E-mail marketing

Exact Target’s deliverability blog has a great post about the definition of Spam.
It’s always fun to listen to companies talk about permission. There are exceptions of course, (address appending for example) but permission is pretty black and white. The interesting part of the relationship comes into play when setting customer expectations.
I did tell CompUSA that I wanted ‘Special’ offers but I didn’t think they would come every few days! How much is to much? I guess it depends on the relationship… One sure bet is to let the reader know how often you’ll be communicating with them. We used to do this routinely when setting up e-mail broadcasts or lists.
On the other hand, much depends on the audience. It’s changing but many marketers seem to (still) impose direct marketing models on the Internet (vs building relationships!). Spamming Special Offers will offend and loose part of the list but mailers can still be ‘successful’.
At the end of the day, it is always about the relationship!

Constant Contact, an ASP that we use for e-mail campaigns is throwing free e-mail marketing events in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area.
The content may be to basic for some but in this day and age of pay for play events- it’s good to find value for free.
On a related note, Exact Target, another ASP offers a deliverbility blog. This is a good read for anyone that wonders what happens (or not) when you hit the send button. I subscribed to find out what happens to those notes that don’t get delivered or bounce!

Compliments of HP, here are good instructions for adding an email address to various address books. Whitelisting an email address ensures that you will continue to receive newsletters and other communications.
HP continues to send this broadcast to my in-box without my permisson while allowing me to ‘opt-out’ but, that’s another issue…