (compared to 86% of UK marketers).
What all this boils down to is that email marketers on both sides of the pond struggle to implement the best practices that will improve email ROI and revenue. Return Path's latest research focusing on the top UK political parties and the subscriber experiences they are create for their constituents only reinforces this point. While I can't pretend to understand the nuances of the British electoral process, I do know that all the parties we studied missed opportunities to create dialogs with their email subscribers, reinforce their unique message and win crucial minds (and votes) in what promises to be a very close race.
Tell me moreCategories:
Feb
17
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
For years, Return Path's Certification program has provided members who apply and pass our rigorous quality standards with a great range of benefits. As the industry's leading third-party whitelist solution, our members get preferential treatment like the automatic display of images and nearly 100% inbox placement rates at participating providers like Hotmail and Yahoo (1.4 billion end client email inboxes worldwide in all). Nothing new there.
Today we are announcing an innovative partnership with RPost, a company we've known and respected for almost a decade. RPost has done some interesting work - and has plenty of patents to prove it - around legal proof of delivery. Their technology is court-admissible, ironclad legal proof of delivery, right down to the contents of the message.
Why are we offering this to our Certified members? Not only will mailers benefit from Certification's strong Inbox Placement, but now those mailers who require legal proof of delivery for their emails will have that capability within Return Path's Certification program. And with Return Path Certification's extensive footprint covering over two million domains worldwide, program members can receive proof of delivery across the globe. Think of this as a legally valid "return receipt" for vital email messages that include critical information like financial statements and insurance notifications. For those situations when Return Path Certification members need more than just an assurance of inbox placement.
What mailers will be interested in our RPost-powered Certification proof of delivery? Many financial companies - investment firms, insurance companies - are now migrating financial statements from paper to email. In addition, we think companies who have time-sensitive notifications and alerts or sensitive transactional messages will be interested in our new Certification proof of delivery powered by RPost.
As the Return Path Certification program has grown, we've heard from our members that we're successful in getting their email delivered to the inbox, but now they want more capabilities from those successfully delivered emails. And we're going to give it to them thanks to our partnership with RPost. But, stay tuned. We're just getting started. 2010 will be a very exciting year for Return Path Certification.
Interested in being one of the first to pilot this combined offering? Sign up today!
Tell me moreCategories:
Return Path to resell RPost's patented Registered Email® solution to its Certification clients
LOS ANGELES, CA and NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 17, 2010 - RPost, the global leader in providing Legal Proof® records in email, and Return Path, Inc., the leading email deliverability and reputation management company, today announced a partnership whereby Return Path will resell RPost's Registered Email® solution to its Certification clients.
Return Path's Certification clients will now be able to access an integrated offering whereby outbound messages will incorporate RPost's proof of delivery technology and Return Path's Certification service.
"RPost's patented technology has some unique features which are critical for a number of our clients," said Matt Blumberg, Chairman & CEO of Return Path. "Many companies who send mission critical email such as financial statements and transactional email are increasingly demanding a higher level of proof of delivery in order to meet regulatory and customer service requirements. The combination of our services will give mailers an even higher degree of confidence when replacing sensitive paper communications with email."
Return Path's Certification program provides thousands of qualified commercial mailers with preferential treatment such as the automatic display of images and nearly 100% inbox placement rates at participating mailbox providers including Hotmail, Yahoo, Comcast, Roadrunner, Cox, Earthlink, and those protected by anti-spam solutions including Cloudmark and Spam Assassin. In total, Return Path Certification is in use by more than 2 million domains, covering more than 1.4 billion end client emailboxes worldwide.
Registered Email® by RPost provides the sender legally valid and court-admissible evidence of delivery, content, and timing of any document or notice sent by email, without requiring recipients to download any software, click links, or visit special websites to open and read messages. It has been adopted worldwide by companies in a variety of industries, from large multi-national enterprises to small businesses and home users.
"The combined product will give commercial emailers the best of both worlds," said Zafar Khan, CEO of RPost. "Return Path's Certification program is the industry's largest third-party whitelisting solution and for over 7 years has given commercial mailers a high degree of assurance that their emails are being delivered to inboxes and not blocked or filtered. RPost's patented Registered Email® solution builds on that foundation to provide legal proof of delivery at the message level."
The companies will initially focus their joint offering on Return Path's clients across a number of verticals who want to send their customers statements and official notifications via email, including high value transactional messages.
Tell me moreCategories: Press Releases
The Conservative Party has an overwhelmingly better email programme than any of its election rivals, new research reveals. Yet all of the UK's main political parties - including the Tories - are making fundamental errors in their mass email communications and are consequently missing opportunities to influence voters in the run-up to this year's general election, the researchers found.
In Return Path's first ever research into the effectiveness of UK political party email marketing, researchers from Return Path - the global market leader in email deliverability and reputation services - signed up to the email programmes of the UK's established political parties and tracked each email campaign over the course of two months.
Return Path's research revealed that most of the political parties were effectively ignoring subscribers who had signed up to receive email messages. More than half of the parties studied sent fewer than two messages over the two months of the study. Labour sent just one email during this period, while the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party and the Democratic Unionist Party sent none at all.
The researchers also found that Labour and Conservatives both failed to use the demographic data that they collected to target voters with customised messages.
Tell me moreCategories: Press Releases
Feb
11
Book lovers are a perfect audience for email newsletters - they love to read and they love to read about books. But book publishers often have few marketing resources and need to maximize every email they send. Paired with a diverse array of products to promote and this can...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
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