I was able to sit down with Eric Stockton, President of Marketing Sherpa for an in the field Duct Tape Marketing podcast while attending the Email Summit in Miami.
Marketing Sherpa has done well by building practical know-how and combining it with a passionate membership community.
Here is Eric’s take on Marketing Sherpa’s mission and future.
The folks over at Carson Systems, Drop Send and Vitamin, have dreamed up another interesting offering. The service is called Amigo and it matches newsletter publishers up with people that have something they want to advertise. The advertiser picks categories, sets a per click price and total budget and then waits for their ad to run in relevant email newsletters.
As with most everything I have seen from Carson Systems the interface is well designed and the platform is very intuitive and easy to use. The proof though is in the results. I’m running a test campaign see how it performs. Could be another way to reach people who still prefer to read text email newsletters and another way for text email newsletter publishers to get some ad revenue.
I had my eyes opened recently to an email marketing point that I was having trouble determining an answer to.
Should you require double opt-in or verification of an email address when someone subscribes to an online newsletter or offer? One side of me fought this idea with the thinking that it just adds another hoop for someone to jump through.
After a conversation with AWeber’s CEO Tom Kulzer, (my list and autoresponder service provider) I’ve become a firm believer in the necessity for double opt-in.
The argument that turned my head was the fact that when you don’t require verification, a person can fill any name and email in and then, when you unknowingly mail that address, guess who the spammer is – you!
Tom tells me that on all their various lists the name bob@aol.com shows up about 80 times an hour.
I think double opt-in is a much more professional approach for the small business to take as well. After all, it’s what the big guys do. With Aweber setting double opt-in up is like flipping a switch.
Bottom line, with double opt-in your subscriber lists will be much more responsive, you won’t be sending (even though innocently) spam and your subscribers will thank you for making the world a better place to live.
If you are sending HTML emails in your marketing campaigns (and there’s lots to support that you should) you have probably come across some serious design issues when it comes to using CSS styling. I ran across a very comprehensive article over at Campaign Monitor that outlines what CSS elements, selectors and properties are and are not supported by the various email client environments such as Outlook and Yahoo.
I had an opportunity to discuss email marketing, autoresponders, spam and RSS via email with Tom Kulzer, CEO of AWeber Communications.