Over the past couple of years, legitimate marketers with valuable messages have been dragged down by unscrupulous spammers who abuse email. Spam filters and the CAN-SPAM regulations are not working - so what next?
DestinationCRM believes the solution being proposed by the major Internet Service Providers may be the saviour of email marketing.
The Solution
“The puzzle solution requires all outbound email to undergo 10 seconds of intensive calculations to be stamped. Mailers are essentially paying for each email in terms of CPU cycles, not pennies, but the result is the same: a near-instant wiping out of spam, since spammers can afford to spend even 10 seconds of CPU time per email–the economics just don’t make sense for them.”
Why will this work?
“If this solution is successfully implemented by the major ISPs, the rest of the world will quickly comply, since virtually everyone sends at least some email to Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. In this way the puzzle solution approach to stopping spam could quickly become standard, and spam could vanish almost overnight.”
Ahh. A tale of good vs. evil. Lets hope the good prevail!
Add Your CommentsAccording to a recent report from CyberSource, the more payment methods offered by e-commerce Web sites in North America, the higher the sales conversion.
Online retail sales in the United States jumped 51% to reach $114 billion in 2003. This according to Forrester Research who cited strong growth across all retail categories. Travel and computer sales (hardware / software) were particularly healthy.
CBS Marketwatch is reporting that a Microsoft will soon offer “end-to-end” search. According to the article, the company will release technology to enable users to search e-mail, their hard disks and the Internet.
Combining web search with desktop and email search has been touted as one of the many ‘next big things’. Other major search companies like Yahoo and Google are rumored to be working on their own desktop search solutions. In fact, reports say that Google plans to release a desktop search tool in the near future.
Seventy percent of small businesses have or will have an online presence by the end of this year, a big jump from the 35 percent that had a site in October 2002, a study says.
If you thought Google’s new Gmail service was an invasion of privacy - get a load of this. A new email tracking service called DidTheyReadIt.com allows anyone to secretly track email they send. When the recipient reads the message, the following information is reported:
- When, exactly, the email was opened
- How long the email remained opened
- Where, geographically, the email was viewed
More at Ecommerce Times
Internet Week: Companies Once Again Are Sprucing Up Their Web Sites
With profits up in an improving economy, many companies now have the money to give a facelift to their tired web sites by making major improvements in home pages, navigation, design, search, content management and other functionality.
Are you looking for a company to help you send out email newsletters? Need a simple solution to create your emails online? You probably need the services of an email vendor.
To making your shopping easier, check out this article at Clickz by Jeanne Jennings. She shares her experience on finding a vendor and provides a checklist for choosing the right provider.
Ranking well in one search engine doesn’t guarantee success in another. Often there are huge differences in results between Google and Yahoo for example. Want to see for yourself? Check out a new website called “Thumbshots Ranking Tool” which allows you to compare results between the different engines.
Search Engine Watch explains how it works: “URLs are represented by small circles, and these circles are connected by a line if the page appears in both engines you’re testing. Mouse over a circle and the full URL of the page is displayed.”
Tom Hespos writes:
“There’s good SEO and there’s bad SEO. Good SEO follows the rules and minimizes the risk of being delisted while increasing relevance to search terms germane to a marketer’s business. Bad SEO uses seedy tricks to elevate listings.”
Tom’s right but there really are no rules. The line between right and wrong in the search engine marketing arena is grey. Smart marketers should avoid even getting close to the line or risk loosing their shirt. If you don’t know what you are doing get professional advice.
