There’s one thing that separates great email marketing from spam. Permission. It’s the vital ingredient to any email marketing program and the principles of permission marketing are at the core of our business.

Did you know that we have an automated spam feedback loop with major ISPs such as Hotmail and AOL, and that we also receive automated updates from spam reporting services such as Spamcop? Additionally, our abuse.reports@sign-up.to address is circulated and made available on various web sites and DNS records to ensure we receive reports of any unsolicited email being sent through our systems.

We take any such reports very seriously in order to protect our clients’ reputations, our reputation, our email delivery rate and ultimately, recipients’ faith in email marketing. Our aim is to ensure that every email we send is anticipated, personal, relevant and rewarding – never unsolicited.

Ideally all data held in all our clients’ accounts would have been gathered using our built in forms, so we will ensure a confirmed opt-in loop and hold all IP addresses and times of consent on file. This means that each time an email address is added to a list we verify both that it exists, and that the owner knows that they’re signing up to an email list.

Of course, sometimes data needs to added en masse to our clients’ accounts – for instance if they move to our service from a competitor. In these cases we can only ask our clients to confirm that the data is fully opt-in. We do however have some key points to cover, and a more detailed overview in our anti-spam policy.

• We view any unsolicited, unexpected email/SMS as spam.
• We don’t allow use of 3rd party lists, whether consent has been gathered or not. We don’t believe that consent is transferable between organisations.
• We don’t permit purchased data to be imported, whether apparently opt-in or not.
• We believe that any communications sent to a subscriber about an unrelated subject to that which they requested to be kept informed about are spam.

We enforce these beliefs because:

• We want to promote permission marketing and protect subscribers’ inboxes.
• We all hate spam.
• We need to have a good email reputation to ensure that genuine permission-based messages are successfully delivered to inboxes.

We actively encourage disgruntled subscribers to report any unsolicited emails to abuse.reports@sign-up.to – and we investigate each and every report to the last detail. We also use both automatic and manual checks on all imported lists, and data added via our API.

Much as we love our clients, on the odd occasion that one doesn’t adhere to these rules we have to intervene, and if necessary terminate their account. Of course, we hate to lose a client, but we deeply believe in the principles of permission marketing and the benefits that it can bring to marketers and subscribers.

** Update :  maintenance was completed successfully, all services are running normally as of 22:36 **

We’ll be performing scheduled maintenance and upgrades this Monday evening (the 7th June), and this means that for a time, Sign-Up.to accounts will be unavailable.

The maintenance window will be from 9pm until midnight on Monday 7th June.

We really hope any unavailability doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. Accounts will be affected in groups, and we don’t expect any one account to be unavailable for more than 30 minutes. Please do relay this information to any colleagues or clients of yours who have access to Sign-Up.to or any of our associated products. We will keep everyone informed of progress from our twitter account so stay tuned to that for updates as the evening progresses. Any questions – please use the comments form below!

What has happened?

AOL have this week closed down a large number of disused email accounts. As is common with any free and popular service, over the course of time a significant proportion of accounts opened fall into disuse; as people’s ISP or other preferences change, they may start using another mail provider and stop checking their AOL account. As per their terms of service, AOL may close accounts not accessed for 30 days. While that could be perceived as being a bit too keen, reports have certainly been coming in of AOL accounts that haven’t been used for a couple of months or so being closed.

How does this affect my email marketing?

In the scenario where an AOL user signed up to your mailing list in the dim and distant past, but has since stopped using their AOL account, we have been successfully delivering your mail to that account for you. Of course, as the intended recipient no longer uses that AOL account, that mail will show in our Analysis section as being delivered but not opened. Now that AOL have closed accounts like that, such mails will now be hard bounced, so we’ll immediately suspend that address. This means we’ll no longer send email to that address and you’ll no longer be charged for it.

Doesn’t this mean fewer people will receive my email campaigns?

No – so long as AOL’s measures are executed correctly we’ll only stop sending your campaigns to inboxes that will never be checked. So long as your email campaigns are relevant and effective, the chances are that anyone who has moved their email account has re-subscribed to your list since doing so. The consequences for not suspending these email addresses are serious, as I’ll now explain.

The benefits of Sign-Up.to

This incident serves to highlight why using fully automated and dedicated permission marketing systems like Sign-Up.to is the best way to ensure your message is received by the broadest possible audience. It is entirely possible that AOL will repeat history and in time re-open some of those accounts as spam traps. If you get caught sending mail to a spam trap – an email address that has been issuing hard bounces for a large period of time and then lies dormant – it can only be the case that the address has been scraped or an old, dirty, list is in use. Sign-Up.to cleans your email lists by suspending addresses after just one hard bounce, ensuring that your email reputation is not damaged while also making your marketing budget work as efficiently as possible.

We’ll be performing scheduled maintenance and upgrades this Sunday evening (the 21st March), and this means that for a time, Sign-Up.to accounts will be unavailable.

The maintenance window will be from 6pm until midnight on Sunday 21st March.

We have chosen this time because historically our systems are very quiet on Sunday evenings, and it gives us the night to apply finishing touches before the week kicks off on Monday morning.

We really hope any unavailability doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. Accounts will be affected in groups, and we don’t expect any one account to be unavailable for more than 2 hours. Please do relay this information to any colleagues or clients of yours who have access to Sign-Up.to or any of our associated products. We will keep everyone informed of progress from our twitter account so stay tuned to that for updates as the evening progresses. Any questions – please use the comments form below!

A bit of a heads up! We noticed late morning that we were queuing emails into hotmail.com and associated domains (e.g. hotmail.co.uk, live.com etc.). Further investigation revealed that the Hotmail servers are refusing inbound mail connections for everyone – more and more reports are cropping up on the internet. Rest assured we’re monitoring the situation and will queue all of your mail to be delivered as soon as the situation is resolved. For those who do, you can keep up to date with this and other Sign-Up.to news by following us on Twitter: @signupto

Update 16:20, 18/03/2010

Hotmail are now accepting inbound mail, but at a reduced rate. Our queue size is steadily dropping; we’ll deliver your mail as soon as we can.

Those who design and engineer web pages (and emails) have long been aware that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) has been something of a thorn in their side. Even basic layouts sometimes require a custom IE6 style sheet, and the kind of modern web features that the likes of Facebook now employ to bring responsive and interactive web pages simply don’t work. As a result for quite some time now there have been campaigns like ‘IE6 Must Die‘ – a geeky read but an excellent example of the frustrations felt in the community. This campaign though has, until recently, not been as effective as that community would have liked.

A recent report by NetMarketShare revealed that IE6 still represents just over 20% of the market. This is because larger corporations and the public sector are often slow to implement technology change, so the ravings of a few internet designers and developers aren’t going to carry much influence. They’ve got the resources to ensure that their own sites work in all browsers, they don’t mind if this prevents their own web sites from being cutting edge, and they are generally insulated to the kind of attitudes and preferences that are advancing web technologies elsewhere. Facebook hasn’t supported IE6 since August 2008. Do large employers care that their staff can’t access Facebook from their office machines? Not likely!

Recently though, the landscape changed. Since hackers in China exploited IE to access some Google mail, it is security rather than beauty and functionality that has taken centre stage on the IE6 issue. The French and German governments went so far as to recommend their citizens choose another browser. Mashable released a new set of reasons why IE6 must die. Google have announced they will phase out IE6 support from March 2010. Today, there’s an article entitled ‘Pressure mounts to phase out Internet Explorer 6‘ on the front page of BBC news.

Here at Sign-Up.to we will be watching this situation with interest. Our public facing services – so that’s our main web site, the dynamic subscription forms our clients can automatically build, and our subscriber profile administration areas  - all currently support IE6. For our paying customers though (those who use our web applications to manage their digital marketing), we haven’t supported IE6 for our customers for around 3 years now. To ensure ease of use and accurate email campaign building it simply wasn’t possible to employ the elderly IE6 engine even then. This has meant that some larger entities haven’t been able to fully use our services, but this is a regret we must carry for the greater good.

With the likes of Facebook and Google now on-side, the campaign has surely gathered momentum. However Microsoft still pledges to support IE6 until 2014, so the date on its headstone cannot yet be carved.

It has been an extremely interesting week for not only the British music industry, but also for the internet and social media. The battle for the UK Christmas number one single has been fought on many topics. I won’t hide my point of view here: I thought the X-Factor’s offering was painful at best, and I am delighted to have such an entertaining song at number one from RATM, but I would like to focus on how it happened.

Tracy and Jon Morter, a couple that I’d never heard of before, started a Facebook group originally titled “Rage against the x-factor“. It strived to get members to buy RATM’s “Killing In The Name“, in the hope that it might outsell the X-Factor’s single. Given that the power of traditional broadcast media and interruption marketing has meant that every X-Factor winner from 2005-2008 had been number one, this seemed like quite a task. Yet, although it was close, that campaign succeeded.

As I write, that group has just shy of 1,000,000 members. The initial growth was completely viral. Tracy and Jon invited their friends, who invited their friends, et cetera. This wave swept through my Facebook account. I can’t remember which of my friends appeared in my news feed as having joined the group, but it was enough to convince me, which means my other friends may have also seen it in their news feed, and so on.

Twitter became a vital key, attracting the attention of the likes of Stephen Fry and Bill Bailey. With retweets from celebrities came a massive following, with #ratm4xmas trending, and eventually crunch point: media attention.

Suddenly Jon Morter was being interviewed live by Jo Whiley on Radio One. Rage Against The Machine were interviewed and played live on Radio 5 – predictably ignoring their promise to keep the version clean – which of course attracted yet more attention.

Zach de la Rocha, Rage Against The Machine’s lead singer, was interviewed when their number one success was announced, and said something quite inoffensive that raised my eyebrows. He referred to the “UK kids” having “spoken”.

Here, I think he’s got it all wrong. Facebook’s insights would be able to confirm. If we consider kids to be those under 18, I wonder how many of them changed their usual music buying patterns as a result of this campaign. Aged 30, I am confident that I and my peers changed ours a lot. Prior to this week, I hadn’t bought a music single in over a decade. Why would I? Albums, yes. Yet for everything else there’s the likes of Spotify and Last FM.

Social Media has torn traditional marketing apart. It has reached to all ages. It got people’s attention when it suited them – when they checked Facebook or their Twitter feed. Traditional marketing relies on people observing bus shelter adverts, wanting to listen to radio DJs, wanting to buy a magazine or newspaper to see the adverts. In this case, it also relied, heaven forbid, on people wanting to spend their Saturday evening watching the X-Factor.

Yet Social Media marketing arrives as a message from your friends, when you decide you want to see it. Your friends have already done the research, they’ve shown an interest, and maybe you would like to as well. Simon Cowell and the X-Factor will be back – presumably at number one next week. This campaign has of course been a flash in the pan, but for Social Media, it is perhaps a coming of age. It’s a marketing tool that can be ignored no longer.

We’re very sorry to say we will be closing our telephone lines an hour early at 5pm this evening for a spot of staff training and team building.

This final hour of our working week is traditionally quite quiet so hopefully this shouldn’t affect many people, but please try and get any requests in as early as possible to ensure we’re on hand to help.

I’m afraid to say we’re going to be massaging our servers this Sunday (4th October) evening, and this means that for a time, Sign-Up.to and associated systems will be unavailable.

The maintenance window will be from 6pm until midnight.

We have chosen this time because historically our systems are very quiet on Sunday evenings, and it gives us the night to apply finishing touches before the week kicks off on Monday morning.

We really hope any unavailability doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. We will keep everyone informed of progress from our twitter account so stay tuned to that for updates as the evening progresses

We’re really pleased to announce the release of our great new Analyse section today. You may have noticed that we’ve replaced the ‘Track’ section with ‘Analyse’, and this is because you can now do so much more in there.

Ever wondered which day is best to send your emails, or wanted to see a graph of how your September newsletter results compare to your August ones? How about seeing your best performing campaigns at-a-glance?

Our brand-spanking-new, one-of-a-kind Analytics Tool lets you find out all this and more with just a couple of clicks, and it’s available right now to all Sign-Up.to customers in the ‘Analyse’ section of your account.

Each of the 8 reports is designed to answer a key question about your online marketing and give you actionable insight to help you get even better results:

How does email delivery vary by domain name?
Track down any delivery issues fast, by easily comparing performance or your emails for different recipient domains.

Log in to your account now to try it out for yourself.

Haven’t got an account yet? Get one today!