Month: August 2005

After reading Ken Schafer's post about "Toronto's Porn Alley" and writing my recent piece on email optimization (Email Optimization – A Changing Landscape) it really got me thinking.

Why doesn't Canada have a law that makes spam illegal?

The US has their Can-Spam Act of 2003. Sure we have our privacy policy called PIPEDA, but technically it is not against the law in Canada to send spam. Maybe that's why spammers can be found in Toronto, Montreal, Kitchener and everywhere else in Canada.
Canada has its National Task Force on Spam that recently submitted their final report which includes a recommendation for a Canadian spam law. This includes the need for opt-in, unlike the US spam laws which just require senders to remove people if they request it (opt out). However, reading a recent comment by Michael Geist, a member of the task force, I don't hold out too much hope that we will have such a law in place any time soon.

Recently I completed the initial phase of a client project to help them optimize their email marketing program. Sending out over 1 million emails each month they rely on email as their main communications channel with prospects and clients. This year, with ISPs, webmail providers and corporate mail administrators using more, and better, tools to fight spam, deliverability has become a greater issue than ever. In some cases they couldn’t get any email through to certain large ISPs and webmail providers. Forget about optimizing emails to get them opened, and better calls to action to convert recipients. If they can’t get their emails through to the intended recipients “optimization” becomes an irrelevant term.
h2. “1 out of every 5 marketing emails never make it to the intended inbox!”
That’s what ReturnPath, a leading provider of email delivery auditing solutions, says based on their ongoing research.
Since I started this project a number of other clients and prospects have asked me to advise them on email optimization. In every case I have started reviewing their deliverability, the ability to get a marketing email through to the inboxes of intended recipients. It has been surprising to find out how few email marketers have any accurate idea of how many of their emails are actually reaching inboxes. And more surprising is how few of the email service providers track their deliverability regularly and manage it on an ongoing basis.