Oct
29
Yesterday, Twitter launched a new lists feature to all their users. Twitter Lists allow anyone on Twitter to create public or private lists of Twitterers.
At Return Path, we decided to spend several hours last night toiling away in the secret laboratory to create the Email Marketing Wizards Twitter List - 120 of the smartest people Tweeting about email marketing.
You can check out the list here.
Is this list complete? Not by a long shot. And that's where you come in. ...
Tell me moreCategories: News
Oct
26
by J.D. Falk
Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services
What's that we see, waving through the raindrops? Isn't email supposed to be dead? You already know I'm going to say no; as usual, once you see past the refraction and the rainbows, reality is somewhat more complicated.
The recent, ongoing launch of Google Wave has almost everything we've come to expect. It begins with a slow roll-out, with people begging for invitations. Then comes the headlines proclaiming the death of email, often based on nothing more than a short preview video and someone else's interview with Wave's creators. This all leads to gigantic, Google-sized expectations. But with Wave those expectations have yet to be met; It is either such a gigantic paradigm shift that most of us can't yet comprehend the enormity of their genius, or it's an incomplete product that shouldn't have launched until there was something more to show off than a Google-y user interface. Either way, Wave appears to have crested quickly, and we're left waiting and wondering.
Then the Mozilla Thunderbird team filled that void by introducing a new concept they call Raindrop. ...
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Oct
22
By Tom Bartel
Chief Privacy Officer
No, Canada is not being invaded by Russia, or even Greenland, although that might be an easier battle than this. Like many in the email and privacy space I am keeping tabs on our colleagues to the north as they work to pass Canada's first national spam law. Canada is the only G8 nation that has not already enacted such a law.
The process began many years ago, but it only really got rolling this past April. The draft law was introduced, read, reviewed and referred to committee in June, where experts and others testified publically in support of the law. The process was well underway and seemingly on track.
But over the past few weeks things have taken a turn that could lead to the law being weakened or scuttled altogether. In particular, the Canadian Marketing Association, having already stated their broad support for the law, recanted on some points and began lobbying on a number of issues, including subscriber consent.
As I watch this unfold I can't help but think that this process of vigorous debate is ultimately what will ensure Canada gets a solid, useful spam law that actually matters. ...
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Oct
21
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
I don't normally think of myself as a rebel. But one outcome of the DMA's recent proxy fight with Board member Gerry Pike is that I've been appointed to the DMA's Board and its Executive Committee and have been labeled "part of the reform movement" in the trade press. While I wasn't actively leading the charge on DMA reform with Gerry, I am very enthusiastic about taking up my new role.
I gave Gerry my proxy and support for a number of reasons, and those reasons will form the basis of my agenda as a DMA Board member. As a DMA member, and one who used to be fairly active, I have grown increasingly frustrated with the DMA over the past few years.
1. The DMA could be stronger in fighting for consumers' interests. Why? Because what's good for consumers is great for direct marketers. Marketing is not what it used to be, the lines between good and bad actors have been blurred, and the consumer is now in charge. The DMA needs to more emphatically embrace that and lead change among its membership to do the same. The DMA's ethics operation seems to work well, but ...
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Oct
07
Rick Castello
Product Manager
Today we are proud to release the latest version of the Return Path Reputation Network Blacklist. Internet service providers use our blacklist to make blocking and filtering decisions about the email entering their network. Now those choices will be even easier to make and more accurate than ever.
The Reputation Network Blacklist is a real-time list of senders categorized as the "worst of the worst" based on the data we receive from mail administrators and ISPs into our Reputation Network, a collaborative data cooperative of ISPs and reputation data providers. The Return Path Reputation Network calculates the likelihood that emails from any email server may be objectionable or otherwise unwanted based on measurement of past performance. This is not a value judgment about the content of the message, but is based on whether past messages from that server were considered to be "spam" by recipients (along with other metrics.)
The new version of the blacklist is vastly superior to the 1.0 version based on size, methodology, updates, and scoring. It is updated in ...
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Sep
30
By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman
Return Path is hiring a VP Marketing. This is a new position - we haven't had the job filled in a couple years like this, reporting directly to me. The job spec is here.
What it's like to work here is pretty well captured here.
Why should you pass this on to a friend who is a good fit? Because you will help a friend find the best job he or she ever had! Oh and because we will pay you a nice referral fee if we hire your friend.
Why should you apply? That's a longer answer ...
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Sep
15
By Tom Bartel
Chief Privacy Officer
Sure, going green is all the rage these days, but I'm not talking about "human-ecology" green, but rather "online-trust-ecology" green.
Earlier this month, we activated an Extended Validation SSL certificate for our senderscore.org website domain. For those who aren't familiar, EV certificates are an enhanced type of domain registration. They were introduced largely to address phishing and other Internet fraud which continues to degrade consumer confidence.
When consumers visit an EV SSL certified domain site they will notice a green address bar signifying registrant identity verification for that site (see screen shot below). The EV certification process is carried out by a certifying agent, in this case GoDaddy, which follows a carefully designed procedure (designed by the Certification Authority Browser Forum consortium) for validating the identity of a domain owner.
As for whether it helps consumer confidence - at least one study says so. ...
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Sep
03
by J.D. Falk
Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services
Oh, Internet. You had such potential when you were born -- darling of the research community, supported by the wealthiest military the world has ever known. And you married well, into a powerful merchant family. Why are you so lost? Is it a midlife crisis?
You were born, some say, 40 years ago this week in a lab at UCLA -- one of ARPA's many children. It wasn't until nearly two months later that you first spoke, transmitting the letters "L" and "O" before crashing -- but soon you were growing, expanding into research facilities all over the continent, and eventually (with some delays) the world.
In 1972 you moved from computing theory into the world of human communication when Ray Tomlinson gave you electronic mail. Ray said that "the first message of any substance was a message announcing the availability of network email." From those first few, feeble test messages and system announcements to today's daily billions -- it's hard to imagine, now, that there was ever a time when you didn't carry email!
In the 1980s you were made up of mere hundreds of computers across a few dozen individual networks, each distinct -- yet each inter-networked. It was in those intersections that you truly grew up. You were given the Domain Name System (DNS) to ease finding your various parts, and nicknamed "cyberspace" after science fiction author William Gibson coined the term to describe something you still might some day become.
...Tell me moreCategories: News
Aug
19
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
The brouhaha over the reports that some Americans felt the email messages the White House sent them about health care reform were spam has the nice side effect of generating some great PR for permission. Isn't it lovely to see politicians, government workers and Fox News broadcasters up in arms over the fact that some people may be on the file but not have actually signed up for White House emails (depending on your politics, you may see different motives, but that's a different matter)? (Honestly, it amounts to the same thing if these citizens did indeed sign up, but just don't remember.) Bottom line: Permission matters in email marketing. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability | News
Aug
12
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
Last month, I wrote a quick summary of the "Creating an Environment for Viral Marketing Success" panel that I participated in at the Buzz2009 event from SmartBrief. During the wide-ranging discussion, I shared a number of tips to help marketers synergize (and energize) their email and social marketing strategies.
These include:
1. Match the content to the medium. Email is great for lifecycle marketing, promotional broadcasts and content newsletters. Facebook fan pages are great for surveys or building loyal fan bases. Twitter may be great for customer service, or perhaps to broadcast. Don't just repost your blog everywhere - send content that is relevant to the channel so that you appeal to customers who consume information in different ways.
2. Make it easy to share. Certainly add "SWYN" or Share with Your Network links, but do so prominently and integrate them into the content. SWYN links in the footer will not drive significant sharing, just like a buried Forward to a Friend link will get little use.
3. Host your own social community. Invite conversation among ...
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