News Posts
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. ...
Tell me moreCategories: News
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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Jul
31
By Angela Baldonero
SVP, People
I am very pleased and proud to announce that Return Path has been named one of the Best Places to Work in Colorado by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
This is a huge honor for us. When Matt Blumberg founded Return Path back in 1999 he wanted to create a "People first" culture. His belief is that happy employees make for happy clients which makes for happy investors. We can be most successful by starting with great people and then treating them really, really well.
Of course this is easy to say (lots of companies do) but hard to do. Which is part of what makes this award so exciting for us. It demonstrates that we are executing on that idea.
A big part of the criteria for this award was a survey filled out by our employees in Colorado. And their answers to that survey showed that they feel their contributions are valued, that they understand the mission of Return Path and see how their job contributes to success. They also answered extremely positively on questions about senior leadership. They trust the senior team to communicate openly and to keep their promises. And they would recommend our products and services. I couldn't ask for more than a community of smart, talented team players who trust senior leadership and see value in what we produce.
If you are interested in learning more about ...
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Jul
19
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
I was delighted to be the email advocate on a panel on "Creating an Environment for Viral Marketing Success," moderated by entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki last week as part of the SmartBrief Buzz2009 event in Washington DC.
The panel also included social media practitioners Brendan Hart, VP of National Geographic, Stacey Kane, Marketing Director for the California Tortilla chain of franchise stores in the DC area, and Andy Sernovitz, author and speaker on word of mouth marketing.
We got right into it. Stacey talked about marketing a brand based on the spunky personality of the California Tortilla founders, who have been connecting with customers via their Taco Talk Tell me more
Categories: News
Jul
08
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
I spent much of May and June on the road in eight cities with the Online Marketing Summit Whistle Stop tour. It was great to get out and meet with so many smart digital marketers.
Here are seven observations/trends:
1. Email rocks. It's still a very important part of the online marketing mix. In fact, email this year has been elevated to a sort of celebrity status. Lots of executive attention due to the low cost and high return. It's the biggest revenue driver in the toolkit.
2. No amount of celebrity can trump the realities of lean budgets. Marketing budgets do not seem to be growing, but the investment continues to be strong with email and search, where the immediate revenue and return is. For email, there isn't so much innovation as preservation: Preserving our jobs and our team, growing our database assets, tying the various eCRM elements together (even loosely) and maintaining our list hygiene and deliverability budgets. ...
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Jul
06
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
Join me this Thursday at noon ET for a free webinar on taking your marketing campaigns viral. I'm on the panel lead by author/entrepreneur/guru Guy Kawasaki and featuring marketers from National Geographic and California Tortilla as well as word of mouth author Andy Sernovitz. It's all part of the SmartBrief BUZZ event happening all day in Washington, DC - with this particular panel being simulcast across the globe, free.
Sign up here and please pass along this link to your own networks.
I will of course focus ...
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May
11
By Margaret Farmakis
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
I'm pleased to announce today the release of our newest research study: Creating Subscriber Experiences That Maximise Returns for UK Marketers.
We've spent a good amount of time in the past year studying the subscriber experiences created by top brands in the U.S. First was our Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy?, which looked at sign up, welcome messages, targeting techniques and more. We followed that up with a look at the experience created by the same companies when subscribers chose to opt out of receiving email in Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After "Unsubscribe Me." And finally, our study on Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers looked at how some of the top retailers in the U.S. handle email for buyers versus non-buyers and some of the tactics they use in their transactional messaging.
So this year we decided to turn some of our attention to the experience for email subscribers outside the U.S. We've said before that marketing in Europe is neither ahead nor behind the U.S. - it's just different. This new study certainly proves that point. U.K. marketers aren't doing demonstrably better or worse than their American counterparts. But they are definitely missing opportunities to improve their results with email marketing.
A few key findings ...
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May
07
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
The new chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission took office with the Obama administration in January. However, Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many of his key deputies have been with the agency for years, so much of the work continues seamlessly. In a DMA/Email Experience Council webinar last week, Peder Magee, Esq., FTC Privacy and Theft attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection said, "The FTC is bipartisan and works on consensus. Typically things are done with unanimous vote. We've had a fair amount of consistency from where we've been."
For now, that stance seems to suggest that the self regulation of the industry is working. Magee noted that some concepts "transcend the medium" when it comes to self regulation. "Transparency, prominent notice, use of personal data, and providing the ability to opt out easily" all are areas the FTC continues to watch.
Certification and feedback loop programs were noted by panelist Tom Bartel, CPO of Return Path, as an example of how the industry cooperates in order to make self regulation work. Especially for certification programs, "Email marketers put themselves forward voluntarily to be held to high standards," Bartel says. "Including the things Peder listed about prominence. Once they are vouched for by the third party, the ISPs can make good decisions about what to do with email from those senders.
"Participation in these programs shows marketers are willing ...
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