• Determining Your Optimal Email Frequency

• Gone Phishing - How to Avoid the Murky Waters

• The Perils of Pinging

DETERMINING YOUR OPTIMAL EMAIL FREQUENCY
by Bill Kaplan, CEO
 

A question we get asked time and time again by our clients – "How often should we email our subscribers?" – seems so simple on its face.  So why is it that the simplest questions often require the most sophisticated answers?

Not Too Hot and Not Too Cold
 
One obvious and desirable approach is to build an email preference center and allow your customers to tell you how often they want to hear from you.  And be sure to make it easy for them to switch back and forth between desired frequencies.  In the end, this will go a long way towards reducing your opt-out rate while giving your customers what they want when they want – which is what it’s all about...Read Full Article

THE PERILS OF PINGING
by Suzanne Shaughnessy
 

It’s a typical Monday morning phone call to us at FreshAddress.  The email marketing manager — let's call her Linda — is in distress.  Her email database was having deliverability issues and she thought she came up with a magical way to fix it: she found a provider who would “ping” every email on the list and tell her if it was good or bad.
 
For anyone not familiar with the term, "pinging" an email list involves taking each email address that you have and essentially knocking on the door of the ISPs (e.g. Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft for Hotmail, etc.), asking if each email address you have is a valid email address of one of their customers, and then turning around and walking away without sending through your email.
 
"I tested it first," she explained.  "I used my own old email address and the demo told me it was invalid.  The cost was minimal - you can buy pinging software for free (or for next to nothing) and do it yourself  - or you can pay a nominal amount to a provider so I figured how far wrong could I go by trying this service." ...Read Full Article