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Sometimes you just want that extra bit of security. You want to own the “real deal.” Depending on who you are, you might seek this out in different ways, such as buying a 4WD, off-road-ready vehicle even though you live in Manhattan, or a having a watch rated to depths of 50 feet, even though you don’t scuba dive. What matters though is that should you want to drive through a muddy mountain pass or scuba with the watch on, you could! Most of us, however, never get to see our fanciest gadgets in action, so we really don’t know if they work!

Thus far, most email reputation systems have been a bit like this, haven’t they? Though they’re rated to provide better deliverability, to qualify for the program you already have to have pretty darn good permission policies and list hygiene practices, and in turn pretty good deliverability.

Last week, the folks at Return Path upgraded their Sender Score Certified system to “go off-road.” Along with the changes at Windows Live Mail (image suppression, increased use of throttling and bulk-foldering for new IP’s, etc.), Sender Score Certified now provides some additional tangible benefits that marketers can see and feel.

Return Path also reported that those qualifying for Sender Score Certified will have their images enabled by “default” at Windows Live Mail/Hotmail and will enjoy more lenient daily throttling limits. Plus, certified senders will also have an “unsubscribe” button enabled by Windows Live Mail/Hotmail, providing the opt-out button that marketers have been yapping about for ages. The ESPC study from earlier this year shows that consumers are likely to use it, too. Per that study, 90% of respondents said they would use such a button “if it existed.” Guess what folks, now it does. Want to reduce your complaints at Microsoft properties? Sender Score Certified is looking like a better way now than ever.

—Chip House

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The convergence of online, offline and face to face—it’s happening this week!

For those of us who have been working in email, on the service provider side, for a long time, we know it can often be a challenge to get marketers to agree to integrate email into all of the other channels they are using. Many times, clients want to use email first, and then use a different channel when they run out of names with email addresses.

It’s been proven time and time again, that while email is a very powerful response vehicle, it is also even more powerful when combined with other channels and sent to the same target. This week, at the Email Insider Summit we are doing just that!

Attendees of the summit will have face-to-face interactions with speakers about key email topics. They can also then leave the presentations and pick up a printed whitepaper that extends the discussion of the panel just conducted. And…if two channels aren’t enough, these same people can request an “email” of all of the relevant whitepapers and case studies shared at the EEC whitepaper room by choosing all of the content located under this title: “Email Insider Summit - May 2007.”

This will be a great validation of the power of combined channels and I am very much looking forward to seeing the impact and results.

—Jeanniey Mullen

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My MediaPost article last week on why it’s time to spell “email” without the hyphen created a huge surge of support for our Hyphens Equal Disrespect petition—and also prompted some interesting and amusing counterarguments.

More than 100 people, representing companies both large and small, signed the petition, signaling that they would spell the word sans hyphen in their emails, press releases, whitepapers and other publications. If you’d like to add your name to the list of supporters, just click here, let us know your name and the company you represent, and we’ll add your name (but not your email address) to the petition. As the number of signees grows, the EEC will use this list to convince publishers to change their spelling of the word.

In the article I argued that spelling “email” without the hyphen was not only easier and shorter, but more accurately reflected what email is today by severing its association with old fashioned mail. In response, one commenter accused the anti-hyphen crowd of being lazy—which is a great point. People are totally lazy. They crave shortcuts and simplicity. It’s one of the key drivers—if not THE key driver—behind language evolution. So that’s yet another reason to cast off the hyphen.

Another hyphenista said that without the hyphen “the first syllable begs to be pronounced as a schwa (‘uh-mail’) instead of an accented ‘e.’” The English language is full of rule breakers, silent letters and other quirks that sometimes trip people up, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone mispronounce the word as “uh-mail”—or for that matter “em-ail.” People are already extremely familiar with this sans hyphen spelling (as I’ll prove in a minute).

This same person said: “Thankfully, ‘e-mail’ remains the correct spelling for no less an authority than The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, The American Heritage College Dictionary, and Webster’s New World College Dictionary, among others. It’s also endorsed by such language experts as William Safire, Bill Walsh, John McIntyre and Barbara Wallraff. Shall I go on?” Sure, but it would be totally pointless. Language is not governed by autocratic “authorities” like these. It’s created by the masses. Language evolution is democratic.

Roger Harris, of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, wrote in to cast his vote for democracy, saying that he supports the principle of common usage. He then decided to hold his own little election, “e-mail” versus “email,” to see which spelling was more common. “Perhaps not coincidentally,” he said, “we have a useful tool to determine such usage: search engines.” The result from Google? Hyphenistas 1.96 billion. Anti-hyphenistas 2.01 billion.

“It seems the tide has turned,” said Harris, “and, in support Chad’s proposition, ‘email’ should become the preferred, and correct, usage.”

I polled Yahoo and MSN today and found even more conclusive support: Yahoo preferred “email” 3.19 billion to 1.95 billion, while MSN preferred “email” 580 million to 170 million.

So there’s already been a silent uprising in support of “email.” Help us make a little noise and convince the “authorities” that hyphens are so 1990s by signing our petition.

—Chad White

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There are definitely some things in life and business that should not be repeat events. Things that happen once and only once due to their specific nature and what is generally, and socially, considered to be the right way to do, or not to do, things.

As I write this, a few events that should not be repeated come to mind:
• Marriage
• Tax evasion
• Getting drunk at the annual corporate Christmas party (although it is fun to watch the train wreck as long as it’s someone else)
• Burning the Thanksgiving Day turkey
• Sending a true B2B offer to a general B2C audience
• Forgetting to add the opt-out link to your creative
• Email list rental

Now what really doesn’t belong in this list? If anyone is thinking marriage I’ll include a marriage counseling hotline number later. Seriously, as an online marketer who truly believes in the value and potential of e-marketing, why has it become so common for advertisers to look at email list rental as something they’re going to try once versus a program that they will commit to and work to develop into a short- and long-term strategic component of their media marketing plans?

If you look at the online advertising industry as a whole, you see a cutting-edge marketing medium that most predict will grow at a 30% clip year after year for the foreseeable future. Seems like a great sandbox to play in. In a survey conducted by E-Marketer, 84% of the respondents said using email is their favorite online activity—so there is an audience for these advertisers to target! Email (retention and acquisition) will be one of the top two verticals that will offer advertisers the best opportunity to communicate with potential prospects and current customers.

None of that sounds bad, so what gives? Is it just a general acceptance of what is versus what should be? Is there just not enough people in the marketplace who know how to make email work, and how to make customer acquisition a recurring success story in the advertiser world? It’s probably that and more because email list rental is without question an amazing marketing vehicle for branding, customer acquisition, and re-marketing to further establish a relationship with an on-the-fence prospect.

Think about the rationale of saying you’re going to base the entire future of your email list rental efforts on the results you receive from a one-time singular event. Is that good business sense? If everyone gave up after the first try didn’t work out we’d have never invented the wheel, never discovered fire, never been able to fly, and those things called computers would never have been built!

Committing to the process as a whole—testing subject lines, testing different creative, using dynamic targeting and personalization, transmitting your prospecting messages at different times and days—will all lead you to the end of the rainbow that exists. I have seen it happen, and have made it happen for many advertisers—large and small, big budgets and small budgets. The one thing they had in common was the determination to make it work and stick it out. They took on the attitude that this will not be a one-time event, but a multi-stage process that would ultimately take their business to a new level.

It can be quantifiably proven that the more you reach out to a prospect audience with your message, in an ethical and well thought out process, the better the results become over time. This is not a quick fix strategy—one in which you need to sell 1,000 widgets by Friday so you quickly throw together a marketing piece and blast it out to the cheapest list you can find. No, this is an opportunity to reach a prospect audience in a dynamic way, testing a variety of strategies, and capitalizing on the fact that not just the world itself, but the people of the world are all migrating to the digital environment.

So do become committed to using email list rental, and do create a long-term strategy, so you don’t get left behind by all the other companies who have committed to this marketing vertical a long time ago.

Now for that marriage counseling number…

—Rob Fitzgerald

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I’ve written before about the power of raising your hand.

Years ago, I raised my hand and started The Rich Media Sig. It is hard to believe today, but at that time, things like video, Flash, 3D worlds like Second Life were considered non-starters. They didn’t work, they would never be adopted. I raised my hand to say: “Let’s start something to educate folks on the power of these technologies.” And now, nearly 10 years later, rich media is so ubiquitous that the term is an anachronism. It has just become “media.”

Jeanniey also is a hand-raiser. Over a year and a half ago I spoke out at ad:tech about the lack of support email marketing was receiving from the then current trade organizations. Jeanniey raised her hand and started the Email Experience Council. The effects that the Council has had to date and continues to have are no less than astounding. Our industry needs more hand-raisers like Jeanniey and more organizations geared towards moving the industry forward like the EEC. My congratulations to everyone.

—Bill McCloskey

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