direct marketing

Ether: Sell Therapy, Counseling, Tax Advice, Computer Help, and More - Sell what you say

root — Tue, 23 May 2006 09:52:50 +0200

Ether is a new pay-per-phone service that allows bloggers and other experts in field to sell their phone-calls via a free phone number provided to clients.

Their claim:

Quote:

Get your free Ether Phone Number.

Set your rate. Set your hours.

This is an interesting approach with a tool that might spread like fire…

I just need to checkout if they offer options for Europe, either calling experts there or providing free numbers there…

Child Protection Registry laws for mailers

Marketing Fan — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:59:15 +0200

Late last year, US states Michigan and Utah passed a law creating a Child Protection Registry protecting minors from receiving or viewing illegal products and services.

Illegal items include e.g. Tobacco, Alcohol, Gambling, Prescription Drugs, Illegal Drugs, Adult Content, Guns/Knives/Weapons, Lotteries, Sweepstakes ... well - you can continue at will.

All mailers - even if the mailing list constists only of adult opt-ins or active clients - have the problem now that they have to check the content of their mails against such a blacklist where parents specified their email as accessible by their kids as well

Michigan and Utah will be setting up registries that permit minors and parents to add their email address to a "Do Not Email" type list. Organizations who serve minors may register entire domains.

Businesses will be required to monthly submit their encrypted subscriber lists to Michigan and Utah who will give your list back minus anyone who appears on the registry... WOW... what a nice administrative task....

The ISIPP - the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy has copies of both laws reprinted on their website as well as links to relevant news articles.

They also have some teleseminars up about what businesses are affected, and how businesses should comply.

more at http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php
News Coverage:

Clickz
News.com
Forbes
Newstarget

Oh my god! can't the guys in government - instead of this overly administrative overkill - create a law that every person in the US must have a distinct mail account? if parents let their mail accessed by the kids, it's the same as leaving the Porn tape in the VCR when leaving to work... or?

Email Marketing Brings In $15.50 per Dollar

Marketing Fan — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:17:19 +0100

Now this is a fine ROI ... MarketingSherpa.com reports: "That $15.50 per email-marketing dollar spent is roughly 17% more than in direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns, according to a new study from the Winterberry Group, a New York-based research and consulting group.

Winterberry also predicts that email sales will go up to $16.70 per dollar in the coming year, compared to $14.60 generated per DM dollar, and $9.71 in sales per telemarketing-campaign dollar.

Email Marketing Brings In $15.50 per Dollar [MarketingStudies.net]

How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability

Marketing Fan — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:32:24 +0100

Pivotal Veracity recently tested hundreds of HTML e-mail messages to see whether they landed in the inbox or the bulk folder, or were blocked outright.

They came up with these surprising results:

A tracking beacon below the closing HTML tag will get e-mail filtered to the bulk folder at MSN/Hotmail.
A poorly constructed boundary between the text and HTML portions of a multipart e-mail message also sends the e-mail to the bulk folder at MSN/Hotmail.
Using hex-encoded domains in URLs (substituting the code "%20" for a space in a URL, for example) can get your e-mail blocked or sent to the bulk folder at AOL, CompuServe, and MSN/Hotmail.
Using a decoy link that shows one URL in the e-mail but actually redirects to another URL when clicked also gets e-mail directed to the bulk folder on MSN/Hotmail.

This isn't a common technique used by most legitimate e-mail marketers, but if you're thinking about doing it, they advise against it.

Using decoy URLs is a technique commonly employed by phishers, scammers who impersonate financial institutions to steal Social Security, bank, or credit account numbers.

For example:
http://companyx.com/maintainyourprofile.php

Readers see the second URL in the message, but they'd be sent to the first URL.

via How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability