Wahoo! We nailed down the last of the 14 speakers and at long last the line-up for our long-awaited ContentBiz Email Newsletter Publisher’s Summit is up at the Summit site. Note the very cute “ticket” graphic by our Web guy Ryan.
http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/1979
You’ll also probably be able to tell from the description of the show, that I was feeling annoyed when I wrote it. My frustration stems from the fact that loads of people lump email newsletter publishing all together into one pile no matter whether the newsletter is published as a business, or if it’s published as a marketing ploy by a non-media company. In fact, about half the people who nominated themselves initially to be speakers were on the marketing end. They wanted to do speeches about stuff like, ‘How to use an email newsletter to market your company.’
I culled through those and just invited the speakers who were experts on business issues if the newsletter itself IS your company! You know, stuff like how to sell ads, how to sell subscriptions, how to sell content-related ancillaries (ebooks, teleseminars, etc.).
Why do I care about this so passionately? Well partly because I get tired of being asked, ‘Well what does MarketingSherpa do?” by people who read our newsletters. “We’re a media company with 8 newsletters.” I say. They reply, “Yes, but what business are you really in?” Um, that would be publishing.
Approximately three weeks ago, some of our publisher MarketingSherpa’s email lists were compromised. We’re working with a group of our readers (those who track their email by using a special address unique to their opt-in with us, such as MarketingSherpa@) to determine the extent of the damage.
I didn’t mention it publicly because at first we weren’t sure it really happened. The techies assured me that there are several reasons why a spammer might get a hold of a particular email (for example by random-name-generation spamming programs), and it might not be that someone stole our lists and was now using them for nefarious purposes. Then I held off still longer because a new owner had taken over our list hosting firm and I wanted to give them a chance to rectify the situation.
They are working on it, putting new security measures in place, etc. (Our tech editor Alexis Gutzman will detail now-required security for lists in an upcoming column in our MarketingSherpa ezine at http://www.MarketingSherpa.com.)
However, as time went by the word got out. Two different email discussion groups have mentioned our plight in the past 24 hours.
Our reputation is very much at stake. One poster even suggested we were sending the spam ourselves and trying to cover up by lying about a hacker. (Yeah, like we’d risk the entire company we’ve spent three years of blood, sweat and no sleep building in order to send you a few porn messages.)
Unfortunately, the list theft problem has not been limited to us.
I know of five other publishers whose lists were also compromised by what appears to be the same hacker/spammer at roughly the same time. I won’t publish their names here because I don’t have permission to do so, and they shared their info with me as a fellow-publisher rather than as a reporter. However, they are very well known permission-based publishers, and between all of us upwards of a million opt-in subscriber addresses may have been stolen.
I want to thank those publishers for reaching out and sharing their info with me during this crisis. It has made a great deal of difference.
According to BusinessMedia’s email newsletter (join the list by sending a blank email to join-BusinessMedia@titan.sparklist.com ) Penton Media Inc has been notified by the NYSE that it’s in danger of being de-listed if it can’t yank its stock price up within six months. The company’s been hit by the B2B ad sales slump that according to the latest CMR ad revenue study have slashed average trade mag sales by 20.8% in the first half of 2002 vs. first-half 2001 (which itself was no bed of roses).
The only good news is that Penton’s Internet ad revenues fell by less than 5%. Even though the Company’s Net sales as a whole were a teeny 4.8% slice of the total online/offline rev pie, this success must be awfully pleasant for the Net team there who, like the rest of us, have suffered the slings and arrows of dot-com doom-predictors for the past two years.
It’s going to be 100 billion sticky degrees out today, and everyone (besides we Sherpas) is on vacation right now, or leaving the office early. Even though I’m supposed to be working, all I want do is surf other people’s Blogs. Some faves:
* Robert Loch’s NetMarketing Blog. Robert is the grumpy voice behind much of DotComScoop, so I was expecting more attitude. Instead it’s useful links to best-of Net marketing news items (especially on search engine marketing topics). BTW: Robert if you’re reading this, it’s Olivier Travers with an extra “i”
* I know this because I’ve met Olivier in person (thanks for the wine!) and also vastly enjoy his WebVoice Blog where I almost always learn something new. For example, did you know some content sites in France are selling pop-under sites? That’s right, they pop-under an entire site instead of just an ad.
Survey Bonanza! Here are three different surveys you might be interested in taking if you are stuck twiddling your thumbs in the office while everyone else is on vacation:
1. Text or HTML? After learning that the vast majority of consumers prefer text-messages versus HTML emails, Lynda Partner of GotMarketing wondered why exactly. Take her quick survey here to explain your preferences. Answers to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Ezine-Tips.
2. What makes a site usable? The UK’s Birmingham Institute of Art and Design is surveying Web designers, online marketing professionals and related programmers. Click here to take their “attitudes” survey.
3. How much do marketing consultants charge? No published numbers on what the range is for consulting fees is available, so my own company MarketingSherpa (not a consulting firm, just publishers of info about marketing) is running a survey to learn more. Results will be published in a future issue of our MarketingFAME newsletter. Please take one or the other:
a. Survey for clients who might hire consultants
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=99436123778
b. Survey for practicing marketing consultants
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=97805123742
Job opening of the day: Wanna be the new Exec Director of AIM (Association for Interactive Marketing)? Current Director Ben Isaacson steps down Sept 13th and AIM’s parent the Direct Marketing Association is looking for a replacement. You must be located in NYC. The press release says, “Qualified candidates should possess public policy and association experience, preferably within an interactive environment. Interested candidates should contact Michael Faulkner at 212.790.1598, or via e-mail at mfaulkne@the-dma.org”
I’m not an affiliate of this site so this isn’t shameless promotion or anything. Just thought it was a fun link for marketers who’ve wondered who are these guys who cybersquat on the URLs we want for our promotions, and are they really getting rich? Wonder no more. Now you can buy the 150-page book The Insider’s Guide To Domain Name Speculation
Just heard back from the Habeas folks I blogged below. I’d emailed them a bunch of questions, such as how do you define opt-in. Lonn Johnston over there emailed back, “Basically double opt-in.” Which is *much* stricter than DMA guidelines that TrustE’s program said it would follow. Which will make consumers happier (DMA’s guidelines are notoriously emailer-friendly versus end-recipient friendly) and lots of mailers (including Sherpa) miserable if this takes off.
Lonn followed up his email with a quick call and promises to have more answers to my admittedly tough questions within a day or two, and I’ll be sure to post them here for you.
A new company called Habeas (as in Corpus) announced this afternoon that they are going to help stop the spam influx by offering a Sender Warranted Email service. At surface, it’s a lot like TrustE’s Trusted Sender program which was pretty much a flop except for happy PR ink for a few of the program’s signatories earlier this year.
Basically both programs give participating mailers a thingy (for want of a better word) to stick in all their outgoing mass emails. ISPs and consumers alike could set their incoming email filters to allow mail with the thingy in because it’s “good” email. And presumably any email without the thingy then goes into the “perhaps-bad” pile.
This sounds like a great idea on the surface. However, some problems are:
1. Auditing emailers to make sure they are correctly mailing, and thus deserve to use the thingy on their mail, would cost far more money than either organization proposes to collect. We assume the auditing function will be kinda lame. If a few spammers get through, well then nobody will trust the thingy anymore.
2. How do you define who’s a “good” mailer and who’s not? Frankly consumers’ definitions of what’s good email and marketers’ definitions don’t exactly overlap all the time. Even the term “opt-in” can be defined in about six different ways with critical differences.
3. You have to get critical mass to make any system like this work. Loads of mailers and ISPs and consumers all have to go for the gusto. Which is hard and expensive to do. Not to mention risking expensive law suits (which have shot down some of the blacklists attempting to help ISPs filter out spam). The whole critical mass thing has as yet proven impossible for email address changer systems (although a couple are working at it) and I think will be equally hard here.
4. A whole bunch of consumers will get so fed up with mass email that they’ll just filter out (not in) anything with the thingy. How handy; it’s like having a commercial zapper built in to your TV. (Oooh, isn’t that why Hollywood hates TIVO?)
That said, obviously we need a solution. I guess folks will keep throwing spagetti at the fridge door until a piece sticks.
When we started publishing our B2BMarketingBiz newsletter in May 2000, I assumed that the so-called online B2B Exchanges would take over regular business marketing. I figured, give it 5 years and almost everything will be sold online.
A letter from reader Dan Shorts, CEO SpaElegance reminds me of how wrong we all were. He writes, “We started 3 years ago as your typical Business to Business online marketplace for destination spas, cruise spas, dayspa and high end salons that offer spa services. With the best manufacturers on board and a marketing program that was hitting the mark, the online orders never seemed to come. We had all the site traffic and registrations we could ever need, but no online sales to speak of.”
However, when he switched tactics and used Web traffic and site email newsletters for lead generation purposes, relying on human being sales reps to close the actual sales, things took off. “We now have a difficult time keeping up with the demand.”
However, he still expects Web commerce to take over from human sales reps someday, it’s just a lot further out than 2005.
