I’m writing this from the sky as I fly over the Atlantic Ocean, on my way back from Heidelberg, Germany where I attended a MAAWG conference. I always enjoy going to MAAWG, not only because of the vast amount of socializing and networking that goes on, but also because of the high level of knowledge and expertise there. For example, I attended a panel discussion that included the managers of the postmaster teams for both AOL and Hotmail. These people are the ones who make the decisions on how email is delivered, and whether it is bulked or blocked. From my standpoint as the one in charge of ensuring good delivery for mobileStorm, the value for attending these conferences is clear.

Overall, from the panel discussions to the hallway discussions, some fundamental truths were again reconfirmed to me. These aren’t new concepts, and have been discussed at length in the past, but I will reiterate as they are becoming increasingly important.

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It’s only been three months since mobileStorm started offering digital video distribution—and using our own service to disseminate mobileStorm’s marketing news/comedy show. Already our product release and own leap into online video marketing have proved astute, at least according to a new survey.

Ipsos MediaCT—which researches the media, content, telecoms and tech industries—says that early this year, online video viewership rose while viewership of other types of media fell. Among those surveyed:

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I took a little break from blogging, and am now back in the saddle again. However, rather than getting to hear me preach about deliverability every week, I am going to share my slot with my esteemed colleagues Jared Reitzin and Shaneli Ramratan. So enjoy the new schedule!

The FTC recently approved some slight modifications to the CAN-SPAM act. While these changes will not dramatically impact the way we send email, they are worth noting, as they do affect the way some mailers manage their unsubscribe process, among other things.

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As you may have noticed in the past couple of years, open rates have declined, making it harder and harder to reach the inbox. This is due to the large anti-spam systems that ISPs have had to put in place to thwart spammers. Unfortunately, permission-based mail also gets treated as spam. So how do you improve your open rates?

Well first, let’s talk about what an open rate is. An open rate is the percentage of mail you have sent, divided by the number of unique people that have opened your message. So if you successfully sent an email to 100 people, and 50 of those people open your email, then you would receive a 50% open rate (that would be a nice figure huh?).

A lot of marketers feel the larger the list they have the better things will be, but this is simply not true. It’s all about the quality of a list, not quantity. Why would you want to continue to send emails to people who don’t care? People who don’t open your email (and we aren’t talking about plain text emails here), don’t care about your content. You need to get real with yourself and face the facts. The first thing you should do is go back over the last 10 campaigns you sent, and remove all of the people who have not opened your email.

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