Commentary

A New Year

It's not right that New Year's Day falls in January. What is new about that? It is cold and grey on Jan. 1, and it's cold and grey on Dec. 31. Naw, the real new year is right after Labor Day. We are back from vacation, the leaves are starting to turn. Fall is in the air. School starts. And for the most part, our industry starts up again. People are gearing up for upcoming trades shows, and holiday campaign planning is underway. Life begins anew.

And so, on this week after Labor Day, I thought it was a good time to look back on the last year in the e-mail industry to see where we've come over the last 12 months. And quite a bit has happened since last fall.

A year ago, e-mail just didn't get any respect. I got up at Ad:Tech and bawled out the trade organizations for not doing more for e-mail. The DMA was still referring to e-mail as alternative media. The Utah and Michigan Do Not E-mail laws were in force, and it looked like they might spread. Everyone was talking about spending more money on search. No one was talking about spending more on e-mail.

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But what a difference a year makes.

According to a recent WebTrends report, as reported by Ken MaGill: "Online retailers rank e-mail marketing as the most important demand-generation activity for holiday success in 2006." And 52 percent of retailers surveyed in the report will be increasing their money spent in e-mail.

The DMA has had a regime change and has even recruited YOURS TRULY to sit on the newly created Interactive Marketing Advisory Board. That will teach me to open my yap. The goal of the board is to advise the DMA on how it can do a better job in interactive.

Goodmail’s CertifiedE-mail program that guarantees delivery and fully rendered HTML in the inbox of select ISP’s, including AOL and Yahoo, is up and running --and as we reported last week, apparently working well.

Other delivery companies such as Habeas have received validation in the form of large investments in their company. Return Path was listed by Inc. magazine as one of the top 500 fastest growing companies (To be exact, the 167th).

The E-mail Experience Council launched, headed by e-mail pioneer Jeanniey Mullen, and began a year-long case study.

The Mediapost E-mail Insiders Summit brought together the top e-mail marketers and vendors for a 3-day intensive (and a lot of golf).

The Marketing Sherpa e-mail show in Chicago has standing-room-only crowds.

AOL now has free e-mail.

And the beat goes on. Happy New Year!

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