A Perfect 10

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

Return Path turns 10 years old today. We are in the midst of a fun week of internal celebrations, combined with our holiday parties in each office as well as year-end all-hands meetings. I thought I would share some of my reflections on being 10 in the blog as I've shared them with our team. What being 10 means to me - and what's enabled us to make it this long:

• It means we've beaten the odds. Two major global economic meltdowns. The fact that 90% of new small businesses fail before they get to this point. Probably a higher percentage of venture backed startups fail before they get to 10 as well


• We've gotten here because we've been nimble and flexible. Over our 10 years, we've seen lots of companies come and go, clinging to a model that doesn't work. We may have taken a while and a few iterations to get to this point, but as one of my Board members says, "we're an overnight success, ten years in the making!"


• We've also made it this long because we have had an amazing track record with our three core constituencies - employees, clients, and investors - including navigating the sometimes difficult boundaries or conflicts between the three

Categories: News

Happy Thanksgiving

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

If you've been reading this blog for a while you already know that Return Path has a long tradition of sending a Thanksgiving card to our clients and other friends of the company. We do this for a couple of reasons, first we like to get ahead of the craziness that starts the minute you sit down for that turkey dinner and doesn't end until the new year.

2009 has been quite a year and like most businesses we've been tightening our belts, keeping our heads down and working harder than ever. So, thank you to our clients, vendors and friends. We truly appreciate your support and wish you and your families a happy, healthy Thanksgiving.

P.S. Do you think the little guy in the front looks more like me or like George? John Scarrow from Microsoft has already weighed in...let us know what you think!

Categories: News

Why are you hiding? What are you hiding?

Neil Schwartzman
Director, Certification Security & Standards

False CAN-SPAM WHOIS Information Ruling may have far-reaching impact

Mickey Chandler, over at Spamtacular notes a recent decision in a CAN-SPAM case which cites 18 U.S.C. § 1037 as one of the laws broken.

Specifically, the defendant had put false information into their domain registration, information displayed in the WHOIS record.

Mickey raises an interesting question - do domain privatization services like domains-by-proxy violate CANS-PAM? ...

Categories: News

See, We Told You Email Isn't Dead

By George Bilbrey
President

When people at email companies write articles titled "Email Isn't Dead, We Swear!" it's hard not to be suspicious. Clearly we've got some skin in this game. Nevertheless, I wrote my column for MediaPost last week on why I believe email is still the killer app. I was careful to include data to back up my argument so that it's not just about my opinion. And so I'm delighted to see more great data that confirms what we know ...

Categories: News

New From Return Path: The Email Marketing Wizards Twitter List

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. ...

Categories: News

A Deluge is Underway; is Email Waterproof?

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. ...

Categories: News

The Battle Up North: Canada Fights for a Spam Law

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. ...

Categories: News

Why I joined the DMA Board, and what you can expect of me in that role

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 ...

Categories: News

Worst of the Worst

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 ...

Categories: News

Wanted: Rock Star Marketer

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 ...

Categories: News