Almost time to vote

I have to admit, the closer we get to election day the more distracted I’m getting. This will be the 8th presidential election I’m eligible to vote in and one I’m following closely. We even watched the 2nd debate live on the trip over to the UK.
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As with the 2008 and 2012 election, email marketing is a huge portion of candidate strategy. Many companies have been tracking how the candidates are using email. Return Path has pulled together a lot of interesting data on their Election Archives, and many other ESPs have thrown their two cents in when it comes to election email.
When this election season started, feels like 10-gazillion years ago now, I started signing up for different candidate lists to see what they were doing with email. I quickly fell behind when so many Republican candidates through their hat in the ring. By that point, I knew other folks were monitoring email and reporting on email and decided to drop the project. I just couldn’t keep up and other people could do it better.
We did comment on the Trump campaign spamming foreign leaders. I think it’s important to realize that deliverability rules don’t get thrown out the window simply because you have an important name or are running for president. A few years ago, one campaign was SBLed on election night and their ESP cut them off. I happen to know the person running compliance there and they supported that candidate but policies are policies.
We also shared a post from someone speculating about how Secy Clinton had access to a private server. The speculation was somewhat wrong, in that the server was already there and set up for Pres. Clinton when he left office. But other than that, much of the other stuff that’s come out has made it clear that email in the State Department was a total mess. I still think a private server was way more secure than an @gmail.com or @aol.com account; it was absolutely more secure than a Yahoo.com account.
This election is important, so I encourage all my readers to get out and vote next Tuesday. There’s more to vote on than just the presidency, too. Here in California we have something like 17 ballot initiatives. Yay, Democracy?
I suspect many folks are in a similar boat and finding it hard to concentrate on things beside the election. So much feels up in the air and important and it’s like we’re all holding our collective breath. After being in the UK last month, I realized how much elections have consequences. The falling pound made it great for us as visitors. But it’s not all sunshine and roses as companies try and sort out how they can absorb a loss in buying power on the open market.
Go vote. It’s important.
 
 

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Politician sends spam, experiences consequences, news at 11

Over the weekend I’ve been seeing a number of over the top, hyperbolic blog posts about the Trump Campaign’s agency getting suspended from their ESP for spamming. Adestra suspended the Donald Trump campaign for “for committing some of the most egregious spamming in the history of the Internet in an effort to save his broke campaign.”
That quote about “most egregious spamming” is from some partisan website that is all about making Trump look bad.  I did actually laugh out loud reading most egregious. Let’s be real here. This incidence of spamming doesn’t even make it into the top 100 of the ones I know about. And it’s not like I’m particularly well up on who’s spamming what.
This really is business as usual in the email space and particularly the political email space. Political sender, be they special interest groups or politicians, are sloppy with permission and will send mail to any email address they get their hands on. I talked about this last week: Spam Filtering is Apolitical
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The Trump campaign isn’t the first political campaign to send spam.  It wasn’t huge news in 2012, but the Romney campaign was doing some bad stuff with their email marketing. They were working with snowshoe spammers. They were listed on the SBL. They got cut off by their ESP.
While Spamhaus doesn’t keep historic records, I found a post from 2012 on the “Mainsleaze” about the Romney campaign / supporters and their use of spam as a campaign tactic. In the comments on that post a representative of Spamhaus says, “Entirely too many political operatives and some of those who work with them at ESPs feel entitled to ignore the usual rules and send opt-out bulk email to anybody they wish.” This is true, and something I’ve repeatedly mentioned on this blog.

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June 2016: The Month in Email

We’re officially halfway through 2016, and looking forward to a slightly less hectic month around here. I hope you’re enjoying your summer (or winter, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere).
 

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Harvesting Addresses from LinkedIn

There seems to have been an uptick in the number of folks harvesting addresses from their LinkedIn contacts and adding them to mailing lists. I’ve been seeing this in my own mailbox. I’m getting added to different lists and because I used a tagged address I know these folks are harvesting from LinkedIn.
This behavior is really rude. Just because someone accepted your contact request on LinkedIn, doesn’t mean they want to be added to any mailing lists you may have. Let’s be honest, some people have hundreds or thousands of LinkedIn contacts. They’re not going to want to get mail from all of them.
This behavior risks your ESP account. I know of ESPs who have disconnected customers for importing all their LinkedIn contacts.
Of course, there are ways to effectively use your LinkedIn contacts. The short version is think about what you’re doing and how your mail will be received. Don’t grab all your contacts, be selective about who you choose. Have too many contacts to go through manually? That’s not an excuse, in fact, it’s an even bigger argument for not becoming a spammer.
Targeting.
I’ve previously written things you must consider when sending bulk mail to people who have connected with you on social networks.

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