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Email Marketing, Business & Monkeys

Archive for the ‘IMHO’ Category

iContact hearts MailChimp?

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Looks like iContact really loves the improvements we made in MailChimp v3.

After we launched, one of our customers searched for “MailChimp” in Google, and saw this ad from iContact (right column):

iContact-hearts-mailchimp

I can only guess that someone at iContact took one look at our new features list, and said, “Wow. Someone finally got it right! Let’s run an ad to congratulate MailChimp! ”

Thanks, guys! We think we got it right, too. But you got our URL wrong. You accidentally pointed it to your own home page, not ours. I’m sure it’s just a goof up by your SEM agency. Sometimes managing all those keywords can get really confusing.

Still though, it’s nice to be recognized by our industry peers as being the right choice.

We heart you too, guys!

95% of problems come from newsletters, not promotions

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I just got off an ESPC call where Cloudmark was presenting. Very cool stuff. Learned they protect over 600 million inboxes around the globe via just about all the major ISPs.

Anyway, the guy from Cloudmark said he knew he’d be on a call with a bunch of email service providers (ESPs), so he looked us all up in their database to see if he had any records on us (this is the part of the call where you could hear a pin drop).
Then he said something along the lines of, “95% of problems that ESPs have seem to be coming from relationship newsletters, not sales promotions.”

Huh?

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Navigating Websites Using Your Webcam

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Just came across Hal Riney & Partners’ new website, which lets you navigate around by waving your arms in front of your screen (kind of like that computer interface on Minority Report). It uses your computer’s webcam to track your arm gestures. I thought it was fascinating, then got really tired of waving my arms around (hey, it’s early and I’m not a morning person). Then I learned I can trigger it while drinking from my coffee mug, so I just used that instead. Now that’s how web navigation ought to be. Sip to the left, sip to the right. Eat your heart out, Tom Cruise.

Hal Riney Minority Report

2 hidden ways to use Gmail

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Have you ever wished you could quickly and easily setup different email addresses whenever you signup at some new website?

For example, we review every single new account at MailChimp. Occasionally, we’ll come across a techie who created an email address like, “mailchimp-techie@example.com” I guess it’s a way to filter all email from us, and it’s also a nifty way to detect if we ever sell their email address or something (this should go without saying, but no—we don’t do evil stuff like that).

Anyway, there’s a quick and easy way you can do all that with Gmail:

2 hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address

Something’s afoot at Habeas

Friday, April 25th, 2008

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but their CEO wants us to know something’s going on.

Congratulations, guys (I think?).

Update via Box of Meat: Ken Magill has some insight here

SEEK – faceted search plugin for Thunderbird

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Interesting plugin for Mozilla’s Thunderbird:

http://simile.mit.edu/seek/


Spam Complaints – Your Own Focus Group

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

There’s an interesting post over at the Word To The Wise blog about the “Report Spam” button.

Apparently, some marketing folks (Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa) ran a survey that suggests the button is meaningless now. That’s because too many people click “Report Spam” when all they really want to do is unsubscribe.

This statement from Laura Atkins is what I found most interesting (which I’ve summarized in a very unprofessional way below):

“I think this is a demonstration of the disconnect between traditional marketing (telemarketing and direct mail especially) and email marketing. In traditional marketing…recipients do not have an easy way to send negative feedback…In email marketing, however…they have a way to communicate back to the marketer that they do not have in other forms of marketing.”

There’s definitely a “disconnect.” Enlightened marketers know how to treat email. Ignorant markters who just treat email as “cheap direct marketing” are ruining email for all of us, and need to have their computers taken away from them.

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Spam Is Not Free Speech

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Just stumbled upon this discussion over at Slashdot:

“In a split (4-3) decision, a Virginia court has upheld the verdict against the spam king making it clear that spam is not protected by the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment or even its interstate commerce clause.”

My first thought was: 4 to 3?!?!?  Who the heck were the 3 people who actually thought spam could be considered free speech? Do they not own computers?

Spamology – Spam Visualization Project

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Spamology is an interesting data visualization project, where the artist uses keyword frequency from spam to form a little miniature city. The more frequent the keywords, the higher and higher they stack. Before you go looking for the “Viagra” skyscraper and the “Rolex” tower, it’s common words (like “with”) that appear the most.

spamology-spamscape.gif

Click “i” for instructions on how to navigate around this little city.
Know what’s creepy about it? The city has an uncanny resemblance to Lagos, Nigeria:

lagos.jpeg

http://www.mailchimp.com/nonrestrictiveocean.php