Come join the fun!
Nov
19
By J.D. Falk
Director of Product Management, Receiver Products
With every new technology, there are a few people who fully grok not only where it stands now, but where it's going -- who will be using it, and how. In our case, these are people whose thinking about reputation is so far ahead of the rest of the industry that if we would have had them as speakers at our IN conference a few weeks ago, and they revealed their visions of the future, everyone's heads would have exploded!
One of these is my friend Mike Adkins, who works on authentication and reputation for AOL. AOL has always been a leader in the industry, and Mike and I -- along with Dave Crocker, and other smart folks -- have been talking about the inevitable and much-needed intersection of authentication and reputation at MAAWG for the past few years. One of the recurring difficulties with this or any complex new technology is that it's new: there are no existing "best practices" and everyone is worried about making the first mistakes. Mike's fed up with this -- as are we all -- and he has decided to put a sharp wooden stake into the heart of the problem. Recently, he's been talking very candidly with the industry about AOL's future plans. The plans may change, he says, but this is their starting point -- and anyone who wants to continue sending mail to AOL's subscribers, or to understand the direction the rest of the industry is likely to take, needs to pay attention.
I tend to get overly wordy and perhaps somewhat theoretical when talking about this topic, so Return Path's marketing team has condensed what we understand of AOL's plan into a few simple bullet points ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Nov
18
By Bonnie Malone
Director, Strategic Services
In June we published a research study on how top brands manage the sign-up and welcome experience for their subscribers. As you might recall, our findings were rather shocking. Big, well-known brands were falling down on what many email marketing experts consider basic best practices. We decided to re-visit those same companies and see if they handled the unsubscribe experience any better. Download this new study now.
The good news is that most of the companies studied had the basics in place. They may not have optimized their experience, but they at least stopped sending email quickly.
The bad news is that, again, we were shocked to discover ...
Tell me moreCategories: Email Deliverability
Nov
18
Twenty Percent of Marketers Sent Additional Email Messages To Consumers After Confirming The Person Had Unsubscribed
New York, New York, Denver, CO, and Mountain View, CA - For Immediate Release -Twenty percent of top brand marketers sent additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, Return Path discovered with its new research study titled Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After "Unsubscribe Me." Eleven percent of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request - a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Marketers risk impacting their overall email reputation with spam complaints if they have a faulty email unsubscribe process.
Return Path, the leading e-mail deliverability and reputation management company, conducted the study by unsubscribing from the email lists of 45 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries. Return Path originally subscribed to these email lists to conduct its Subscriber Experiences study.
"We conducted the Subscriber Experiences and Unsubscribe Experiences studies, because we were concerned that marketers were having issues with two very important points of contact with their email subscribers - at the beginning and the end of the relationship," said Bonnie Malone, Director of Strategic Services. "Unfortunately, the studies confirmed our concerns. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Press Releases
Nov
14
Check out some recent mentions of Return Path, both in the news and around the blogosphere.
In the news ...
Matt Blumberg was featured in this New York Times piece about our recent acquisition of Habeas. He was also quoted in a piece in the New York Observer about managing in a slowing economy.
An Associated Press piece on how retailers will be using email this holiday season features quotes from Stephanie Miller.
On the blogs ...
Tell me moreCategories: News
