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- laura
- Jan 8, 2013
Chris K. at Bronto blogs about in-store address collection and delivery issues. Chris is right, the Spamhaus issue isn’t going away any time soon. And companies collecting addresses in store / at point of sale really need to figure out how to make sure that their data capture is accurate. That means addressing everything from customers giving the wrong address to typos and other transcription errors.
Gene M. at Forbes asks Is Constant Contact the Best E-Mail Marketing Service?. I’m not sure Constant Contact is the best, but it’s nice to see that some people do realize that the occasional compliance incident just means that the ISP is actually monitoring things.
Matt B from Return Path posts his predictions for the new year. While I don’t always do predictions, I agree with all of his.
The Next Web says that Yahoo users are being compromised by an XSS exploit. I have noticed a lot more virus from Yahoo users over the last 2 days, including one person who said their account was broken into while she was on the ski slopes. It may not be exactly an XSS hack, but something is broken at Yahoo and the spammers seem to be somehow getting around Yahoo’s outbound filters.
Does CAN SPAM apply to individual prospecting emails
- laura
- Mar 5, 2014
Two different people on two different mailing lists asked very similar questions recently. Are people who send individual prospecting emails required to comply with CAN SPAM.
My opinion (not a lawyer, don’t play one on TV, didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night) is that CAN SPAM does not mention anything about volume, and any individual unsolicited email that has a “primary purpose” of advertising is required to include a physical postal address and a way to unsubscribe.
My other take on it is for individual prospecting emails failing to comply with CAN SPAM is like speeding. It’s illegal, and you can get in legal trouble by doing it, but everyone does it and few people get caught.
ESPs and consolidation
- laura
- Jan 8, 2015
Earlier this week Bloomberg news reported that an anonymous source told them Verizon was looking to acquire or investigate a partnership with AOL. It didn’t take long for the Verizon CEO to quash the acquisition rumors. Acquisitions and partnerships have always been around in technology, this is nothing new. But it made me think a little bit about the acquisitions and mergers in the ESP space.
The last 2 years have seen unexpected purchases of ESPs. Oracle bought Eloqua. Deluxe acquired Vertical Response. IBM has acquired a number of players in the email space, including parts of mail.com, SilverPop and Pivotal Veracity. eBay acquired e-Dialog. Salesforce acquired ExactTarget. Big companies seem to use the acquisition process to acquire the technology needed to send mail to and on behalf of their customers.
I’ve heard some people claim this is the beginning of the end of the stand alone ESP. I disagree. I think there is enough market demand to support stand alone ESPs. But the market is crowded and there are a lot of ESPs out there. There will be some consolidation. Some ESPs will be bought, either for their technology or their staff. Some ESPs will change and add more features. Some big companies will decide to install big appliances to run their own marketing in house.
Things will change but that’s what happen as a market matures. And the ESP market is maturing.
Who do you think will be bought next?