austinpreneur

Steal all my email secrets on Thursday at Innotech

On Thursday the 16th at 9am, Dennis Dayman and I will be giving a presentation on email deliverability at the Innotech conference in Austin. Come pick our brains about whitelisting, authentication, reputation and the infamous spam folder! We're also a great resource to ask about the various third party email providers and services.

• How can I get in touch with someone who can really help me at Hotmail or Yahoo?
  
• What can I do to reduce the number of people who click "this is spam" or unsubscribe from my emails?
  
• I've been told that I'm hitting a "spamtrap". Now what?
  
• How do I get off a blacklist?
  
• Do I need a dedicated IP address?
  
• Can I buy email addresses to add to my list? What about list rental?
  
• Any other questions that you want to ask!

We'll be giving a 20 minute overview of email deliverability and then we'll open it up to the audience to talk about real problems you are facing and suggestions for tackling them. We need your help! Please come prepared with questions about your email marketing programs.

Here are the slides:

Deliverability Innotech 2008

Email Secrets from Deliverability.com Joshua Baer & Dennis Dayman The Basics Sender ID Authentication Domain Keys Authentication Delivery Seeding Feedback Loops Whitelists secret #1 relevancy is most important secret #2 reputation is more important than content secret #3 From and Subject are most important secret #4 it is hard to send email by yourself secret #5 there is no secret to deliverability tell us your secrets tell us your problems Resources http://www.deliverability.com/ http://www.returnpath.net/ http://www.pivotalveracity.com/ http://www.lashback.com/ http://postmaster.aol.com/ http://postmaster.yahoo.com/ http://postmaster.hotmail.com/

My first facebook virus - is this the end of the innocence?

I hear many people predict the demise of email for personal communications in favor of social networking. They say that Facebook makes it hard to get Inbox messages that aren't from real people, so there is much less spam. While this may be true in the short term, I think in the long term messaging within Facebook and social network will have the same fate as email and will become more and more like email over time.

I've already talked about how Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn today are very similar to AOL, Compuserv and Prodigy of 20 years ago - separate networks that are destined to be joined together with SMTP. Do you really want to have a bunch of different social network Inboxes to check? Do you think people who are messaging you will be able to figure out whether they should send a message to on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or regular old email? It's just going to get more and more confusing.

In addition to that, I've already seen many businesses setting up Facebook profiles as if they were people instead of using Pages the way they are supposed to. They do this so that they can send commercial messages to the users Inbox instead of sending Updates which show up in a less prominent spot. They know that more people will read their message if its grouped with the other personal messages instead of the other commercial messages. However, its poisoning the well - the act of putting the commercial messages in the Inbox reduces its value and as others start to do that it will become ineffective for everyone.

For example, here is a Facebook profile for a coffee shop in Austin that keeps showing up on my "People you may know" list. And here is a music venue. I'm sure its a nice coffee shop. Considering that they both have almost 500 friends, the strategy seems to be working. I've seen many other businesses do the same thing.

Yesterday I received my first trojan horse virus in my Facebook Inbox. It looked like it was coming from a friend of mine and linked to a YouTube video I should watch. But the link was funny looking and it was a friend I hadn't talked to in a while, so I was immediately suspicious. I bet that a lot of Facebook users won't be suspicious and will click on it.

Could this be the end of the innocence for Facebook?

SXSW Panel Picker is up - cast your vote!

Every year, SXSW puts up all of the great panel submissions and lets the community vote on which ones are best. They combine this data with their own advisory panel and staff to select the final panels.

At the very minimum, please show your support for me and OtherInbox by clicking here and
PLEASE VOTE 5 STARS FOR THESE 4 PANELS.
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/3/company:otherinbox

Here is a list of all the panels I'm involved in, of course I'd recommend them all!

Don't Declare Email Bankruptcy! Take Control of Your Inbox.
Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Your inbox is overflowing with spam, bacn, ham, email lists, Bcc's, and even a few emails that you actually want to respond to. Learn about new tools to help protect you from spam, prioritize your inbox, and save you time. Don't be a slave to your inbox!

Should I Build my Startup on Ruby on Rails? Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

You've heard Ruby on Rails is the hottest new technology for developing web applications. You've also heard of concerns about scalability and hiring talent. How do you separate the facts from the hype? Hear the business perspective on why to consider Ruby on Rails now and why you might want to wait and see. Get ready for a head-to-head comparison with PHP, Java and .NET!

Hackproofing Ruby-on-Rails Web Applications Mike Subelsky, OtherInbox.com

Ruby-on-Rails makes building web applications deceptively simple, and for most Rails startups, security is usually an afterthought. Through a live coding demonstration, I will demonstrate how thinking from the attacker's perspective can help you protect sensitive data and avoid the pain of a hacking incident.

Scaling Ruby-on-Rails Using Cloud Computing Mike Subelsky, OtherInbox.com

Skeptics argue that Ruby-on-Rails "can't scale". In this talk, I prove them wrong by demonstrating how cloud computing technologies have changed the game, enabling developers to use the expressiveness of Ruby and Rails to build high-performance applications that scale easily. Will include a case study and live scaling demonstration.

Email Deliverability Secrets from Deliverability.com Dennis Dayman, Eloqua & Joshua Baer, Datran Media

Okay so you have read all the white papers about email deliverability and you've got the basics covered - but some of your email still goes to the spam folder. Learn about advanced techniques for segmenting by IP address, building your email reputation, removing spamtraps, and more. Find out how to get your problems priority access from ISPs like Hotmail or Yahoo. Plus we'll take 3 volunteers from the audience and help to diagnose your deliverability challenges on the spot!

Spend More & Pay Less: How to Create a Great Company Culture Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Learn from successful entrepreneurs the do's and don'ts of building a company culture. Take home a list of specific ideas you can implement to make your employees perform better and increase their loyalty. What's the rationale behind providing free drinks, catered meals or free cab rides? How much strategy and financial information is appropriate to share with the entire company? Can employees work from home? How do you celebrate your successes? Find out what really works and what is just a waste of time and money.

Hire an Employee, Hire a Local Contractor, or Outsource it Overseas? Steve Bell, ShangBy.com & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Should you hire employees in-house, work with local contractors, or outsource overseas? Learn the overall pros and cons as well as the specific exceptions. Hear personal success stories and horror stories from entrepreneurs who have extensive experience building products in-house and overseas. At the end, we'll take specific examples from the crowd and give recommendations on how to proceed and who to work with.

So You Want to be an Angel Investor? Hall T. Martin, Central Texas Angel Network & Joshua Baer, Austinpreneur

Wishing you were an early investor in Facebook? Have some extra cash? Or maybe you just love talking to startups? Whatever your reason is, Angel Investing can be fun and financially rewarding. As software and hardware costs go down, many startups don't need as much money and Angel investors become more attractive than venture capitalists. Hear from a panel of experienced Angels to learn basic strategy, evaluate opportunities, negotiate terms and find other investors to partner with.

The New Inbox Mark Schmulen, NutshellMail & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Everyone knows that email is the killer app. But we get so much email that we're in danger of information overload - and its only going to get worse. New paradigms for email are evolving to help prioritize the email you want and ignore the email you don't want. Hear from the innovators in Inbox management about what to expect in the years to come.

Bootstrap Your Startup Bijoy Goswami, bijoygoswami.com & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Dell, Oracle, Microsoft and Virgin were bootstrap companies that were able to get started without raising traditional venture capital. Bootstrapping is not just capital efficient, it has many other positive influences on your business and your potential to profit from its success. Learn why you should consider the bootstrap method and ask questions of a successful bootstrap entrepreneur.

And here are some other friends doing panels that are also worth voting for:

Widgets and Mashups - Enablers or Risky Business?
David Altounian, iTaggit Inc.

Time-to-market demands on web developers are leading to the creation of widgets, mashups, and embed code to add functionality to sites. This panel will explore the options, benefits, and risks of using third party sites and modules.

Dancing With Zombies: Monetizing the 'Old Media' Graveyard Matt Cohen, OneSpot

With online content exploding, the “old media” deathwatch has become a popular spectator sport. But with large financial war chests, millions of readers, and a burning need to re-invent their business models, big media brands aren’t joining the departed anytime soon. They’re just turning into something new. This panel will contemplate the old media metamorphosis and discuss why these brands will offer substantial syndication and revenue opportunities to third party online publishers in the years ahead.

Blog Revenue Strategies for the Web Discovery Era Matt Cohen, OneSpot

What will it mean to be a professional blogger three years from now? As the Web becomes more intelligent, bloggers must be prepared to evolve their publishing, syndication and monetization strategies. A better collective understanding of individual consumers, “smarter” content aggregation tools and new models for content distribution will transform the current landscape, creating new opportunities for market leadership and revenue generation. This panel will examine the major trends at work, and dig deeply into these new opportunities for the online publisher.

PR for Pirates Jeremy Bencken, BuzzStream

Doing your own PR? How to use the latest tools and techniques for finding the right bloggers & reporters, researching their contact info, writing a great pitch, and conducting highly personalized outreach, without making it your full-time job.

The Whole Business Web - Making the Shift Jon Lebkowsky, Social Web Strategies

The accelerating emergence of Web 2.0 and the new converged digital social media enables business to move all its processes, not just sales/marketing/PR, out of the deep-hierarchy low-velocity world of conventional mass-based operations, up into the high-knowledge high-velocity network structures of the Web, creating a whole new platform in which the old tradeoffs of quality vs. speed vs. cost no longer apply. This panel explores how the Whole Business Web is emerging, and how you can make the shift now.

Making Green Visible Jon Lebkowsky, Social Web Strategies

Sustainability requires informed buyers. The accelerating convergence of real and virtual is opening vast new potentials for us to make the “green” visible in every purchase by increasing the interaction between the product and the buyer, making the product’s true history and composition transparent. This panel explores these trends and the globally emerging new technologies and businesses working to make this happen.

Showtime -- Bringing the Co-Web to a Screen Near You! Andrew Donoho, IBM

The Co-Web, the collaborative, media converged web, is upon us. Showtime uses Web 2.0 technologies (OpenAJAX, XMPP and RTP/RTSP) to build a Co-Web page where we all interact on the same data at the same time, see the same context and make better decisions as a result.

Measuring the Health of Your Online Community: Metrics That Don't Suck Miles Sims, Small World Labs

There is a lot of buzz today around measuring & defining community health. This panel will focus on the right way to work WITH your community to measure success and make sure value is being provided for both sides.

In the Cloud: Massively Parallel Computing for Everyone Mason Hale, OneSpot

"Machine learning" once implied PhD's and racks of servers. No more. With projects like EC2, Hadoop and Mahout, and accessible texts lining bookstore shelves, advanced distributed computing techniques are going mainstream. After introducing the basics of map/reduce and collaborative filtering we will ponder the possibilities of web-scale computing for everyone.

Martha Stewart-izing Your Site with Rich Complementary Content Steve Waters, OneSpot

Recipe for Vertical Media Destination Site: Place high volumes of exceptional content in bowl. Add 2 cups of affinity focus. Stir in 1 cup of SEO flavoring for richness. Bake at 500 degrees all day. Serve hot. Repeat indefinitely. Until now, only fabulously wealthy master chefs could make this dish, because only they could afford the staff and tools necessary for its successful creation. This panel will explore the emerging content syndication trends and technologies that are allowing the rest of us to turn our humble sites into vertical media destinations. Felony conviction not included.

Lessons Learned from the Open Source Software Neelan Choksi, SpringSource

Open Source Software, once considered revolutionary, has increasingly been accepted as mainstream. In this panel of some of the most experienced open source leaders and analysts, we will explore what has made open source successful and what lessons all businesses can learn from this paradigm shifting technology.

Making Money with Royalties and Revenue Share Agreements
Lou Ellman, RoyaltyZone

Technology companies often enter licensing or partnership agreements to target new markets and increase revenue. The panel will discuss common licensing agreement strategies, keys for success, and effective ways for companies to track and monitor agreement performance.

Deliverability.com makes it into marketing.alltop.com

I'm proud to announce that Deliverability.com has been selected as one of the top marketing blogs for Alltop.com.

Deliverability.com is the best blog that covers email deliverability and email marketing. It has regular contributors from all of the top email marketing companies and the prime source of news, rumors and commentary from the industry insiders.

Same Script, Different Cast -- How Social Networking Can Learn From E-mail

eMarketingandCommerce.com just published my article about How Social Networking Can Learn From E-mail. This was based on my earlier blog posting to Deliverability.com and edited by Carla Vicens.

Some RSS belongs in my Inbox, some in my news reader

It seems like there are really 2 different kinds of RSS feeds for me. With many feeds I want to see every post as soon as it comes out and consciously decide to read it or delete it. It's not surprising that so many people choose to read their RSS in email by using a service like Feedburner or RSSFwd to get each individual blog posting delivered as an email message.

For example, I like enjoy reading the blogs of Marc Andreessen and David Byrne. I try to read every post. So it makes sense to have the arrive in my email where they will sit in my Inbox (actually I automatically file them into a folder with OtherInbox) until I read them or delete them.

Yet there are other types of feeds that are more like reading the newspaper. They are full of many different topics and I only want to read the ones that catch my eye or are the most popular. This is the kind of thing that people read in an RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines. This is how I read the blogs of all of my competitors products - I just want to scan the recent headlines I don't have time to look at every single one and if they pile up then I just want to see the most recent ones.

I wonder which is more popular? Do most people read RSS feeds and blogs from their web browser, from a specialized news reader, or by subscribing to a Feedburner email? In the past I've always used the email option if it was available. Which do you prefer?

cross-posted from the OtherInbox blog

The Email Problem

Everyone seems to agree that email is great. There are many types of communication that I prefer to receive via email over other channels such as postal mail, the telephone, fax, carrier pigeon, etc. I love how at the Apple retail stores they will email my receipt to me instead of printing it out (save a tree!). I get much less postal mail now that all of my financial institutions and utilities have "paperless billing" options that send monthly statements by email. Judging by the popularity of these services, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Yet everyone knows that email is broken. The problem is bigger than just spam. Michael Arrington recently declared email bankruptsky and deleted his inbox. There are two fundamental problems, both of which are only getting worse:

1. Our actions generate more incoming email than we have time to read
2. We want to respond to more emails than we have time to

Spam is part of the first problem. But another part of the first problem is that its a lot easier to sign up for new emails than to decide which ones to unsubscribe from. Over time, you get more and more things that you've signed up for as well as more and more spam that you don't want. You start off with a clean slate and then just add more and more baggage over time until eventually the only solution is to get a new email address and start over.

The second problem stems from the fact that email lets you easily communicate with more people than you could before. It's very easy to write a single email, copy and paste it for 5 different recipients, and end up with 5 replies coming back at you. Email multiplies quickly. Yet we're still typing each reply one at a time.

Both of these problems are just getting worse. As we more offline things go online we will only get more newsletters, receipts, statements, warnings, notifications, etc. Soon my car will be sending me emails and my house and my dishwasher. There will be too much to go into a single "inbox".

And as more things go online we connect with more other people. The more people we connect with, the more we want to communicate, the more emails we send and the more replies that come back at us. RSS, Blogs, social networks and Twitter all help to alleviate this problem. Rather than blasting an email out to 100 people, you can just post it to your blog or on Twitter.

As the number of online communications grows, not all of it needs to happen in email and not all of it will be manageable within email. I don't really want to have receipts in my email - that's just the most convenient option available to me. In the end, that receipt needs to end up in a filing cabinet, database or expense report. I want to be able to find the receipt later if I need it, but it doesn't really belong in my Inbox.

This doesn't mean email is dead or that email shouldn't evolve. Quite the opposite, email needs to get better and helping us find the messages we want and ignore the ones we don't. We need to be able to reliably unsubscribe from emails we don't want and trust that the ones we do want are legitimate.

We need to start thinking about a more sophisticated Inbox than just a list of messages sorted by date.

this was cross-posted from the OtherInbox blog