Less is More The latest research shows that people spend 51 seconds reading any given commercial email newsletter, as opposed to 15 seconds on a promotional email. I find this credible based on personal experience, at least the ratio of the two, although I might do a little less on both. Return Path’s Stephanie Miller blogs about this and the implication for marketers on the Return Path Online Resource Center for Email Marketers.
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Euromail
Euromail My colleagues George, Alex, and I had a very interesting and productive week in Europe this week. The MAAWG conference was very useful, and we are a proud member and sponsor of that association. We had about 20 meetings with European ISPs and email vendors to learn more about how the Euro market works and where it is in its stage of development (hint: very different from the US!). We learned a lot and got good feedback on all of Return Path’s lines of business, from market research to lead generation to delivery assurance. We even managed to have some outstanding meals, and super quick drive-by “viewings” of the Eiffel Tower, the EU headquarters, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and…
Gmail as Competition – Another View?
Gmail as Competition – Another View? This week, while many from the industry have been in Brussels at the outstanding yet oddly-named MAAWG conference for ISPs and filtering companies, internet marketing pundit Ken Magill had a scary, scary headline related to Google’s insertion of ads in email — Is Gmail Feeding Your Customers to the Competition? The assertion is that Gmail’s contextual ad program, combined with image blocking in commercial emails, could easily lead to a situation where one of your subscribers doesn’t see your own content but then sees an ad for a competitor in the sidebar. Scary, I admit, but how much is that really happening? We analyzed some data from our Postmaster Direct business that is quite…
A Good Laugh at Microsoft’s Expense, Part II
A Good Laugh at Microsoft’s Expense, Part II Three minutes of quick video entertainment awaits you. What if Microsoft redesigned the iPod packaging? Watch here. This could be any big company, not Microsoft. Makes you really realize how much “less is more” in terms of product design and packaging. Like Google. Thanks to Frank Addante from StrongMail for turning me on to this clip. See Part I if you want another quick clip about punishing developers for buggy code.
Yes, They Are THAT Important
Yes, They Are THAT Important Our enterprise spam filter has been down for about a day as we reconfigure some servers here. It has been just this side of crippling, especially travelling and getting spammed to death on my Treo. Spam filters have become good enough (though still not perfect on the false positive side, of course) and prevalent enough, that I had forgotten just how important a role they play in today’s corporate IT environment. We’d be in really sorry shape without them!
Naked Talking
Naked Talking Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing The Way Businesses Talk with Consumers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, would have been mildly interesting had I never read, let alone written, a blog. So chances are if you’re reading this blog regularly, it’s not a great use of your time or money, but if you just ran across this post while trying to learn more about blogging – or really about any form of post-2002 Internet marketing – it’s probably worthwhile as a primer. But if you’re knee-deep in internet marketing or blogging, it may be a bit of a snoozer. I find it entertaining that leading bloggers like Scoble and Israel, who are part of the ultra-small group…
What Kind of Entrepreneur Do You Want to Be?
What Kind of Entrepreneur Do You Want to Be? I had a great time at Princeton reunions this weekend, as always. As I was talking to random people, some of whom I knew but hadn’t seen in a long time, and others of whom I was just meeting for the first time, the topic of starting a business naturally came up. Two of the people asked me if I thought they should start a business, and what kind of person made for a good entrepreneur. As I was thinking about the question, it reminded me of something Fred once told me — that he thought there were two kinds of entrepreneurs: people who start businesses and people who run business. …
The Business of Being a Scumbag, Part II
The Business of Being a Scumbag, Part II From today’s Direct Newsline email newsletter (no apparent way to link to it) comes another view into how the Internet Axis of Evil carries out its mission. Zombie Computer Network Commits Click Fraud A global network of 34,000 “zombie” computers infected with a Trojan Horse virus is being used to commit click fraud against pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, according to software security research firm PandaLabs. It is thought to be the largest click-fraud bot network detected so far, and comes at a time when advertisers are reported to be growing increasingly worried about wasting their performance-ad dollars on unqualified clicks. The firm reported Friday that, according to data it has observed, the computers…
Agile Reading
Agile Reading While not exactly a laugh a minute, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck, is a good read for anyone who is a practitioner of agile development — or anything agile. (Note: if you want a laugh a minute, read Who Moved My Blackberry?, which as Brad says, is hilarious — kind of like The Office in book form). As I wrote about here and here, Return Path now does both agile development and agile marketing. The book draws many interesting comparisons between manufacturing and engineering, which I found quite interesting, and not just because I’m a former management consultant — there’s something that’s just easier to visualize about how an assembly line works…
Sticking it to United, Just a Little Bit
Sticking it to United, Just a Little Bit I am sitting in the Red Carpet Club waiting for yet another delayed United flight, and there’s a small thing bringing me a little extra joy. I recently started using Verizon’s Broadband Wireless service, which is expensive at $60/month, but awesome since it basically works anywhere and eliminates the need for hotel, Starbucks, and other Wi Fi hot spot fees (and for a great tutorial on how to use the service to power two computers at once, read Brad’s post here). I’ve long been annoyed at United — and American as well — for both charging a pretty sizeable annual fee to belong to their airport clubs and then soaking me for…
The Business of Being a Scumbag
The Business of Being a Scumbag I’ve written a couple of times about what Fred calls the Internet’s Axis of Evil. But David Kirkpatrick from Fortune just blew me away yesterday with his lurid description of the Internet’s crime scene. This is a must-read for anyone who works in the online medium.