The Email Wars

I love that Yahoo goes on to blame the speed of email being deliverd on spam. Has email and spam become a greater scape goat to throw on a problem?

“Jim, sorry I did not get your email last week… must have been flagged as spam and my inbox just deletes them at the end of each day. Yeah I know you were emailing to buy something, but have you ever tried the phone….”

I have personally seen in the last two weeks Yahoo fail to deliver an email from my own wife in less than 8 hours. That is sending me an email not vice versa. And mine to her, maybe a day. And another one of our partners who uses Yahoo Business Hosting Services and Email, has been blacklisted for over 3 weeks with SORBS (not them, the WHOLE Yahoo IP address) and we can’t get mail from them. So they have to use thier back up personal HOTMAIL accounts.

Yahoo Plagued By Slow Email, Analysis Shows

A small security firm in Iowa says it has discovered why Yahoo’s email is sometimes slow.
An analysis of Yahoo Inc. mail servers found that they were only able to accept email about half the time on average, making it likely that email was taking longer than normal to deliver, the security firm said Friday.

In testing 16 Yahoo mail servers, Dymeta Inc., based in Bettendorf, Iowa, found on average that the servers were unable to accept email 45 percent of the time, and the number of available servers ranged from as low as four to as high as 12, Aaron Gillette, chief technician for the company, said.

“We’re not saying that mail isn’t going to get through, but it’s likely to take longer than normal,” Gillette said. “Normally, when you send email from one account to another, you can expect it to be delivered in minutes. With the problems they’ve got, it could take hours or even days to get through, or it could be bounced back entirely.”

Interesting article on bloggers and email vs RSS use. This was from Sept 2005 (a whopping 8 months ago) which in internet time is like dog years. So take this with a grain of salt. We actually see a larger subscription rate to this blog to date by email sign ups still, but the RSS feed subscription is gaining ground. We see a 3 in 5 are using email at the emailwars.com.

My recommendation to bloggers: consider using this product. There are a lot of people out there who have not made the jump to RSS readers yet. You want to get your content in front of them, and this is another way to do it. Based on some stats that Fred Wilson (an investor in FeedBurner) published last year, we can expect about 1 email subscriber for every 5 RSS subscribers.

From and article our team found over this past weekend on China.

Email Marketing in China
According to Danny Levinson, Managing Partner for BDL Media Ltd, a China-based email list management company, Yahoo! and Hotmail claim to be the number one email providers in China. However, 126.com, Netease.com, Sohu.com are probably the top three local providers in reality. Internet users generally have 1.6 email accounts, and according to the CNNIC, a whopping 80.3% use free personal accounts while just 12.1% get email at-work accounts. Users send approximately 3.7 emails per week and receive 5.2 per week (not including spam.) “With the rise of the Internet,” says Levinson, “companies think they can sell anywhere in the world. Which is true to a certain extent. I’m in China and ordered books through Amazon. But selling a product to the Chinese is a little different, depending on how the sale is transacted and how the product is delivered.” Levinson emphasizes Morris’ point that you really need to set up a presence in China in for either licensing, sales support, manufacturing, regulations or a combination of all of these. What does this have to do with email marketing? “We get calls from companies every week who want to market to China but don’t have a presence here. We turn down 99% of them because the product is illegal, the product being marketed has little if any Chinese-language backup support (which hurts us in the end because our users stop trusting our messages), or we’re being contacted by known spammers. Bottom line if you want to do email marketing to China? Worry first about setting up a presence here.” For companies that have set up shop, the types of emails sent out vary by industry. KFC and Pizza Hut are testing viral e-coupons. However, coupons don’t really work the same way in China as they do in the US. Instead, individual stores will issue their own coupons that can be used only at specific locations. Airlines and hotels send out emails that are similar to those sent out in Europe and US and work well, according to Levinson. In terms of formatting, Levinson advises you to include all your text in the body of the HTML and not as part of an image. Javascript is not permitted in email and any forms linking to external servers must use the GET command instead of POST. You should run your subject lines by someone locally as certain words and punctuation will not be allowed. He also advises that you limit capitalized words -– no more than 5% of the total email should contain fully-capitalized words.

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China has enacted a new law that regulates the ownership and use through licensing of email servers. It is a good approach as a large volume of spam originates from servers and zombie servers in China. I know that we are looking at entering China this year and knowing the rules of each country, and especially these, really helps is your strategy to new markets.

China uses spam law to take over email providers

China’s new spam law hides a couple of disturbing details:

1. Email Service Providers must be licensed to operate, and;.
2. ESPs must keep copies of everyones’ mail for 2 months..

Those who submit then get the opportunity to negotiate China’s version of CAN-SPAM’s gauntlet, including “ADV” in commercial message Subject lines, stop sending on request, and no open relays or zombies.

The Chinese law doesn’t seem all that different from Western efforts… until you consider the way things really work today as the authoritarian country that birthed several of the world’s greatest civilizations marches to its new reality, as the Backgrounder that follows shows.

Read More

How many of you, and more importantly how many of your customers are using mobile devices to read email? I know that at our agency eROI we are at about a 10% penetration rate. We live and die by these little pocket sized gems. This article should help you understand the shifting importance on time shifting and device shifting in regard to email marketing. I wonder if this will lead to more SMS campaigns in the future with unique URLs to track results.

One question that begs an answer is what is the best way to find out if your audience is reading email on these devices. My answer is survey and ask. Ask them to update profile information on device preferences for email. It might help you to segment and target users based on location in the future.

Liberation Through Mobile E-Mail?

Can mobile e-mail really help us achieve a better work-life balance?
After spending an hour or so trudging through inane messages and spam, many of us tend to think that e-mail has made our work lives more hectic. However, a new study from Visto, a provider of wireless e-mail platforms for mobile devices, suggests otherwise.

Amid concerns about the continuing erosion of personal time, Visto’s research “suggests that mobile e-mail can deliver renewed control over the working day for the individual with improved productivity for the employer.”

According to the survey, 70% of frequent business travelers with a heavy reliance on e-mail expect mobile e-mail to free up their schedules and they actively want mobile phones with the ability to receive and send both work and personal e-mails.

Read More

But it is to a Canadian Company and they don’t care. I emplore you to read this article as this whole law is really messed up. We need to have one national law and not one for every state. It makes it too hard to control and is really (as you will read) a ploy to make someone else some money. On that note, Why should anti spammmers look to make money the same way spammers are? Ahhhh, America, what a Great country.

Critics say spam law failing to guard kids
E-mail registry: Created to shield children from adult ads, some now call it a money-making scheme

Dennis Jolley hasn’t been deluged by offensive e-mail pictures and solicitations. Nor has his 4-year-old son, who hasn’t quite figured out how to send or open an e-mail.
Still, several months ago, the Salt Lake City father signed up for Utah’s Child Protection Registry anyway – just to be sure no unwanted pornography ever slips through.

“If they want to produce porn, that’s their right. But I want to be able to say I don’t want it to come into my house unsolicited – by any method,” Jolley says.

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I wanted to take a moment to turn you on to 2 of our other blogs if you have not seen them yet.

Email Days is a collection of emails that are good, bad, funny and odd that trickle into our inboxes.

Return on Subscriber is focused on what works and techniques to learn from for email marketing.

Enjoy.

The eROI Team.

I am excited to see that Return Path has updated and actually made over the Bonded Sender program. We have been using Bonded Sender Iron Port servers since the dawn of time (or so it feels like). It was high time that this program and system got the full treatment. Thanks to the team at Return Path for making the changes, listening to marketers, ESPs and ISPs, and building on a solid system that has been one of the leading systems for years.

Read about it.

I came across an intersting article from Kevin Newcomb at Clickz. Basically the top tier email marketers and ESPs embraced SenderID and Domain Keys (60% they claim) but he thinks that the next step is reputation services. I agree that it is on the horizon and think that the Return Path and Habeas solutions are two of the best ones out there, not just on price alone, but they are more encompassing than the current Goodmail solution. I think that most email marketers and ESPs would readily embrace, if not faster, a standard of one of these two rather quickly. I know that having to pay multiple vendors for anyone is a challenge. Are you planning on learning more and implementing authentication for your email marketing efforts?

The embrace of e-mail authentication by commercial senders, one of the key issues facing the e-mail industry, is coming along nicely.

The adoption level grew by 60 percent last year and is at a point where most large commercial senders are using one or both of the two dominant frameworks. According to data from the E-mail Senders & Providers Coalition (ESPC), more than 35 percent of all mail now sent is being authenticated.

The logical question many e-mail stakeholders are now asking is, what comes next? At the second annual E-mail Authentication Summit this week in Chicago, many of them will take up that question, discussing what will drive further adoption, issues of enforcement, and how to layer on reputation services once a sender’s identity is known.

Read More

AOL is blocking all emails addressed at its subscribers that reference a campaign opposing the provider’s Goodmail Certified Email programme.

Emails containing the DearAOL.com web address are bounced back to the sender. A test email sent by vnunet.com on Thursday afternoon was returned. The error message linked to a web page that explained that:

“There is at least one URL in your email that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members.”

Read Article

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2154127/aol-accused-email-censorship

This is a little self promotion, but indulge me. I spent some time with an agency partner of ours being interviewed on the state of email marketing. If is worth your 20ish minutes if you are interesting in hearing it. Peter has put togehter a strong line up of presenters each week and is worth of your RSS subscription.

I hope that you enjoy it.

Listen to the PodCast.

This might be the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time. Read the testimony below about Goodmail infront of the CA Legsislature. It is not going to make a difference in spam, but just validate what should legitimately get to the inbox with AOL and Yahoo. So does not really fix the problem, admitantly, just adds another layer of cost and complexity?

Goodmail CEO: CertifiedEmail Not Meant to Decrease Spam

Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras told advocacy groups and legislators at a California Senate committee hearing last week that its fee-based CertifiedEmail program – which Yahoo and AOL are implementing – is about authentication, not reducing spam, DM News reports.

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Seems like many companies are trying to provide a solution to the Goodmail one. Looks like if there is a buyer… a market grows.

Intellectual property company Sticky Web, Inc. has said they would compile an opt-in database of names and email addresses to help combat spam. Sticky Web holds several Internet and software patents. The company believes that their opt-in-specific email technology patent could help build a delivery system that could guarantee and certify email delivery.

The opt-in system would charge commercial emailers a small fee for email delivery. “Raising the delivery cost of commercial OPT-IN e-mail is gaining traction as an accepted cost of business marketing,” said Sticky Web CEO Tom DiStefano in a statement. He cited plans by AOL and Yahoo to implement a ¼-1 cent charge on email delivered to their customers.

Users of Sticky Web’s email solution can sent email to specific lists, and get real-time tracking results about whether their emails were received or not. The resulting data is designed to help email businesses determine the best pricing strategy for email delivery. “Raising the cost of commercial e-mail is a key tool in defeating the illegitimate bulk e-mailers responsible for the SPAM epidemic by creating a pricing structure for delivery of OPT-IN e-mail that bars entry to Spammers,” added DiStefano.

Learn More

I like this line in the policy blaming spammers for the reason why legitimate opt in emailers are being blocked. Lousy line. That is like saying well Jim Smith was speeding, so we are going to shut down the freeway. Lazy effort to a legitimate problem.

See PDF of the Policy

Verizon to pay for SPAM blocking methods

Verizon has settled a class action lawsuit that accused the ISP of blocking legitimate email. In 2003 Verizon began to block a massive amount of IP addresses which in some cases blocked entire countries. Verizon did this to limit the amount of Spam their customers received. However the blocking had a major side effect, it also prevented legitimate email from reaching their users. Verizon DSL and Dial-up customers complained about the blocking and begged Verizon to turn off the filters but the company did not do so until a lawsuit was filed. The blocking began in October of 2004 and ended in May of 2005.

Verizon customers who can prove that a legitimate piece of email from Asia and Europe, did not arrive or was blocked between October 1st 2004 and May 31st 2005 can receive up to $49 USD.

The lawyers who faught the case have asked Verizon to pay them $1.4 million USD. I guess we know whose interest those lawyers were looking after.

See how to file a claim.

The kids’ do-not-e-mail juggernaut that for the last year has threatened to legal adult content as well is grinding to a halt—at least for now.
So many bills have been introduced that are rather confusing as well as could be very costly to those trying to email to certain states. It it odd to try to establish a bill for each state when often times you have no idea where a person is physically located. And even if you do, what if they move? How will you track and stay up with this? And will they truthfully tell you where they really are?

I think that if you want to create a bill like this, you need not only to do it at the federal level, but also educate the public about the impact it will or could have on emails that they opt in to.

A bill in Georgia that would have established so-called child protection do-not-e-mail registry died last week. A similar bill in Connecticut was gutted. Similar bills in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Hawaii are also either dead or languishing. And an Illinois kids’ no-e-mail bill was also killed earlier this year.

Though child do-not e-mail registries in Utah and Michigan still pose significant threats to e-mail containing legal adult content, other states allowing their registry bills to die or gutting them indicates the tide may be turning in marketers’ favor.

Read More