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| August 22, 2002 Dear Reader, HTML or Text? Spam or Legitimate Email Marketing? Reporting or Hype? These are just a few of the issues addressed in this Jennings Report. Dive right in! Oh, and let me know what you think about the WSJ article-- am I taking it too seriously? Table of Contents 1. Getting the Most From Email Names DM News 2. Counterpoint One: OPA Responds to My Picky Questions on e-Sub Report ContentBiz [Blog] 3. Counterpoint Two: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics ClickZ.com 4. Email Format: Which Way to Go? eMarketer 5. Is the Line Between E-Marketing and Spam Fine, Fuzzy or Gone? The Wall Street Journal Online Content 1. Getting the Most From Email Names Arthur Middleton Hughes, DM News, August 14 2002 This is the second in a three part series about database marketing, but it's a great follow-up to the article about using e-mail for branding that we included in the last issue. Hughes' premise is that e-mail is a natural for retention, and he gives examples of ways to use e-mail to increase lifetime value. A good read for just about any e-mail marketing professional. 2. Counterpoint One: OPA Responds to My Picky Questions on e-Sub Report Anne Holland, ContentBiz [Blog], August 15 2002 Note: This item is the fourth one down, posted Thursday, August 15 2002. If you downloaded and read the PDF on online paid content from the Online Publishers Association in the last issue, you'll want to read this as well. Anne (justifiably so) had some questions about the report and contacted the OPA to get answers. Nice of her to include an overview of her discussion with OPA in her blog. This information helps put the report in perspective and it seems like they'll use some of her suggestions the next time they look at paid content online. Must reading! 3. Counterpoint Two: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics Vin Crosbie, ClickZ.com, August 13 2002 Reporting or Hype? One thing you can say for Vin -- he always speaks his mind. This is another article with questions about and criticisms of the OPA paid online content report that appeared in our last issue. It's a little less constructive than Anne's, but still worth reading to put it all in perspective. The fact that this online medium is still evolving is part of what makes this all so much fun, right? 4. Email Format: Which Way to Go? David Hallerman, eMarketer, August 20 2002 HTML or text? This is a common question asked by those just venturing into the e-mail realm, and it was a topic of much discussion after Debbie Weil's presentation at ClickZ.com's e-mail conference in NYC in May. In this very informative article, David pulls in statistics on HTML vs. text format usage and preference, as well as click-throughs and conversions by format. While the answer he proposes at the end isn't a surprise to anyone who's been doing this a while, the statistics he presents to get there are valuable. 5. Is the Line Between E-Marketing and Spam Fine, Fuzzy or Gone? Jeremy Wagstaff, Loose Wire, The Wall Street Journal Online, August 21 2002 Spam or legitimate e-mail marketing? This one hurt! It's a humorous or humorless (depending on your perspective), biting article which states that 'spam has just grown up and gotten a real job: e-mail marketing.' The situation he's talking about is what gives e-mail marketing a bad name -- but the fact that he's using it to write-off the entire industry is frustrating. (And, for the record, I can't ever remember writing a subject line to appeal to anyone's greed, manhood, paranoia or propensity to gamble). Read this one and weep. Closing Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to read this issue. We'll publish again on Thursday, September 12. Feel free to drop me an e-mail and let me know what you thought about anything you read in this issue, or let me know if you run across anything that might be good for a future issue. Ciao for now! Jeanne mailto:publisher@jenningsreport.com |
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The
Jennings Report
