So, where'd they go?

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

As we've reported a couple times in the past, one of our interesting nuggets at Return Path is a wealth of "ISP switching data" that comes from our very large, active, self-reported Email Change of Address, or ECOA, service (consumer sign-up; client info).

I noted the article floating around last week that AOL lost about 1 million subscribers last quarter, the lion's share in the U.S., of course.

So, where'd they all go?

Well, according to our ECOA data, which may of course be somewhat skewed by our data sources (but has data from well over 1 million consumers each quarter), AOL users defected as follows:

To Yahoo! -- 42.5%
To broadband providers in aggregate (cable, etc.)-- 23.5%
To Hotmail/MSN -- 19.5%
To Gmail -- 2.7%

Thanks to my colleague Iffat Ahmed for help pulling these numbers together.

Categories: News

It's not all about email

By Tom Bartel
Chief Privacy Officer

The Return Path culture has always focused on teamwork, and we've always stressed giving back to the community. As a corporation we support Accelerated Cure, a non-profit focused on finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis. We also give employees time to support their own philanthropic passions. When Hurricane Katrina hit, we joined so many others who so badly wanted to help those affected by the storm. Instead of donating money, we donated time to Habitat for Humanity.

The first wave of volunteering was last week, and our team of six spent the week working together to gut houses in St. Bernard Parish. Being there reminded us that while our day-to-day mission is important, it is also important to give back to the community -- even when that community is the global one

Categories: News

The New York Times; Postage Is Due for Companies Sending Email

New York Times Article

Categories: News

Direct Newsline; AOL- Goodmail Deal Called Cynical Money Grab

By: Ken Magill

AOL's announcement that it would begin implementing Goodmail's CertifiedEmail program and phasing out its enhanced whitelist is being denounced by at least one top industry executive as a cynical attempt to get more money out of non-spamming marketers...

Direct Newsline News Article

Categories: News

A New Role in a Growing Business

By: George Bilbrey
GM of Delivery Assurance

I'm pleased to announce that Return Path's own Leslie Price is joining the Delivery Assurance Product Management team as the Senior Product Manager for Accreditation Services. Leslie brings a very strong understanding of the delivery issues faced by our clients, as well as, a strong set of relationships with the ISPs to the job. Leslie will be taking the lead as we start to improve and extend the Bonded Sender Program and continue to strengthen the services that we provide our clients.

With Leslie's depth of experience in this industry, she is the perfect person to lead the charge for us....

Categories: News

A Welcome Addition to the Return Path Team

By: Anita Absey
VP Sales and Account Development

We are delighted to have Dennis Malaspina join our Postmaster Direct team. His offline and interactive experience will be a tremendous asset to our customers, and will continue to help us expand the suite of online acquisition solutions we provide to the market.

Dennis will have the opportunity to continue to build our existing sales and client development team, and will have a strong voice in our ongoing database development and enhancement efforts.

His positive impact on the organization is already palpable...

Categories: News

Doing Well by Doing Good

By: Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

At Return Path, we feel strongly that companies can and should make the world a better place in several different ways. Certainly, many companies' core businesses do that -- just look at all the breakthroughs in medicine and social services over the years brought to market by private enterprises. But many companies, including Return Path, aren't inherently "save the world" in nature (although some people in online marketing would have you believe that we are!), and those companies can still make a difference in the world in a few ways...

Categories: News

What's Up with Our New Website and Why Should You Care?

By: Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

I'll admit up front, this is a little bit of an experiment. Our new website features this Online Resource Center for Email Marketers. It's a blog through which we will publish useful tidbits about email marketing, and occasionally about Return Path, for you and your team. You can comment on it, give us feedback or initiate a dialog. You can subscribe to it in the blue box to the side via RSS or email, and you can always subscribe to either of our stand-alone monthly email newsletters (content in the newsletters will also appear in the blog).

So what's the experiment? We're not exactly sure what a corporate blog is "supposed" to be -- we're inventing it as we go. The idea is to make our online presence more interesting, lively, interactive, useful, and transparent about Return Path. It is more about...

Categories: News

DM News; Return Path Switches Site to Blog

DM News Article

Categories: News

BtoB; Who's Who 2004 - Direct & Database

BtoB Article

Categories: News