MindComet

Environmentally-Conscious SPAM Infographic

Spam isn’t just an annoyance and inconvenience for our inboxes; it actually produces a negative global impact on the environment. The team at webpagefx.com recently released the infographic below explaining just how this is possible. They claim that each spam email on average causes as much CO2 emissions as driving 3 feet. Compound that with the worldwide volume and you have quite the impact on the global environment.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 17, 2011

Hotmail Revamps Usability Features; Declares War on Newsletters

Hotmail claims that a good 75% of their spam complaints consist of legit email, most of which are newsletters and / or sales offers. Because of this, they are classifying this email as “graymail”. Hotmail recently explained their reasoning behind this on their blog. See their piechart breakdown of what their average user’s inboxes consist of.

So what Hotmail plans on doing is creating a “Newsletter” category, which emails will filter into automatically. How do they determine which emails are newsletters exactly? They plan on using their “Smartscreen” technology, which they claim to have a 95% success rate.

This may be a little troublesome for us email marketers. I have a feeling open rates for Hotmail users will drop briefly, but only until Hotmail users get used to the new automatic filtration process.

Along with their newsletter filtering process, they’re also unveiling a new unsubscribe process which is independent from the CAN-SPAM compliant links within emails. See the screenshot below for what users will see:

Another cool feature they’ve announced is Sweep, which is a part of Scheduled Cleanup. This feature basically removes all previous marketing messages from a specific sender, only leaving the most recent email in your inbox. The rest are filtered out into a different folder. Check out the video below:

This is just the tip of the iceberg for the new Hotmail. It’ll be interesting to see if any other major ISPs adopt similar tactics to keep users’ inboxes cleaned up by default. Personally, I think this is a little too intrusive on Hotmail’s part, but I suppose they have their reasons. What do you think?

Read more about their new features on their blog.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 07, 2011

Poll: How Do You Deal With Unwanted Messages?

I’ve always wondered how people handle unwanted marketing messages. Now, keep in mind I’m not singling out SPAM either—these messages are usually taken care of automatically by your ISP— I’m talking about any email that you’ve subscribed to that you don’t have the time for at the moment. Do you delete them? Do you leave them just sitting in your inbox unread (this would drive me absolutely crazy)? Do you mark them as read?

If you’re anything like me, you treat your inbox with a fair amount of respect—not allowing it to get too cluttered or mismanaged at any one point. Personally, I mark all unwanted emails as read, but I’m curious to find out what my readers do when they want to blank out their entire inbox quickly.

I’d assume from the outset that the results will show that most people mark as read or delete unwanted emails. But a part of me wonders just how sophisticated the average person is becoming in terms of their inbox and other sources of information online. It’d be very interesting to see if many people have filters setup for their inbox.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 03, 2011

The Best Looking SPAM I’ve Ever Received

This email “from” Apple is SPAM.

I must say, this is some of the best looking SPAM emails I’ve ever received. I almost marked it as “Not Spam” until I began looking at it with a bit more scrutiny. The subject line (way too long with some share code tacked onto the end), reply-to (some gobbly-gook hotmail address) and links (all directing to a Polish domain) were all huge warning signs. It’s engaging, convincing and has clearly gotten the Apple email look and feel down pat… right down to the correct Cupertino physical address. But make no mistake, this is SPAM.

I’m sure that if this has made it through any of the major ISP filters and into users inboxes, it’s duping them left and right to click through. This just goes to show that SPAM is constantly evolving and becoming as sophisticated as ever. Make no mistake, with emails like this out there, ISPs will be battling uphill for years to come.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 28, 2011

Unsubscribe Victories & Woes

Within this post you will see two extremely different unsubscribe pages. One incredibly humorous, the other… extremely infuriating.

Let’s start and get the bad extreme out of the way first, shall we?

After buying some much needed new headphones from Adorama, I decided to activate the extended warranty. All I had to do is fill out the postcard that came with them and send it back to the dealer. No big deal. I believe there were 4 fields on the card: First name, last name, email address and order number. Nothing about opting in to a newsletter. A week later, I received an email saying that that the warranty was activated. Then I started getting their newsletters. This was odd to me, since I never explicitly opted in for updates or tips. So I clicked the unsubscribe link… and this is the landing page I was directed to:

The copy on this page is telling me that if I opt-out, the extended warranty is null & void. WTF? Their preference center isn’t very clear either. My account preferences has me signed up for 2 newsletters: General & Workshops. So if I update my profile to receive none of the newsletters, without fully unsubscribing does that mean my warranty still stands??? It’s unclear. I need my warranty, but I don’t want these emails.

My point is that this is unacceptable and the very definition of a SHADY practice. Things like this leave such a bitter taste in my mouth. So have it your way, Adorama. I’ll just continue to mark your emails as SPAM, which will ultimately damage future deliveries. You can leave. Go away now. kthxbye.

Now for the good extreme. This unsubscribe page comes from Groupon:

It’s hard to see why this unsubscribe page is so awesome by a screenshot alone, so click here for the direct page and see for yourself. I assure you, it is worth your time. (Be sure to click “Punish Derrick” once you’re there). I have to say, since Groupon were so creative and injected a bit of humor into an issue that we Email Marketers find typically ominous, I resubscribed immediately. Well played, Groupon. Well played.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 26, 2011

Microsoft’s Hotmail Update: Social Media & SPAM-Centric

Microsoft recently unveiled a new look & feel to Hotmail including additional features focused on eliminating inbox clutter and social media. Here are a few key takeaways:

Hotmail Highlights:
This is a dashboard breaking down emails from your contacts, social networking sites, flagged emails and any upcoming events you’ve marked. They’re more or less built-in filters from the get-go. Nicely done.

Filters:
There are also filter tabs that sort out all of your inbox messages based on the criteria of the filter. On-the-fly sorting.

Categories / Quick Views:
Photos, Shipping Info, Documents. The most common emails sent to you will be sorted out automatically based on their contents.

Sweep:
Most importantly, Microsoft has implemented a “Sweep” feature that allows users to remove clutter from their main inbox. For email marketers, this means that your campaigns may suffer with Hotmail users.

Trusted Senders:
You can boil this down to being Microsoft’s equivalent to Goodmail. They pre-approve specific senders and IP addresses for users to ensure delivery, complete with a safety logo next to the subject line.

Their SPAM handling techniques are quite interesting, too. They’ve developed a way of sorting out legit email that you may have signed up for unintentionally (which they dub “graymail”) and actual SPAM, which they’re calling “SmartScreen”.

Most of the updates on the surface seem to be “too little too late” to covert a Gmail user, for instance. But the advances of the new Hotmail user experience as a whole makes the argument that email is further planting itself as the hub for all social communication online. Unfortunately, I don’t think these fundamental changes to Hotmail will go over well with their users, since they skew older and spend less time online. But nonetheless, it’s progress. It’s one step forward and not two steps back (*ehem* Outlook 2007, *ehem*).

There are more features listed on their preview page including Office and cloud storage implementation. It’s a definitive step in the right direction for Microsoft & Hotmail and I’m curious to see what they release next.

So what do you think this means for email marketing? If these features are widely adopted by Hotmail users will email campaigns of the future just be “swept” away, overlooked to never be opened again? I think it’s a definite possibility and one that deserves discussion. Comment below if you have any thoughts.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 17, 2010

Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked

Now I have to be honest, most webinars I attend don’t really provide a whole lot of value. Most of them barely skim the surface of what they’re advertising the topic to be. All in all, they are a means for the company to simply promote themselves and sell their services. What I’m trying to get at is that the emphasis is on the company, not the topic when in reality it should be reversed, dontchathink?

So when I attended the “Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked” webinar hosted by Silverpop late last week, I was slightly skeptical. Luckily, Silverpop did not fall into the same pitfalls many webinar-hosts succumb to and delivered a highly informative and useful webinar detailing many points I want to share with you here.

RELEVANCE::
So first off, the entire webinar revolved around the theme of RELEVANCE and I can’t stress that word enough. If you’re not delivering RELEVANT content to your subscribers, they’re going to mark you as SPAM. If there’s a relationship gap between the marketer and the subscriber, all of the best practices in the world won’t help you if the subscriber thinks you’re simply abusing the relationship. You also need to give your users a means to stay active and involved. Give them some incentive every once in a while to keep them on board with your brand.

ENGAGEMENT METRICS::
There are many aspects ISPs look at when determining if a sender is blacklist-worthy. These include:

- tracking time the email stays in the inbox before deleted
( assuming the longer is stays in the inbox, the better for the sender reputation )

- marked as “not spam” data
( I brought this up about a year ago wondering if ISPs also take into account emails that land into the junk box which users flag “Not Spam”, which they definitely do )

- panel data
( I may be wrong about this, but from what I gathered, panel data is asking a sample of their users take a poll which determines what the ISP should and should not be considering SPAM )

- mail sent to inactive accounts
( self explanatory )

- users for feedback and data
( again, the users of every email provider such as AOL and Gmail are the ones who determine whether or not your emails will be delivered in the future. be as transparent, honest and relevant with your subscribers as possible. )

QDOBA::
Next they showed an example of an email sent out by the mediocre burrito chain Qdoba.

Their burritos may be bland—and so is this email—but it’s for a good reason. This is actually a pretty clever email. It’s subtle. It’s not your standard marketing message with loud, abrasive imagery. It’s just text and it’s tone acts like it’s coming from a snotty co-worker-guy. But the problem is that it simply doesn’t appear to be coming from Qdoba. It’s disengaging and actually does look like SPAM, but it wouldn’t really work any other way. So can you tell why the recipients may have been confused and marked the email as SPAM?

Basically, you can’t get around identifying yourself to your subscribers. If you don’t prove you are who you are clearly, you will be marked as SPAM, which may lead to blacklisting all over the place. It’s too bad, too. I liked where they were going with the intention of this email.

SEGMENTATION::
This also touches on the fact that sending relevant messages to your subscribers will work out in spades.

Marketers have reportedly experienced a 22% higher open rate for segmented campaigns and click rates twice as high opposed to non-segmeneted campaigns. Get as much personal data on your subscribers as possible and use it to your (and their) advantage!

FREQUENCY::
There has to be a sensible balance and cadence to your sends.
A) don’t over send - if you berate your subscribers with too many emails you’ll ultimately end up annoying them to the point of unsubscribing or marking you as SPAM. limit each subscriber to no more than 3 emails a month, spreading each delivery to 10 days.
B) don’t send too infrequently - you have to stay fresh enough in your subscriber’s mind when it comes to their inbox. If your email appears to be from Random Brand X in the mind of the user, you better believe they are going to mark you as SPAM. I’d imagine one email every 2-3 months just touching base will do you more good than once a year.

ESPs::
Any ESP worth your money should have a deliverability team on hand constantly working for you to ensure you are whitelisted and your reputation is maintained. If this is not included in your monthly invoices, find a new ESP which offers this service. Word.

FINAL THOUGHTS::
I think this screenshot of a slide from the presentation sums up everything about this webinar. If you apply these 7 aspects of engagement to your email marketing campaigns, you should have a much easier time with your deliverability, open and click through rates.
Thank you to Silverpop for delivering such a compelling, informative and topical webinar. I only hope all webinars were as good as this. Much appreesh.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 23, 2010