All about email, Message Compass

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The rules for handling e-mail messages properly and considerately may be old hat to you, but it doesn’t hurt to examine some of the newer and lesser-known tenets of polite e-mailing.

Mind the spam. Distribution lists are a godsend for getting the word out about something en masse, but take care not to spam your recipients. A problem may arise if you have multiple lists and send the same message to all of them: If an individual appears in each of your “San Francisco,” “California,” “America,” and “Global” lists, and if you e-mail the same message to all four lists, that person will receive four copies. Pay attention to the memberships of your various lists, and carefully consider how you plan to use the lists.

Carefully consider who gets a reply. “Reply to all” is a powerful but widely abused e-mail feature. When more than four or five recipients are involved, you should use “reply to all” only if the message is of critical importance to the vast majority of those listed. Misuse of the “reply to all” feature is a primary culprit in environments where the flood of e-mail is out of control.

Out of office messages are more useful than you think. Arranging to send an automated “out of office” e-mail response to anyone who sends you a message can be a big time saver for people who are trying to get in touch with you. Make sure, however, that you know how the “out of office” system works so that the response goes out only once per sender and not as a “reply to all” (see above).

Message recall doesn’t work. Except in a few corporate e-mail systems, once you press Send, your message is gone. By broadcasting a “Joe Smith would like to recall this message” notification, you are telling your recipients not only that you don’t know how to compose an e-mail message properly, but that you don’t understand how e-mail systems work.

Forget not the power of the pen. These days, whether you’re sending a thank-you note or a simple greeting, a handwritten note will have much greater impact than a dashed-off e-mail message. As of May 11, 2009, postage for a first-class letter costs 44 cents.

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Microsoft and Yahoo! may have struck a deal that grants the Redmond-based software giant exclusive access to Yahoo!’s search technologies for the next decade, meaning that Yahoo! Search will be powered by Microsoft for the next ten years, but apart from search, the two companies are still rivals. This applies to the email clients of the two companies: Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo!’s Yahoo! Mail.

When it comes to email addresses, most of us have two of them: a primary email address and a secondary email address. You hand the primary one to your fellow co-workers, to your friends, to your family, to your business partners and so on. And since it is your primary email address, you check your inbox regularly. The secondary email address is most times used for signing up to newsletters, for setting up accounts for various online services, or for online shopping. And since this address is not that important, you rarely check your inbox.

Here is where Hotmail trumps Yahoo! Mail as a secondary email client. If you forget to check your Hotmail account for period of 270 days (about 9 months), you will lose that account. 270 days is a long time, a lot longer than what Yahoo! mail has to offer.

Here’s the Microsoft’s official position from Hotmail’s help section: “Free Windows Live Hotmail accounts become inactive if you don’t sign in for more than 270 days or within the first 10 days after signing up for an account. After an account becomes inactive, all messages, folders, and contacts are deleted. Incoming messages will be sent back to the sender as undeliverable. Your account name is still reserved. However, if the account stays inactive for an additional 90 days, the account name may be permanently deleted.”

And here’s Yahoo!’s position on Yahoo! Mail: “Accounts are deactivated and removed after four months of no use. When an account is deactivated, you won’t be able to access it, regardless of whether or not email has been received in the account during that time. And sorry, but we can’t retrieve any of the information that was formerly stored in it.”

What about Google and its Gmail client? The Mountain View-based company that takes 70% of the search market, positions itself somewhere in the middle. If you will lose your Hotmail account after 9 months and your Yahoo! Mail account after 4 months, your Gmail account will be deleted after 6 months.

“A dormant address is a Gmail address that hasn’t been used for six months. You can still receive mail if your address is dormant, but you need to log in to keep your account active. If you don’t log in to Gmail within three months of it being labeled dormant – or for nine consecutive months – Google may delete the address,” explains Google.

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t’s definitely not the most elegant collaboration tool, but email is the most widely used for sharing thoughts, documents and other communication essentials. So it’s surprising it has taken this digital medium over 40 years to evolve from plain ASCII text to a soon-to-be social application for managing relationships and efficient collaboration on business documents. Get ready for Email 3.0, a one-inbox mix of social media, instant messaging, text messaging, news feeds, widgets and other mash-ups all swirled together creating a better organizational environment for the user — and greater challenges to the email marketer.
On May 27, Google demonstrated Google Wave, a new Open Source application based on HTML 5 standards. The presentation by developers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon from Google’s Sydney office shows a Gmail inbox on steroids, where the worlds of email, social networking, instant messaging and document collaboration collide. This creates an integrated string of disparate communications call “Waves” where the lines between various media and real-time, on and off-line communications are blurred.

Microsoft, too, is trying to change the versatility of email with its upcoming release of Outlook 2010. Mainly geared towards businesses, this new version of Outlook will try to mimic some social networking, allowing users to view emails as conversation threads coupled with the ability to hide threads they aren’t interested it. The announcement that Microsoft plans to continue to use Word as the main HTML-rendering engine for Outlook is providing a lot of grumbling in the email marketing community because of the message design obstacles the application causes.

New Protocols On The Horizon

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) hasn’t changed much since it was widely adopted in the 1980s, when ARPANET was converted to what is known as the Internet today. The protocol lacks the processes necessary to facilitate a seamless real-time collaboration and interactivity that newer technologies such as social networking encompass. However simple, SMTP’s wide implementation and open roots can be directly attributed to the successful proliferation of email use among Internet users. SMTP is also blamed for the wide spread of spam because it lacks sender authentication technology. Enter the Google Wave Federation Protocol, an Open Source communications protocol to facilitate Google Wave technology.

And if you think Microsoft, Yahoo and FaceBook are going to sit idle while Google muscles influence over the guts of future email communication protocols, think again. It’s fairly certain that one of these companies will extend their current platforms to compete with Google Wave and they will be reluctant to support the Wave Federation Protocol. Eventually, some will cave as users demand cross-platform compatibility (Microsoft users able to communicate with Google Wave users).

The Carryover From Traditional Email

When these new communication platforms become compatible, it will open the gates to marketers, but you should certainly expect challenges from traditional email. For one, it is possible that spam could be curtailed, as authentication and security technologies would be built into these new security protocols. This would force marketers to solicit a true opt-in from subscribers, giving them full control of permission. Gone will be the days of implied opt-ins, purchased lists and other forbidden fruit that have tempted too many email marketers.

Another challenge Email 3.0 will offer users is an easier way to sort, categorize and mute different types of communications. The continued challenge for marketers will be not only to get permission, but to be relevant enough to stay at the top if the inbox queue. Even though the marketer might obtain permission, once muted, a marketer’s message may never been seen again.

Many email pundits stress the importance of creating a dialogue with subscribers by using more engaging content. With Email 3.0, a true bi-directional dialogue will become necessary, as communications start to look more like Twitter, with subscribers expecting immediate responses to questions and inquiries. Telling subscribers not to respond or not responding will quickly get marketers muted, rendering their efforts useless.

These new advances in email technology are long overdue and surely welcome among consumers and business alike. These technologies will help to lift the overall email experience by providing a true integration of social media and other technologies. In addition, email marketing efforts that are slapdash and executed in haste will be rendered completely useless, as traditional challenges come to the forefront of the discipline, demanding greater respect from marketers.

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by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Monday July 27, 2009, 5:51 PM

Ten days after announcing that a report alleging the intentional deletion of Mayor Ray Nagin’s e-mail messages would stay under wraps, the Nagin administration released the report Monday, alongside a detailed response challenging its findings.

Mayor Ray Nagin’s out-going e-mail was still not being archived as of a few weeks ago, according to the Louisiana Technology Council.
While the report by the Louisiana Technology Council had not been made public before Monday, the group weeks ago announced its central finding: that Nagin’s e-mail messages had been deliberately deleted by someone with “high-level access” to the city’s computer system.

The written report provides a few new wrinkles. For instance, it says that as of a few weeks ago, Nagin’s “sent messages” were still not being archived by City Hall for reasons unknown, even after a civil court judge in February held the mayor had violated the state public records law for similar practices.

The LTC report recommends addressing that issue posthaste “because (the mayor’s) Sent Items are the most relevant electronic record of his work in City Hall including his contacts with constituents, contractors and other elected officials.”

Though the Nagin administration has questioned the LTC’s methodology and competence, the city’s eight-page response to the group’s report seems to confirm the allegation that such messages aren’t being saved.

The response blames the lack of archiving on the way the mayor’s BlackBerry is configured, which is apparently a matter of user preference.

“The mayor’s blackberry setting is the reason for the lack of Sent Items in the actual mailbox, ” the city rebuttal says.

Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett added, “Everything in every city end-users boxes are copied and stored.”

The city rebuttal also takes aim at an assertion that is not in the LTC’s written report, but which was conveyed to city aides verbally: that the mailboxes belonging to three former employees of the Mayor’s Office of Technology are missing.

The rebuttal says those mailboxes — belonging to former technology directors Greg Meffert and Mark Kurt, and Imagine Software founder Scott Domke — have been located.

Nagin’s staff on Monday also sent the news media a letter in which City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields threatens to sue the LTC if the group doesn’t immediately turn over to the city any and all data it gathered during its probe.

LTC president Mark Lewis said his group has cooperated with the Nagin administration since being hired in May and will continue to do so. Lewis said late Monday that the two sides are tentatively scheduled to meet today at 11:30.

“I think they’re worried we’re going to disseminate what we have, but we’re not going to violate our non-disclosure agreement by doing that, ” Lewis said. “We’re happy to give them the information.”

In late June, the LTC delivered to the city a file containing recovered contacts and calendar entries from the mayor’s e-mail program, Lewis said.

More recently, he said, the LTC was able to recover about 18,000 items from Nagin’s City Hall e-mail account. Those items may not be e-mail messages per se, but rather garbled bits of data that need to be combed through, said Chris Reade of Carrollton Technology Partners, which worked on the retrieval.

“It takes lot of time to reassemble those into e-mails, ” Reade said. “They’re a mess.”

Along with raising questions about why the mayor’s outgoing messages are not being archived, LTC’s report questions why Nagin’s e-mail messages were deleted, even as other city staffers’ accounts were left alone.

“Of concern is this: If there were no storage issues, why is there no mail?” the report asks pointedly. “If there were storage issues, why was the mayor’s mailbox identified as a place to save space? Why not other mailboxes?”

The city’s response does not take on those questions. However, interim technology director Harrison Boyd has expressed confidence that SunBlock Systems Inc. of McLean, Va. — the firm he hired after firing LTC — will be able to retrieve the mayor’s missing e-mail messages. The city has not disclosed how much it will pay SunBlock to perform the work. LTC charged the city $8,000 for its services but has not submitted invoices or been paid.

LTC was hired after it was revealed in a civil court proceeding that nearly all of Nagin’s e-mail messages from 2008 had been deleted. Initially, city officials said the deletions had occurred because of space constraints. But Civil District Judge Rosemary Ledet ordered the city to look deeper.

Earlier this month, after Lewis and Reade announced the LTC’s findings, city officials announced they had fired LTC, saying the group’s findings were off-base and suggesting its members lacked the technical expertise to do the job.

Boyd had said last week that the LTC’s report — which was requested by members of the media — would not be made public because it was so flawed .

In a letter dated Monday, Moses-Fields asks for a meeting no later than noon today “to negotiate the immediate return of any and all city property, including email records, other information and electronic data” that the LTC gathered in the course of its review.

The letter states that LTC “gained access to, and continues to hold massive amounts of electronic data — well beyond the Mayor’s files.” Much of the information is “not appropriate for disclosure” under the state’s Public Records Act, the letter says — “much less public announcements by a terminated contractor.”

The letter warns LTC that “this is a very serious matter” and warns of the possibility of a lawsuit.

“Should you choose not to respond in the specified time frame, please know that I intend to take immediate legal action, as evidenced by the attached draft civil complaint, petition for temporary restraining order and the accompanying memorandum.”

None of those items is attached to the electronic copy of Moses-Fields’ letter that was released to the news media.

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- Live editing by multiple users
- Playback
- Drag-and-drop adding of files
- Embedding
- Extensions and applications
- Natural language
- Open-source protocol

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It’s always good to get recognition from the analyst firms because many organizations pay attention to what these guys say. In the ever evolving area of records management, this recognition can help a lot.

According to the report: The Forrester Wave(TM): Records Management, Q2 2009, a number of key enterprise content management vendors lead the wave for records management including Open Text, IBM, EMC and Oracle. Autonomy and CA are also leaders, with Interwoven and HP noted as strong performers.

We took a closer look at what features brought some of these vendors to the top of the pile.

The following figure tells you how companies feel about the need to support regulatory requirements today.

Survey on need for Records Management

As you can see, records management is fairly important to most organizations, regardless of size. That may be because GRC isn’t just an issue of larger organizations.

Selecting the appropriate records management solution isn’t easy though and it does depend on your requirements. According to Forrester, there are five trends that affect the selection of a records management solution:

Rising demands to mitigate legal risks and challenges

Evolving records management certification requirements

Expanding focus beyond physical records, toward a broader array of digital assets

Converging vendor capabilities for archiving, records management, and eDiscovery

Looking down the SaaS path

Forrester helps evaluate some of the record management vendors out there including: Autonomy, CA, EMC, HP, IBM, Interwoven, Open Text and Oracle. These vendors met certain criteria that Forrester applied which included:

200 deployments or more of the solution in the enterprise market (employees of 1000 or more)
Native support for both physical and electronic records management
Mentioned often by Forrester clients
These aren’t the only vendors out there, but here’s a look at the leaders in this market and why they rise to the top.

The Leaders in Records Management

Forrester Wave Records Management Q2 2009

Autonomy

Autonomy’s Records Management solution is based on their acquisition of Merido back in 2007. Obviously the fact that the solution leverages the IDOL platform is a key component for Autonomy as IDOL enables the pulling together of information from a variety of locations.

Other notable features include integration with their eDiscovery and enterprise archiving solutions, along with the addition of a number of legal experts and significant install base of legal solutions that came with the Interwoven acquisition earlier this year.

The Autonomy Records Management solution is compliant with a number of standards already and they are actively pursuing the DoD 5015.2-STD V3 and MoReq2 standards. Autonomy is also one of two non-enterprise content management vendors to make the leaders for records management (the other was CA).

Open Text

With a particular focus on their current shipping offering, the report also cites “strong physical records management capabilities and retention management support for a wide variety of electronic content types and applications.”

With strong integrated solutions for both Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, Open Text does seem to have a good handle on the records management needs of organizations today. In addition, their solution is compliant with a number of standards including the U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2-STD, the United Kingdom’s TNA regulations and Australia’s VERS regulations.

IBM

IBM made the list for their IBM FileNet Records Manager. It is one of two Records Management solutions that IBM offers. FileNet Records Manager offers support across a number of information assets and is integrated with the FileNet ECM, as well as archiving and eDiscovery solutions.

IBM has achieved certification with all Records Management standards except MoReq2, which they are actively pursuing now.

EMC

EMC’s Documentum Records Manager makes the leader list having improved its physical records management capabilities and offering a modular approach for retention management.

EMC is also actively pursuing the DoD 5015.2-STD V3 and MoReq2, having achieved certification for the others.

Oracle

Oracle’s record management solution is Oracle Universal Records Management, offering a framework for federated records management and physical records management capabilities. Oracle does not offer native archiving and eDiscovery solutions to integrate with its records management solution, but Forrester notes its language support as another key feature to its position on the list.

Oracle is compliant with the DoD 5015 certifications and is actively pursuing the MoReq2 and VERS certifications.

Want More Details?
This was just a quick look at some of the leaders for Records Management. To get more details about these and the other vendors in list or just to understand more about the records management industry today, get your copy of the report

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More content consumers now share articles and other media through social network Facebook than through email, says widget maker AddToAny. The company, which makes a popular widget designed for sharing content across sites, says that 24% of its shared media goes to Facebook. Email receives only 11.1% of content or shared links and Twitter gets 10.8%. Yahoo Bookmarks accounts for 5.5% and MySpace get 5% of content.

Top Shared Content Destination

Facebook 24.0%
Email 11.1%
Twitter 10.8%
Yahoo Bookmarks 5.5%
MySpace 5.0%
Windows Live 4.7%
Delicious 4.5%
Digg 4.4%
Google Bookmarks 4.0%
Yahoo Buzz 3.9%
Reddit 3.8%
StumbleUpon 3.4%
Bebo 3.1%
Mister-Wong 0.9%
Yahoo Messenger 0.5%
Evernote 0.5%
LinkedIn 0.4%
Netvibes Share 0.4%
Blogger Post 0.4%
Technorati 0.4%
Propeller 0.3%
Mixx 0.3%
Netlog 0.3%
Other 7.9%
Source: AdToAny

Wary digerati should keep in mind when reading these metrics that AdToAny is only a single widget, and we may presume that widget users are predisposed to use social networking over other formats. The surprisingly low performance of LinkedIn (.4%) also suggests a skew to the consumer, perhaps younger, audience. Nevertheless, another popular widget maker, AdThis, confirms to the AllFacebook blog that Facebook does indeed get nearly a quarter of content shares on its network.

Whatever the specific accuracy of the numbers, the study demonstrates an important trend no publisher can ignore. For key segments of the Internet population, social networks are becoming communications hubs that replace the stand-alone functionality of email and instant messaging. In the heyday of MySpace, many teens simply left their MySpace profile page open whenever they were online because it served as the place where messages moved in and out. As the communications tasks move off of stand-alone apps and into Web services, publishers need to devise strategies both for distributing content more effectively into these networks, and also to engage users while they are on the networks themselves.

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By Fritz Faerber, Associated Press Writer
When Daniel Carter logged on to a shared computer at a hostel in Rome to check e-mail, he had no idea he was in a hacker’s sights. After his trip was over, he discovered someone had hijacked his e-mail account and sent a message to hundreds of his contacts asking for money.
“Sorry i did not get you informed about my short trip to london … i was attacked on my way to the hotel by some hoodlums and they took away all my belongings,” the e-mail said, ending with a plea for money “so i can sort out my hotel bills and fly back home” and a promise of repayment.

Most of Carter’s contacts recognized the scam from the poor grammar and lack of upper-case letters. Unfortunately, one older friend fell for it, sending some $2,000 to the scammers. Carter eventually regained control of his e-mail account and cleaned up the mess. But the money his friend sent was lost.

“This was a big wake-up call. I thought, ‘Who’s going to hack me, I’m not important or of large means,’” said Carter, a songwriter and composer who lives in Salt Lake City. But, as he found out, a hacker can make a quick profit off an ordinary traveler.

What happened to Carter is a relatively rare phenomenon. But travelers are especially vulnerable to hackers because they often use computers and Wi-Fi networks in hotel lobbies, cafes and airports.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Microsoft | Federal Bureau of Investigation | Apple Inc. | Kevin Mitnick
“If you are using an open Wi-Fi network, you are extremely vulnerable,” says computer security consultant Kevin Mitnick. He should know: Mitnick served five years in prison for computer capers that gained him notoriety and prompted an FBI manhunt.

Here are some steps you can take to protect yourself.

Create a strong password. Carter says his e-mail was easier to hack because he had a weak password. Password advice can be found at: microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

You might also create a dedicated e-mail account for use on the road, with a password that is different from passwords you use for bank and credit card information. Let your contacts know you’ll be using that account while on vacation. You can stay in touch, but if someone does hack into your account, they only get your vacation pictures.

If using a shared computer, try to cover your tracks. On Apple’s Safari browser, under the Safari menu, toggle “Private Browsing.” On Microsoft’s Explorer, when you log off, go to “Tools” and “Delete Browsing History” to remove traces of your passwords and the websites you’ve visited.

But experts say clearing the history offers weak protection at best. A shared computer, even one that’s hard-wired as opposed to one with a wireless network, can harbor keyloggers or other malware that grab passwords and other information. That’s why Mitnick says he’d only use a shared computer to check e-mail as a last resort — and then he’d immediately change all his passwords when he gets to a secure computer.

Wireless hotspots can also be dangerous — with the hackers monitoring communication from your laptop or other electronic device. And a wired hotel network can also be dangerous, since a hacker could be in the room next door and access your computer through the network.

“Sniffing a wireless network is really easy to do — any teen in junior high can do it.” Mitnick says of a strategy that amounts to eavesdropping on computer communications in an open network in, say, a cafe or airport. Such vulnerabilities can yield mayhem with attacks known as “Packet Sniffing,” “Man in the Middle” attacks and “MAC Spoofing.”

That’s not to say every hotspot is dangerous. But when using your laptop in a public place, you obviously want up-to-date security programs, says Dave Marcus, McAfee’s Director of Security Research and Communication.

You should also disable file-sharing on your laptop, Marcus says. It’s also a good idea to turn off Bluetooth, printer-sharing and disable ad hoc network connections. Each Windows and Mac operating system has a slightly different procedure to do this. Information for your computer can be found at: support.microsoft.com or apple.com/support.

Many experts say you should not send any sensitive data while in a hotspot. That’s because many e-mail services and browser connections essentially broadcast in the clear, meaning someone can eavesdrop on information sent to and from your computer. If you want to be careful, that means avoiding banking, shopping and checking credit card accounts. Even though these sites usually encrypt your data, there are some workarounds a determined hacker could use. Even passwords for seemingly innocuous services could potentially lead to more sensitive personal data.

If you want to take your computer security a step up, consider a VPN, or Virtual Private Network.

“The best way to protect yourself is a VPN,” says Mitnick. “It’s a tunnel, where all your communication is encrypted. A passive attacker can’t intercept.”

Bill Bullock, co-founder of the VPN service WiTopia, calls such networks “the next weapon in the arsenal” after firewalls and antivirus software. His company offers plans starting at $39.99 a year, but there are plenty of competitors. And, if you are computer-savvy, you can even create your own VPN, connecting from the road to your secure computer at home and accessing the Internet through it. They can also work with iPhones and other personal data devices.

But Kelly Davis-Felner of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group that promotes growth of Wi-Fi networks, says a VPN is probably overkill for travelers who are just checking the latest sports scores or e-mailing Mom from a cafe on the Champs-Elysees.

“It’s a statistical possibility that you’ll get hacked in a hotspot,” she acknowledged, advising against banking, trading stocks or doing business-related work at an open network without VPN.

But she added: “You are taking a much greater risk handing your credit card to a waiter than sitting in an airport sending e-mail.”

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The team behind the Xoopit social photo management service, first developed as an add-on for Google’s Gmail, are joining rival Web mail operator Yahoo, they announced late Wednesday.

Xoopit promises to help users mine the pictures and video files stored in their Gmail account and open them up to comments from their friends on social networking sites. In addition to e-mail attachments, the service also scours photos and videos shared through sites such as Shutterfly, Google’s Youtube and Picasa Web Albums, or Yahoo’s Flickr.

The startup first offered an invitation-only beta version of its service in March last year, and sent out a further wave of invitations three months later. It wasn’t until December that it developed a version of the service for Yahoo Mail, after that company opened up its Web mail platform to external applications. Called “My Photos”, it has become the third most popular application for Yahoo Mail, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo signed the agreement to acquire Xoopit on Wednesday, according to a posting on the Yahoo corporate blog.

Neither company disclosed financial details of the deal. Xoopit began life with US$1.5 million in funding from angel investors, according to published reports, adding a further $5 million from venture capital funds Accel Partners and Foundation Capital in June 2008.

While the Xoopit staff will be joining Yahoo, the company isn’t turning the service it developed for Gmail off just yet.

“That service will remain active for the time being,” company founders Bijan Marashi and Jonathan Katzman wrote in a Xoopit blog post announcing the acquisition.

However, Xoopit will no longer sign up new users to the service, it said.

Yahoo will continue to provide support for a Firefox add-on developed by Xoopit for Gmail users, according to its blog posting.

That Firefox add-on has been downloaded over 400,000 times from the Mozilla Web site.

Google has also been developing limited photo management features for Gmail: its Gmail Labs pages feature additional functions that users can turn on to preview photos in Flickr or Picasa Web albums when they receive an e-mail containing a link to such an album.

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How to maintain clean email lsit
by John Osgood
June 30, 2009

John Osgood
John Osgood writes about and teaches small business owners how to market their companies and products online for a zero to small cost. John maintains a strict policy of building a relationship and not “HAMMERING” his subscribers with constant email offers! His 5-day e-course for Small Business owners who want to build a huge email list can be downloaded here: Head over to http://www.smallbusinesslistbuilding.com to get your FREE copy now! There also many other resources for the Small Business owner including Podcasts and a blog which you can check out by going to: http://www.smallbusinesslistbuilding.com/blog

So you think you have a targeted mailing list, a great offer and a compelling call to action?

All the elements of successful email marketing depend on one factor — having valid email addresses on your list. If you have already started building your mailing list, make sure you have valid email addresses.

Too many people have been victims of email spamming and they have found ways to protect themselves from getting annoying, irrelevant emails. In case you do not know, there are actually throw away freebie e-mail accounts on the Internet. These are e-mail accounts your prospects can only receive e-mail at but cannot send out e-mail from. What’s more: your prospects don’t even have to sign up for them! Emails that go to these fake email accounts are automatically deleted every couple of hours.

Why do your prospects use these false e-mail addresses?

Well, they are just avoiding being bombarded with future emails from you. As an honest online marketer you definitely do not want your prospects to sign up for your permission-based email lists using a bogus email address!

Fake email addresses can cause problems in your database, that’s why it is important to keep your email mailing list clean, because when you send an email to these fake email addresses, these emails bounce and return, wasting your bandwidth and your time. So clean up your database and retain the value of your mailing list by keeping it clean and free of fake, invalid email addresses.

So how do you keep your mailing list clean and up-to-date? Here are a few things you should do:

1. Check if you have bad, undeliverable email addresses before you send your emails.

2. Try using email validation software so that you can exclude the bad email addresses from your list.

3. Delete those who have un-subscribed from your list.

4. Before sending out emails, search for people who un-subscribed from your previous emails and delete them from your database.

5. Make sure your list is updated, always provide an option for subscribers to change their email address.

Now, some of you might be contemplating about buying email lists?

Unless it’s from a reputable list company, avoid buying or renting lists. Most email addresses in their lists are probably collected by website email extractors, what’s more, you don’t know these people in the list and most likely they won’t welcome an email from you. Try using the double opt-in subscription method, this will give you the assurance that you have a valid email address and that the prospect really does want to receive mail from you.

In marketing with email list building, you should make it a point to regularly and consistently check your business email lists for invalid addresses. Your goal is to have a clean, accurate opt-in email list, so be sure to clean your list.

E-mail is an effective and relatively cheap marketing tool to attract repeat customers, but make sure your lists are clean, and you get your money’s worth for your email list campaign.

EmailSafe , Backup email from Outlook without duplicate
EmailShop: Extract email address from website, files(PST, NSF, MSG, ZIP, PDF) and Microsoft Outlook just by drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste

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