Recent Posts

Motivating people

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivating people recently. What really motivates people to do things? Why do we make the choices we make? How do you convince people to do things when they’re unsure they want to do those things?
Let me give you an example. Friends of mine are fostering dogs for local rescues. A neighbor of theirs is trying to start a rescue herself. The neighbor is trying to motivate people by posting pictures of dead dogs in garbage bags. On one level, I get the neighbor’s point: that image is what motivates her to take action. But all that’s doing for other people, my friends included, is driving them away from working with her.
What she needs is a better grasp of how to motivate people. She needs to learn how to speak to people in a way that will motivate them to help her. Unfortunately, she thinks that what motivates her will motivate everyone, except it doesn’t. In fact, it’s doing the exact opposite for some people who are actually sympathetic to her cause.
What does this have to do with email?
I’m often surprised at how many marketing professionals can’t or won’t tailor their argument to their audience. Look at filters, many marketers have told me over the years about how mean ISPs are to them, how the ISPs make poor filtering decisions and how what should really happen is marketers should tell the ISPs to fix their filters.
In very few cases, though, have I seen a marketer actually try and talk to an ISP rep on their terms. It seems so simple to me: marketers are people who motivate people for a living so they should be able to market their own wants to ISPs. They just need to find the right message, but they don’t seem to be able to think about things from the ISP perspective.
I’m not sure I actually have an answer. But how do we motivate people to do things has been a major topic in my head recently. I think the best motivation is often to convince the other party that a given course is in their best interest. The tricky bit is selling that message.
How have you sold a message the other party didn’t want to hear?

Anti-Botnet Code of Conduct Published

The Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) published a Anti-botnet code of conduct for ISPs. This is a purely voluntary code for U.S. ISPs that want to mitigate the botnet threat to follow. You can download a full copy of the final report from the MAAWG website. The FCC has published a fact sheet about the report on their own website.

Gmail and the bulk folder

Earlier this week Gmail announced they were providing reasons for why they delivered a particular mail to the bulk folder. I’m sure a lot of senders are rejoicing over the clear feedback. After all this is exactly what they’ve been asking for “tell us why you’re filtering our mail and we’ll fix it.”
I am not sure, however, that this is going to help the majority of senders seeing mail going to the bulk folder. On the Gmail support pages, they list a number of the explanations they’re be providing.

Delivery challenges increasing

Return Path published their most recent Global Deliverability report this morning. (Get the Report) This shows that inbox placement of mail has decreased 6% in the second half of 2011. This decrease is the largest decrease Return Path has seen in their years of doing this report.
To be honest, I’m not surprised at the decrease. Filters are getting more sophisticated. This means they’re not relying on simply IP reputation for inbox delivery any longer. IP reputation gets mail through the SMTP transaction, but after that mail is subject to content filters. Those content filters are getting a lot better at sorting out “wanted” from “unwanted” mail.
I’m also hearing a lot of anecdotal reports that bulk folder placements at a couple large ISPs increased in the first quarter of 2012. This is after the RP study was finished, and tells me increased bulk folder placement is more likely to be a trend and not a blip.
One of the other interesting things from the RP study is that the differences are not across all mail streams, but are concentrated in certain streams and they vary across different regions.

Why complain now?

There’s a concert promoter in London that’s been spamming me for years and years. Most of the time my spam filters take care of it and I never see their mail. Every once in a while, though, one of emails gets through and ends up in my inbox. Usually I move it to junk, curse at my filters for not getting it right and just go on with whatever I’m doing.
I suspect this is more common than not with most people. Those lucky enough to have a “this is spam” button can make the mail stop by clicking it. Others, like me, just have to delete it and move on.
Sometimes, though, I get to the point where I’ve had enough. I’ll send in a complaint to the sender or their provider.
I have to wonder, though, how many people react to email negatively and hit “this is spam” when they’ve been ignoring mail for a while. This can complicate the lives of senders (what doesn’t?) because the “this is spam” isn’t in reaction to a specific email, but happens due to circumstances outside of the sender’s control.
Delivery is an ever changing field, and it’s just getting more complex and harder as receiver tools get more sophisticated.

Proxy registrations and commercial email

Yesterday the law firm Venable, LLP published a document discussing the recent California appellate court decision in Balsam v. Trancos. Their take is that commercial email that contains a generic from line and is sent from a proxied domain is a violation of the California Business and Professions Code § 17529.5(a)(2).

Lasting effects from aggressive marketing

Return Path has an interesting post on the lasting effects of aggressive holiday marketing.

Canadian Anti-Spam Law

A few years ago, Canada passed an anti-spam law (CASL). In the time since then, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commissions (CRTC) have been working to establish the regulations to implement the law. Those regulations appear to have been published recently. Matt Vernhout, a email expert and Canadian citizen, published a link to the regulations and a summary of the rules.
There still doesn’t seem to be a firm date for when CASL will be enforced law. Matt says he’s hearing that the date will be around October. We’ll see if it slips from that.

Comcast changes

I updated the Wiki a few weeks ago when I heard, but don’t think I posted anything here. Comcast has changed their delisting form page to http://postmaster.comcast.net/block-removal-request.html. The old form is currently non-functional. You can fill it in, but it’s unconnected to anything on the back end and it won’t result in an IP being delisted from the various Comcast blocklists.
My understanding is that the old form may come back to life at some point, but it’s much safer to use the new form and the new Comcast Postmaster Site.

Less can be more and more can be more

The Wall Street Journal reports that some large retailers are scaling back their email marketing. Benefits of sending less mail include higher open rates, lower unsubscribe rates and an increase in sales.