The first proto-post I wrote for this series (which was only posted to our internal company blog) was titled “Four Fives”, and included a list of links to posts giving five “top tips” on a range of different subjects related to email marketing. In the same vein, I present this week a similar series of series:

• Three Keys to Effective Email Marketing – the basics
• Email Never Goes on Strike – “4 Tips Guaranteed to Stuff Your Stocking”
• Five Lessons Email Marketers Can Learn From @Sh*tMyDadSays – lessons from Justin Halpern’s Twitter account
• User-Generated Video Contest – “6 Steps to Promote Brand and Generate New Marketing Content”
• Stay Safe from Online Email, Phishing, Social Media, Malware and Other Scams this Holiday Season – Proofpoint’s “Seven Simple Rules”
• 8 Email Marketing Tips – a good overview
• Nine Strategies for Smart Email Marketing – About.com’s email guide, Heinz Tschabitscher, gives his take
• Top Ten Ways to Accelerate Your Email Marketing Strategies in 2010 – some great tips from Joanna Lawson-Matthew

(Also, Joanna, I love the intro “Let the Wild Rompus Begin!” – great stuff!)

Interesting — and good — to note one common theme amongst nearly all of the posts above: the most important point, ah, pointed out, is that you need permission to properly engage in email marketing. Shortcuts like buying lists just don’t work.

Couple of special mentions this week, firstly to the wrap-up of Mark Brownlow‘s excellent five part series of posts on the Future of Deliverability. There are actually six parts, as he’s also put up a list of 192 deliverability resources. Nicely done.

Secondly, I wanted to link to author steve (not sure about what the proper capitalisation should be here!) of Word to the Wise fame on his two posts on ICANN’s recent announcement about support for proper domain name Internationalisation (part 2 is here). The posts do an excellent job of explaining the subject and how it relates to email marketing. Again, great stuff – cheers steve!

As part of a court case, last week saw the decision by a US court that falsifying data used in whois records is illegal according to the CAN-SPAM act, and can lead to up to three months in prison (!) – something which has fairly far-reaching implications on many in the email marketing industry. Here’s a few posts discussing the case, the law, and how it could affect you:

• 9th Circuit decision in US v. Kilbride – including a PDF with the full text of the decision
• Use Private Domain Registration and Go to Jail? – read: don’t use private registration services
• Why are you hiding? What are you hiding? – Neil Schartzmann of Return Path weighs in
• Court Rules That Using Domain Registration Privacy Services Represents ‘Material Falsification’ – from TechDirt’s that-doesn’t-seem-right dept
• UK Email Marketing Legislation Update – related legal information for UK email marketers

In other legal news, Tagged.com (the world’s “third largest social network” that I’d never heard of…) settled after New York and Texas threatened to sue. Ordered to pay fines totalling $700,000, they remained adamant that they ain’t done nuthin’ wrong – claiming that they were merely using the same features other social networking sites do. Quite a few sites around the net chimed in on this one, making it what I would guess is the largest story about Tagged.com to date. Who says there’s no such thing as bad publicity?

Special mention this week goes once again to Neil Schwartzmann (already mentioned for his post at Return Path) for a followup to his earlier story about SPAMFighter.com’s bad handling of his registration and subsequent request to be unlisted from their database. Apparently the “SPAMFighter supremo” Henrik Soerensen finally came to his senses and posted a proper apology for the situation, consuming the appropriate amount of humble pie. Props to Neil for getting them to come round, and kudos to Henrik for dealing with things in the way he did (… eventually).

I love stats: my inner nerd lights up with anticipation at the mere mention of statistics, reports, and analysis. Even if you’re not a professional geek like myself, you should still pay attention to the figures: they can tell you everything (and, occasionally, nothing). Want some examples? Here you go:

• Europe Grew by 10 Million New Facebook Users Last Month – figures on the top 20 gainers in social media
• Email software popularity: 5 lessons for your list – useful analysis of email client usage from Mark Brownlow
• Surprising Email Study – an overview of a recent, interesting, report by smartFOCUS
• Cyber Monday/Black Friday Forecast for 2009 – predictions based on stats from previous years
• New Research Shows Email Marketing Still Delivers Impressive ROI – stats to back up what you should already know
• SocNets, Email at Top of 2010 Media-Buying List – a review of a commercial report available from MediaPost

Amusingly this week, news about the sale of SORBS for “a cool half mil” broke via jedsmith.org (with a later followup of the effect) after Michelle Sullivan foolishly revealed details over IRC (apparently in front of 25 other people, d’oh). SORBS is not known as being the most, ah, user-friendly blacklist around (the word “reviled” has been used), but it’s hard to doubt its reach – something which irate sysadmins have often complained about after finding it difficult to get a legitimate netblock removed from the list. GFI have now issued an oft-quoted official statement regarding the matter, but seem to have been caught slightly off-guard, as there’s still no mention of it on their main site.

Special mention this week to Chris Wheeler, whose brother passed away unexpectedly last week. Prompted by this awful event, he has decided to offer up his own time to try and give something back to the world by doing what he feels he does best: help improve people’s email deliverability. It might seem a little strange, but it’s a gesture that I’m sure is heartfelt, and from the content of the post seems as genuine as they come. You have our sincere condolences, Chris.

As always the blogosphere has been a mixed bag covering a range of subjects, with the usual posts on general advice, discussions about specific issues, press releases, technical updates, and non-stories. This week however there seemed to be a prevalence of Hints and Tips-type posts; so here’s a few choice posts, all with great advice:

• Gaining and retaining subscribers – 10 essential points everyone should live by
• This Week’s Tips – “Getting Customers Involved” (continued)
• 5 Tips to Lower Your Unsubscribe Rates – how to keep customers from switching off
• Tips for Email Marketing Success On Any Given Sunday – American Football as an analogy
• 5 MORE Things All Email Marketers Need to Know – general hints and advice

In the same vein, there’s also been a number of “How-tos” posted covering such topics as simply how email marketing can be successful, how to keep your mail from getting unblocked, and how to merge email, microsites, and social media together for fun and profit (well, profit, at least).

Special mention this week to a post on Proofpoint’s Email Security Blog titled Email Horror Stories… Just in Time for Halloween that introduces 10 articles about situations you’ll be glad haven’t happened to you.

Much time has been spent discussing the subject of user engagement lately as it becomes more and more obvious how much of a key role it plays in the current email marketing landscape. For your edification – a few recent related posts from the blogging world:

• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – George Bilbery from Return Path weighs in
• How to attract customers, engage them & keep them coming back – backyard birding as a study in user engagement
• Email Marketing Today: Episode 29 – “Lessons learned from WWD New Rules of Consumer Engagement”
• How Engagement Metrics Influence Deliverability – key points
• User Engagement & Email Delivery – a few quick notes
• Using Personality To Help Drive Engagement – why it’s important to show you’re not a faceless corporation
• Future of deliverability: 1 – the role of user interaction (see also part 2)
• How Can Non-Profits Send More Engaging Email? – a new study with some interesting statistics

Twitter have in the past week or two made several important changes that I think are worth mentioning, particularly because of the launch of our new Share section. One thing that I noticed this morning (being one of the lucky 5% of users getting a sneak preview) was the new ability to set up lists (apologies for the link to a slightly out-of-date post, but there’s no more recent information available that I know of, yet) – which for me is a very cool feature I have long wished for. Our own Mr Gareth Langston will be posting more about this later, so I’ll leave the details for him to describe.

Also, as many people are aware, Twitter searches will soon be incorporated into Google search results. What hasn’t been as widely discussed is Microsoft already have a Twitter search up and running – at least for part of the world (NB: I finally got it working by tweaking the URL). Finally, on a technical note, they’ve also introduced support for API versioning, which will allow the introduction of new features more easily than previously, and makes my developer side a happy little geek.

Special mention this week to Marketing Sherpa‘s recently announced 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s not free ($297 for the PDF-only version), but to whet your appetite there is a fairly large executive summary slash excerpt available (16 pages, including several pages for the index). The report itself contains research from 1,493 “real-life marketers” with a plethora of charts, tables, statistics, and advice totalling 283 pages of content: quite honestly the most comprehensive research on email marketing that I know of, especially when complemented by our very own UK email marketing benchmark report. Good stuff, Sherpa!

Subject lines are the first thing seen by someone when they open their inbox, and as such are one of the most important elements of any email campaign – possibly the single most influential part of any email. Here’s some pointers on how to get it just right:

• Who needs Subject Lines…? – a clever strategy from Southwest Airlines
• Straight Talk on Subject Lines – four essential points to note
• Thoughts on email subject lines – what’s compelling – and why?
• Email Marketing Minute – “Subject Line Special Characters”
• Subject lines: Amazon’s lessons on discounts and frontloading – stats, analysis, and conclusions
• 7 fixes for terrible subject lines – dos and don’ts from iMediaConnection.com

The Wall Street Journal posted an article this week with the title “Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate“¹. In all honesty, this is — as you may have predicted — not true; at least as discussed by many of the prominent bloggers out there. This isn’t the first time the death of email has been predicted, and I’m certain it won’t be the last.

This week’s special mention goes to a post by Neil Schwartzman, Spamfighter.com are Spammers (reached via laura on Word to the Wise). An interesting tale of how not to deal with customers – made even more wince-worthy by the comments from the CEO of SPAMfighter.com below the post.

¹ This may be a little geeky, but can I say, what the hell is up with WSJ’s URLs? Ye gods, people, this isn’t 1995! How are we supposed to take advice on the latest forefronts of technology from a company that can’t even translate SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html into something a little more friendly?

Deliverability: often misunderstood, despite being important to everyone engaging in email marketing. Here are a few articles covering the topic that might provide a degree of enlightenment:

• Why poor email deliverability is your own fault – and what you can do about it
• Deliverability Emergencies from the ISP Side of the Desk – a reality check
• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – or is it simply a new way of looking at things?
• Rescuing reputation – many small steps
• Email deliverability: what’s it all about? – detailed basic information

This week saw the announcement of the new Composite Snow-Show (CSS) blacklist from Spamhaus, which aims to work around the problem of widely spread, low-use IP addresses which are used for spamming. Naturally, this was covered by the usual suspects around the blogosphere, with a nice overview from the excellent Word to the Wise. On a related note (and just possibly prompted by news from Spamhaus), Return Path also announced the latest version of their Reputation Network Blacklist, which they describe as a real-time list of senders categorized as the “worst of the worst”. In a quick return to our litigious friends over in America, (and as the third link to a post by “laura” this week!) I’d like to point to a hilarious argument-turned-ugly at the DMA. Lawyers, on your marks! Lastly, special mention this week to an article over on MediaPosts‘s Email Insider that I have to confess was very enlightening for me: My Name Is Loren. BTW, I’m A ‘He’. Steve Knigge’s note in the comments also made me laugh.

Do you consider mobile marketing in your advertising campaigns? If not, you should probably think about starting to; and if you do, then the following posts should still provide some extra insight into the topic:

• Integrating mobile marketing with email – Getting started
• Integrating mobile marketing with email – Text messaging (SMS)
• Mobile: Should You Care? – yes, yes you should
• Mobile Email Marketing – Myths & Realities
• Mobile Email Marketing – Create a Mobile Version of Your Next Campaign

The holiday season: everyone’s favourite time. Of course, they say it starts earlier and earlier every year, and this year it seems that people have definitely started ramping up their marketing already with an eye upcoming time off. Have you begun thinking about how it’ll affect your campaigns yet?

Special mention this week, and a tip of the hat, to a similar series of posts to the Roundup over at Brontoblog that covers the Best of the Blogosphere, (here’s a direct link to this week’s – they don’t seem to have categorised all the previous posts properly yet, unfortunately). It seems to be written in turns by Kelly Lorenz, Kristen Gregory, and Julie Waite. Nice work, guys – or, rather, girls! Keep it up. (Or I’ll have nowhere to steal all my links from!)

A bumper roundup this week due to the last two Fridays having been taken up with development work for our shiny new Analyse section with all its lovely new charts and tables. Crunch time is finally over however, so please expect normal service to resume – for now.

So, what have people been talking about over the last couple of weeks? One particularly well covered topic has been social media, particularly with regards to how people use it for sharing content:

• Reportlet: FTAF vs. SWYN – some facts and figures from RetailEmailBlog.com
• Yahoo Points the Way to the ‘Social Inbox’ – Y!’s attempts at integration
• You know social media is pervasive when … – “Trapped girl calls for help on Facebook” (!)
• Inspire Interaction with Promo Emails – “4 Tactics to Boost Clicks, Encourage Social Sharing”
• Social Media Integration Survey – interesting results, but no real surprises
• Social Sharing: Who Cares?! – why should people want to share your content?
• Email Share-to-Social: Not Just About The Links – sensible advice from MediaPost’s Loren McDonald

Also of note is our very own Gareth Langston‘s ongoing series of posts on how to leverage social media:

• Join the Twitter Conversation
• The Facebook Platform Revisited
• Create a consistent brand image across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
• Adding bespoke content to Facebook Pages
• Social Media Insights

The above links are only a few highlights from the series – and Gareth’s got plenty more to say, so stay tuned for more insights.

Another perennial talking point that’s been discussed recently has been the maintenance, management, and proper use of your email lists:

• 20 Ways to Build Your Email List – sensible, and practical, recommendations
• How to Build a Good Email Newsletter List – the basics (and most important!)
• Email Marketing Minute: Hand Written Email Optin – short video with advice for retailers
• Opt-In, Opt-Out: Confusion Reigns – clarification and edification
• How to Overcome Email List Fatigue – keeping your lists fresh
• The (Hopefully) Final Word on Purchased Lists – in a nutshell: don’t buy lists

Not news, but still worth covering: testing remains one of the most powerful and, sadly, underused methods of optimising the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Thankfully however, it’s not being ignored by the email marketing sites out there, with plenty continuing to provide sage advice on the subject (including one of my favourite sites, Anne Holland’s Which Test Won?).

For our now-regular mention of activities in America, a quick note to say that in fine litigious tradition RPost have sued Goodmail for patent infringment. Interestingly, I came across a great collective noun proposed the other day: a fleece of lawyers – perfect.

Lastly, this week’s special mention goes once again to Mark Brownlow for the third addition to his series: Famous inboxes #3: Sauron, offering some rare proof that humour can exist alongside useful and insightful information.

An inconsistent week of posts in the email marketing blog world this week, meaning a lack of highlights that can be easily be grouped together. However, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plenty of useful, interesting, and amusing subjects discussed:

• How often can you send to your email base – before they unsubscribe or disengage?
• 8 email statistics to use at parties – guaranteed to break the ice
• Email as a PR problem – clear, concise advice on what to do when you mess up
• Consistent Facebook, Twitter and YouTube branding – from our very own Gareth Langston
• How to Conduct Email Surveys – Marketing Sherpa’s special report
• Stop Sending So Many Emails! – more is not always better
• Music for Mailing – an email-related playlist to get you in the mood

In what has become a regular note about goings-on in the good ol’ US of A, one of the more discussed items this week has been the recent news that the state of Maine has introduced legislation prohibiting the collection of information from under-18s without parental consent… which was promptly reversed after practically everyone pointed out how badly written it was.

Special mention this week to to a post by the always-excellent Mark Brownlow (of Email Marketing Reports fame) Beware the wisdom of the minority, where he discusses some subtle ways that raw stats and vocal minorities can be misleading.