Help Us, Help You: Take Our Reader Survey

By Tami Monahan Forman
Director, Customer Marketing

We want to provide you the most valuable email marketing blog possible, and we could use your help to do so. Help us give you more of what you want -- and less of what you don't -- by taking our survey and telling us what you think about the content, frequency and topics in our blog. It will only take about seven minutes to complete, and you may even win a $50 Amazon gift card for your time.

Please take the survey today!

Categories: News

International Regulation Alert: New UK Email Law

By Tom Bartel
Chief Privacy Officer

For anyone marketing in the United Kingdom the New Year has started with a new email regulation to decipher and comply with: the UK Companies Act Amendments of 2006.

As in the US, where the CAN-SPAM act requires postal address in the footer of each commercial message, the new UK amendment imposes similar requirements for transactional types of business email.

The law extends company registration requirements already in place for paper business letters and forms -- requiring certain company details to appear in email versions of those business letters and order forms. ...

Categories: News

Return Path Email Predictions for 2007

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

Over the last few weeks or so we've been enjoying (and participating in) the conversations going on in the industry predicting trends for 2007. In fact, we encourage you to check out the musings of the folks at eROI, Dave Pasternak and Dianna Dilworth at DMNews, and Jordan Ayan at SubscriberMail.

Here's our pick for top 5 trends to watch in 2007.

More spam is on its way: The huge increase in the amount of spam being sent has had some serious implications for ISPs and other receivers as they grapple with the increased traffic on their networks. ...

Categories: News

Getting Email Past Second-Class Status

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

I recently started writing a column for DMNews. It's exciting for Return Path and for email marketing in general - it really shows that we have a seat at the table with one of the industry's most venerable trade pubs.

This is why I urge you to read this month's edition. In it I discuss ...

Categories: News

Email at the Center

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Strategic Services

Get a bunch of smart email marketers together and inevitably we start celebrating email as the mother of all online marketing channels. Email was certainly the center of attention at the Email Insiders Summit last week, but what really struck me in my conversations there (and since) is how being at the center doesn't mean email is in a vacuum.

As the Program Chair of the event, I was able to speak at length with our keynote speakers and many of the panelists. We all talked openly about how in some ways email has let us down. It's not the interactive customer dialog medium we hoped for, and it's harder than ever to break through the clutter. Even getting delivered to the inbox is more complicated.

Yet, email marketers really embrace that email is most successful when it's more than just a message blast. ...

Categories: News

Email Lives to Get Response Another Day

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

Here we go again: another obituary for email marketing.

This time it comes from, of all people, speakers at the Email Insider Summit. According to a MediaPost article, several executives feel that email marketing is on the decline, mainly because of the spam issue. Consumers and businesspeople are fed up with so much spam and marketers can't get to their inboxes anyway. Woe is email.

I'm sure this won't surprise you, but I beg to differ.

To insinuate that consumers and business executives are no longer interested in receiving offers for relevant services and products simply isn't consistent with actual data. ...

Categories: News

Eight is Great!

By Jack Sinclair
COO

It seems a little immodest to wish ourselves a Happy Birthday, but we feel compelled to celebrate the fact that today is the 7th anniversary of the founding of Return Path. As someone who has been here since Day Two, I've had a front row seat for the whole wild ride. It hasn't been dull!

And boy does Year 8 look exciting! New products, new services, new marketing programs ... we've got lots of irons in the fire and we are poised to execute across a wider market than we ever imagined. Of course none of this -- past, present or future -- would be possible without the combined support of our clients, employees and investors.

So, what's our biggest challenge? ...

Categories: News

Tell Us What Works for You, Learn What Works for Others

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

Got an email file you wish was more responsive and growing faster? Looking for proven methods to determine the value of an email address to your company?

Please take this 10-minute online survey and participate with other email marketers to help all of us better understand key drivers of email list growth and file valuation.

I'm the co-chair of the List Growth & Engagement Roundtable of the Email Experience Council. ...

Categories: News

Does Your Unsubscribe Process Follow These 5 Best Practices?

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Strategic Services

The news last week that Yesmail was fined a little over $50,000 for violating the CAN-SPAM opt-out provision reminded us that all too often, it's too hard to unsubscribe from promotional email programs. Certainly the letter of the law is important, but it's the spirit of making your unsubscribe process easy to find and follow that protects your brand, improves customer satisfaction and reduces ISP complaints which can lead to low deliverability.

When is the last time you actually tested your unsubscribe process? I heard from three clients this week some variation of, "I think Steve in IT checks that..." Like all programming code, unsubscribe processes can break, and apparently the FTC really is watching.

Categories: News

Patent No-Longer Pending

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

Back in 1999, there was no way to easily stay connected if you changed ISPs. No post office for email. So we created one - Return Path ECOA. More than 31 million consumers have used our ECOA service to stay in touch after an email address change - and we've been able to connect them with more than 300 companies and countless personal contacts using our services.

Now, the ECOA process that we designed has been granted patent 7,080,122 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ECOA matters now more than ever, not only helping companies keep in touch with customers, but also playing a role in email deliverability

Categories: News