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It's still spam

Companies are always trying to find new ways to use and abuse email. My mailbox has been rife with mail from companies trying to sell me stuff for my business. It’s been interesting to watch the new ways they’re trying to get attention, while not honoring the most important rule of email marketing.
EmalMarketingForBlog

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Email in 2020

time_report_forblogLate last year Litmus invited me to contribute to a whitepaper they were putting together about email in 2020. Today, they released Email Marketing in 2020. I am honored to be included in the list of experts that they chose.
One of the things I find so so much fun in participating in this type of joint project is seeing what other people’s visions are. When Chad first contacted us, his request was very simple. He wanted 400-ish words on what we thought would change. We all approached it from our own perspectives. The final document really touches on a wide range of changes and gives an bright and rosy view of the future of email.
It’s hard to imagine I’ve had email for more than 25 years. It’s become such a fundamental and critical part of my life. I mean, sure I’m an email professional but it’s more than that. Some of my best friends I met over email. I’ve gotten multiple jobs based on my presence on email discussion lists. Steve and I met around email. One of the fun bits of M3AAWG is that I get to see friends I first met almost 20 years ago over email.
Email has really changed in the last decade. It is now a critical part of daily life for many people. Even social networking would be nowhere without an email address. Email really is the key to the digital kingdom. That’s not going to change.
Email being the key to the digital kingdom is a challenge. It lets nefarious people into our homes and into our lives and into our computers. A lot of very smart people are working on how to make email safer for us. I think it will be much safer in 2020, through the hard work and dedication of a lot of people.
I strongly encourage you to download the Email Marketing in 2020 white paper from Litmus. There is a lot of insight. It will be fun to see how much of what was said becomes reality.

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Just stop spamming!

Al posted a clip from the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar on SpamResource (slightly NSFW) that resonated with me this week.
If you meet me on the street and ask me what my job is I’ll tell you that I work with companies who send bulk email to make sure that they’re not sending spam. I do this by educating clients into good practices and teaching them how to send mail people want to receive. What this statement doesn’t tell people is that usually clients find me because they have been suspended by their ISP for spamming or blocked by some receiver.
Clients who find me because they can’t send mail usually hire me to solve their immediate problem. And I do give the the best advice I can to resolve their problem. But fixing today’s problem isn’t enough, you also need to fix the processes that caused the problem. To me, a critical part of my job is to set clients up for long term success by creating procedures that will get them delisted and keep them from being relisted in the future.
Sometimes, though, I have those moments Al is talking about. When clients don’t actually want to fix their problems, they just want to argue. They want to argue about the definition of spam. They want to argue about permission. They want to argue about how awful their ISPs are for suspending their account. They want to argue about CAN SPAM. They want to argue about free speech. They are angry and they want to fight.
My role is to listen to them, then guide them down a constructive path. I do turn out to be the sounding board for a lot of customers, sometimes they just need to know someone is listening to them. Once they get it all out we can move on into solving the problem.
But, boy, are there the occasional conversations where I just want to scream, “JUST STOP SPAMMING!”

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