Word to the Wise

The question came up on a mailing list about how senders classify email. Steve came up with the following list of email types from the recipient (not sender) perspective

• Transactional & Alerts
• Marketing
• Duplicates
• Duplicates
• Apologies for the preceding duplicate
• Just sending mail so you don’t forget us
• Opt-in confirmations
• Welcome messages
• COI challenges
• Opt-out confirmations
• Apologies and corrections to the broken URL in the preceding email.
• Notifications that we added you to this other list over here, seeing as you’re on this one
• Inscrutable blank messages
• Inscrutable messages that aren’t exactly blank but seem to consist solely of a broken image
• Other apologies, assorted
• Reconfirmations after we got blocked at AOL
• Different reconfirmations while we migrate to a different ESP, ‘cos the last one got blocked at AOL
• Reminders to add us to your address book, especially at AOL
• Cross-marketing for ISPs other than AOL
• Spam
• Mailing to our suppression list by accident
• Viruses
• Not really spam, honest, look, we have an unsub link

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There comes an inevitable point in some of my longer term consulting gigs where my client asks me some version of the following question:

I still get spam in my inbox, so why is the email I send blocked?

So what is your best answer?

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Ken Magill has a post up mentioning the top 40 companies in email marketing. Some highlights:

1. Goodmail: This firm has been under fire and in the news so often that it has helped me make more deadlines than any other company on this list.
2. SubscriberMail: They’re in Chicago.
3. ExactTarget: They’re in Indianapolis.

Editor’s note: If your company did not appear on The Magilla Marketing List of Top 40 Fastest-Growing (and some not-so-fast-growing) E-mail Marketing Related Companies that Came to Mind Randomly while Swilling Vodka Martinis list and you think it should have, e-mail us. We’ll do another list. Heck, we’ll do ‘em all year! But you have to put out a release. Hmmm … I smell a business model.

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On the heels of JDs post about building relationships with ISPs, many of our Abacus customers and our ISP contacts have been commenting that boxes of meat are always welcome.

Please, remember to send them boxes of meat.

Meat may not get your email delivered, but it will make the ISPs remember you fondly.

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MailChimp’s customer service people were contacted by what appears to be a King selling monkeys.

I want to get permission part II up today, but this was just so funny I had to share.

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