Email Ethics

Is Gmail stealing your clicks?

2011-05-19T13:24:00.001-04:00

First of all I would like to have the chance to express how much I am fond of Gmail (and google services at large) that I use a lot. However, since the beginning I have wondered what is the proportion of lost clicks on Gmail addresses. Why would I suspect a lower click rate on Gmail? Simply because Google displays contextual ads on the right of each and every email received on Gmail. The ad being

GoodMail to cease operations

2011-02-02T09:50:00.000-05:00

Although there is still no official announcement on the GoodMail website, several legitimate sources have spread the word that the company will cease operations in a few days. Here is the text which is being sent around: It is with great regret that I must inform you that Goodmail will cease operations on Tuesday 2/8/11. We will continue to provide CertifiedEmail tokens until Monday 2/8/

Unsubscribe me !

2011-01-30T18:16:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I last posted on this blog. The main reason for this is that I didn't have much time, another reason is I didn't have much to say. However, this week I decided to unsubscribe to all the different Newsletters I was subscribed to in france (now living in Canada, these newsletter were not very interesting to me. I thought unitl now that most of the best practices for

One 2 One email marketing

2010-10-07T11:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Cabestan-Canada organised a conference in Montreal, QC (in French) on One 2 One email marketing. For those of you interested (and understanding French), here is the powerpoint of the presentation: Le Marketing One2one par courriel View more presentations from Anton Panaitesco. I also made a translation of the presentation available here: One 2 One email marketing View

New hotmail email filtering system

2010-09-03T10:00:00.006-04:00

An Email Insider article mentions that hotmail should be releasing pretty soon a new inbox placement metrics system based on the user engagement. It's true this story has been around for almost a year, but knowing what Gmail just did, rolling out their new (Beta) priority inbox, it makes sens that hotmail wouldn't want to be left behind and that it should probably speed up the switch to a more

What will Gmail's Priority Inbox change in email marketing?

2010-08-31T10:15:00.004-04:00

This has been a global tendency over the last years: to get rid of Spam and other unsolicited, unwanted or unneeded emails, ISPs have tried to classify email senders and sort them into 3 categories: 1 - Spam and unsolicited emails : Usually refused by the server 2 - Unwanted emails : Usually sent to the junk folder 3 - Regular mail : Delivered to the inbox. The thing with this system was that

The new hotmail

2010-08-11T14:45:00.002-04:00

How could I describe the brand New hotmail? I could list all the new features in a very long post and discuss them one by one but this would be too boring on a blog dedicated to email marketing since the changes in this version are (for the most) feature related, the spam filtering remains MS SmartScreen and the rendering system remains unchanged except for one noticeable thing that I will

Social marketing gone wrong

2010-08-04T13:57:00.001-04:00

The discussion goes on and on and on... will Social marketing kill email marketing? My answer remains unchanged: NO. The main point according to me is not on costs, on reliability, efficiency,... it's on risk. Let's take a simple example. I'm a playstation 3 player and am registered to the Ubisoft newsletter, and an Assassin's creed (one of their latest games) follower on facebook. Wisely,

The true danger of social marketing.

2010-07-14T18:31:00.000-04:00

I've always been a social marketing sceptic even though I myself have (personal) accounts in all social websites I know of. One of the reasons why I never trusted social marketing was that I've always had that feeling that whenever something was to go wrong, the back draft would be worse than on any other marketing channel. Some marketing experts foretold the end of email marketing a couple of

Think interactive

2010-07-07T13:08:00.001-04:00

One of the main benefits of email marketing is its quickness and the amount of information that can be used to optimize the way you communicate with your clients/prospects. If the job is properly done you will not only increase drastically your ROI but you will also help your clients and increase their overall satisfaction. Here's my point of view: If you have a mailing list that you broadcast

AOL : Email account stealing and spoofing for dummies

2010-06-29T13:00:00.004-04:00

AOL just made a few weeks a go a post on their official mail blog to explain to their users why and how they could be receiving SPAM from their own email address. The post briefly explains how an email address can be stolen or what is spoofing and gives a couple of tips to avoid compromising his email address. The readers of this blog won't probably learn anything new here, but I thought it was

What is email deliverability?

2010-06-28T21:28:00.000-04:00

After a couple of years writing on this blog, I realize that there's still quite a few myths and weird questions wandering around the web and in direct marketing trade shows or seminars about deliverability. I've decided to do a quick powerpoint presentation on the subject, some kind of really short "Deliverability for dummies" thing for people around the planet for whom IP reputation, feedback

Tips for a successful subscribe form

2010-06-25T09:00:00.001-04:00

The best way to collect email inside your database is to have a subscription form on your website.To maximize the number of emails subscribing to your newsletter there are a couple of things you should do: First : Make your subscribe form stand out.When I visit a website and decide it's worth keeping in touch with the shop/brand I try to subscribe to their newsletter. Unfortunately, too many

Email rendering: Displaying Background images in both Gmail and Outlook 2007

2010-06-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

Most email marketers around the world are aware of one thing: it's quite impossible to have your email render properly and identically in all email readers, browsers and webmails... Among the tricky rendering issues Outlook 2007 and Gmail stand out with their inability to display properly background images. This triggered the following best practice: if you are ever to use white or some other

Hacking through to hotmail's inbox

2010-06-21T08:44:00.000-04:00

As all readers of this blog must know by now, @hotmail, @msn and @live email addresses (as well as a number of other Microsoft mail operated domains) use a reputation based SPAM filter. This reputation is a savvy calculation based on the percentage of hardbounces, spam trap hits, complaints and positive reactions out of the overall volume of emails sent. To be really efficient, this user

How Cabestan-Canada can help you perform

2010-06-17T15:33:00.002-04:00

As I said a few weeks ago I just left Cabestan Europe to join the Cabestan-Canada team. I guess that's the opportunity to get working with you Canadian and American people out there. Here's the latest powerpoint presentation we made, please feel free to comment or contact me.

Email-Ethics in Canada

2010-06-03T10:06:00.004-04:00

Hello reader,This is just a short post to apologize first for the lack of recent posts, the reason is my second point: I just moved in to Montréal to become the CEO of Cabestan-Canada.I'm head high with paper work and currently looking for an apartment.I will resume posting here as soon as all is sorted out :)

New Gmail rendering rules

2010-05-14T09:17:00.004-04:00

The guys at emailKarma (among others) have spotted a drastic change to the way Gmail's webmail renders images.This change occurred over the week-end and could have a massive impact on the way your creative will display in Gmail.Funny thing is this only impacts sliced images (read here a big image cut into smaller ones) since what Gmail does is that it adds a slight space around the image.The

What google tells you about email marketing

2010-05-07T06:29:00.005-04:00

Now that google's wonder wheel is out it's quite funny to see what are "email marketing"'s related subjects.I've checked a couple of them and browsed around, the results are quite interesting :First "email marketing"Leads to "email advertising"Or to "email marketing best practices"Other searches trigger interesting results:Like "email marketing deliverability"There's quite a lot of stuff here to

Optimise according to your goals!

2010-04-28T09:33:00.002-04:00

One funny thing about email marketing is that 75% of the success of a strategy relies on the Database itself.You can come up with the finest campaign of all times, if you send it to a poor quality database, you won't get any good results.This has been said quite a few times already on this blog, I tell it once more: the DB quality is the core of the business.Now, having that in mind there's a

Score your DataBase !

2010-04-21T13:00:00.001-04:00

One of the most important things for a successful email strategy is to know your Data Base.We have discussed more than once on this blog the importance of analyzing the reactions of your DB to estimate what "turns it on" and what "turns it off".But knowing your DB goes far beyond that, it also means to have a good and honest vision of its quality.I've been playing with reports, for quite some

Returnpath's standards shift, a hint on the market's evolution?

2010-03-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Up to now, to be eligible for Returnpath's Certification you "only" had to match an arm long list of best practices, such as having a clear and visible privacy agreement, not hitting too many spam traps, honey pots, not triggering too many complaints and so on...Today, ReturnPath announced to its customers by email and on its blog that it will no longer accept to certify third party only senders

OME Madrid

2010-02-25T09:17:00.004-05:00

The OME Madrid is almost over, unfortunately I didn't have time to go to any conference yet, but here's some second hand information I can share with you guys:1 - A massively huge amount of people attended the conferences, all packed in the different rooms around the fair, some even sitting on the ground or standing outside, most of the conferences had a massive success.2 - As last year, a very

OME Madrid coverage

2010-02-22T11:53:00.004-05:00

I'm in Madrid this week, (partly) to attend the OME Madrid trade show.My company has a booth there (Cabestan - Booth n°96). I you are around, please feel free to drop by and say "hello".I will try to attend some of the Keynotes (those on email marketing mainly) and to make short summaries of what has been said and done.Stay tuned!

Third party emails: Extra revenue, great risks.

2010-02-17T14:22:00.005-05:00

At some point, the idea always ends up on the VP of marketing's desk:Earn extra money from the DataBase by sending third party campaigns. The idea will always seem sweet: rent the database for a nice CPM or find the latest generous affiliation campaign, it's quite simple indeed and grants a quick revenue to the Database owner.The real trouble is companies usually under-estimate the risk for their