Comments on: Images ON in Gmail – If You’re Authenticating

By: Gmail, Gmail, Gmail : I Send Your Email

Gmail, Gmail, Gmail : I Send Your Email — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:19:59 +0000

[...] marketers who create image-heavy messages AND have encouraged feedback from their subscribers. As Ben at MailChimp points out, if encouraging feedback is scary, just add a link to messages sent to Gmail subscribers. And get [...]

By: Sandi Solow

Sandi Solow — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:52:12 +0000

Do you think this will affect open rates at all?

By: Peter Hogenkamp

Peter Hogenkamp — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:10:18 +0000

Hehe. Actually when I get replies from people working for the same company who are away for the same period of time, I sometimes start guessing whether they might be on vacation together…

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:06:13 +0000

Ha! They actually put some time and consideration into their autoreply. That’s rare. Think you might send them some wine whenever they get back?

By: Josh Hutchinson

Josh Hutchinson — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:38:36 +0000

I get a kick out of reading the ‘out of office’ replies.

Details of the vacation are always nice– we got one yesterday that was essentially ‘I’m not going to read your email because I’m sitting on a deck chair in the south of France, and currently wine is more important to me than whatever you have to say’.

Nice.

By: How to Manage Your Email List | Email

How to Manage Your Email List | Email — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:49:54 +0000

[...] Images ON in Gmail – If You’re Authenticating (mailchimp.com) [...]

By: Mike Hillyer’s Personal Webspace » Blog Archive » Getting Images Turned On by Default in Gmail

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:28:11 +0000

[...] According to the MailChimp blog there’s a new program in place at Gmail that allows images in a message to be turned on by default with the following requirements: [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:54:01 +0000

Hi Mike,
Agreed. Those “do-not-reply” emails are a huge wasted opportunity to engage with customers. And it’s not even like you have to reply all that instantly when someone replies to you (but it’s nice). Whenever I send a newsletter, I get hundreds of bounces and replies immediately after. That can seem overwhelming, but it’s not so bad. My inbox filters throw them all into a folder, and after a day goes by (enough time for most subscribers to reply or bounce), I’ll spend about an hour of my time sifting through them and replying back to people. It’s fun. I get a kick out of hearing from customers, and I think people get a kick out of receiving replies “from an actual human.”

Granted, my lists are not in the millions (yet). And the real pain is not replying to humans, but handling the “my email address is changed to…” autoreplies.

For those with lists way too large to handle replies in-house, there are companies that’ll do this for you like:
http://www.bamboocricket.com/email/

By: Mike Hillyer

Mike Hillyer — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:14:41 +0000

Generally speaking wouldn’t you agree that avoiding a do-not-reply is a good way to better engage subscribers in any case?

While it can lead to an increase in incoming mail, I’d say it better engages people and could potentially lead to fewer complaints because people can reply and reach a person rather than clicking a complaint button.