Case Study: Web 2.0 Runs on Email

It’s fashionable in many circles to toll the death knell for email. Part of the reason for that is the rise of Web 2.0 – blogging, social networking, and other methods of interaction that supposedly make email obsolete.
The funny thing is, Web 2.0 tends to rely pretty heavily on email. All those LinkedIn and Facebook emails are the things that drive huge amounts of activity on the sites.

Take Twitter as another example. While Twitter has successfully created a whole new communication method (complete with the verb “to Twitter” and the noun “tweet”) a large number of their new members come through email. Specifically they come from peer-initiated email, aka forward to a friend email. Unfortunately for them, a lot of that email was being blocked or junked. This is a common problem for any company that has email forwarding on their site.

Fortunately for Twitter …

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Yahoo! Adds Two New Email Domains

Yahoo! announced last Thursday that it is making two new domains available for email – ymail.com and rocketmail.com. They introduced the new domains to make it possible for new people …

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The Comcast Feedback Loop is Available Exclusively from Return Path

We are very pleased to announce that Comcast now offers a complaint feedback loop, powered by Return Path. (For you deliverability nerds, you might note that we got beaten on this announcement by our friends at Deliverability.com. We appreciate the plug!)

Those of us who work in the industry feel like everyone should, by now, grok what a feedback loop is and why it’s so useful for both senders and end recipients of email. But we know that’s not completely true yet, so this seems like a good time to review the history and initial purpose of feedback loops.

When a user clicks the “report spam” button (or equivalent) in their mail client, a copy of that message (a spam “complaint”) is transmitted to their ISP. This type of system is generally only used by web-based mail clients such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, or in custom desktop interfaces such as AOL’s, though some anti-spam vendors offer plug-ins for Outlook or Thunderbird. The ISP can use these reports, in aggregate, to update and improve their spam filters. …

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Drawing the Line

We are having a bit of a debate at the moment internally around our Sender Score deliverability business about how to handle clients who are in businesses that are, shall we say, not exactly as pure as the driven snow.  As a company that provides software and services to businesses without a vertical focus, we are often approached by all sorts of companies wanting our services where we don’t love what they do.  Examples include:

• Gambling
• Tobacco
• Neutriceuticals
• Guns
• Adult content or products

Our challenges are along three dimensions, each of which is a little different.  But common threads run through all three dimensions. 

…

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Rocky Mountain High

Last month we took our best email experts and hit the road to bring fresh, new marketing ideas to San Francisco and Los Angeles. This month we embark on the next leg of the tour.

Next stop is the Mile High City on May 27. Not only will you learn best practices from our expert team of Return Pathers, but you will get first hand knowledge and advice from other email marketers just like you. On tap for Denver, are email marketers from Memolink, Shop at Home, Sierra Trading Post and LifePics who will share their experiences on how they cope with everyday email challenges to drive revenue for their businesses. Best of all, it’s a great opportunity for you to get your specific questions answered one-on-one during our email expert roundtables.

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Let the Phone Gather Dust; Brush off the Spreadsheet Instead

“What’s all the fuss about?” A marketer asked me the other day during an industry event. When you generally follow best practices for deliverability, she said, you usually can get into the inbox. Then, if a big block does occur, you just call Return Path to get it lifted. “There is enough wiggle room, right?”

Um, no. Not really.

Our smart client Nathan Murphy at Classmates.com got it right when he said the other day, “If I do my job well, I should never be in the position of having to contact an ISP because of a delivery problem. I feel that some people in the industry view email delivery as a reactive role and not preventative.”

Can Return Path get blocks lifted for our clients because we know their practices and program integrity and feel comfortable representing them?

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Get Fresh, New Email Ideas: Expert Seminars

So you are sitting at your desk, staring at your email promotion calendar thinking “Is there a single new idea left in the world? What do my subscribers really want? What are the newest rules for getting to the inbox? What are other marketers doing to get out of the rut?”

If this describes you, then you need to come to Return Path’s Email Expert Seminars . The smartest minds in email today will be on hand to give you a fresh perspective on email. You’ll view the world from the perspectives of subscribers, ISPs and your fellow marketers. You’ll also get a fresh perspective on email acquisition and learn some bold new ways to apply those same old best practices.

Our experts are coming to …

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JupiterResearch: Marketers Focus on the Wrong Stuff?

As many readers of this blog will no doubt already know, the JupiterResearch report on ESPs that was released this month found that 70% of marketers rank “deliverability” as their number one priority when selecting an email service provider. While we applaud marketer’s attention to deliverability issues, it seems to us that their focus has been placed slightly in the wrong direction. As I’ve written before, ESPs cannot solve all deliverability problems for email marketers. Moreover, there is very little difference between the major players on the pieces that the ESP can control. Basically, you can stop worrying about whether or not your ESP can get the email through. They do a good job.

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Worried About Deliverability? Focus on Relevance

Whenever I sit down to write about relevance, I find myself thinking “Is this a new idea? Don’t marketers already know this? They must get the basics by now, right?”

Unfortunately, the answer appears to be a resounding “No!” Last week JupiterResearch released its 2008 Email Marketer’s Buyers Guide and, as Direct Magazine columnist Ken Magill points out, the news isn’t very good. The top criteria marketers use when choosing an ESP are deliverability and price. That is good news – as deliverability is the single most contributing factor to earning higher revenue. And keeping costs down also helps the bottom line.

However, as the report itself points out, looking to your ESP to solve your deliverability is completely misplaced.

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Why Does Return Path Spend So Much Time Working Within Industry Organizations?

That answer is simple. Because we love email and are committed to preserving and enriching the email ecosystem for everyone who uses it (except the bad guys.) There is a lot of coordination required if senders, receivers, and end users are to withstand the assault on email by the “axis of evil” – spammers, phishers, and other fraudsters that are polluting our email ecosystem. As champions of the email space, we have dedicated a lot of time and energy into supporting the online community and committing resources to making email work for everyone.

Return Path is proud to serve in the following capacities:

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