Interesting Facts and Finds
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Email Delivery Rates
A new study by email services firm Lyris shows that the average email service provider gets 92.5 percent of emailed delivered to opt-in lists and 88.5 percent more generally. Interestingly, different ISPs filtered out radically different proportions of email as "bulk" messages. Concentric proved the most sensitive, putting fully 61.7 percent of all emails into the bulk folder. By comparison, Hotmail blocked 5.3 percent and Gmail 16 percent. Those domains that most often failed do deliver opt-in emails were! Go.com (26.5 percent), iWon.com (25.7 percent) and Gmail (20.9 percent).
Remember Paper Magazines?
A recent survey conducted by 101communications has revealed some tell-tale data about subscribers to digital magazines, i.e., the online versions of their print counterparts. Topline findings include:
35% of digital subscribers increased their use of the parent Web site
31% increased their use of the magazine
22% increased their use the publication's e-mail newsletters
55% subscribed to the digital version as it was easier to save
54% subscribed for convenience
51% of subscribers subscribed for search features
92% of subscribers stated they had taken some action as a result of reading an ad in the digital publication
90% are likely to renew their subscription
78% are satisfied or very satisfied with their subscription
Email Ad Readers: Who Are Most Likely to Buy
For all retail categories, Yahoo! users are more likely to be influenced by email advertising than users of Google or MSN. They are also more likely to be influenced by email advertising than are members of the sample as a whole. On the other hand, for all categories or products, Google users are more likely to be influenced by email advertising than the group as a whole. Google users are also more likely than MSN users to be influenced by electronics, automobile and pharmaceutical email advertising. However, MSN users are more likely than Google users to be influenced by emails advertising home improvement, groceries and apparel. (iMedia)
Catalogers Shifting Focus to E-Commerce
More and more catalogers are shifting their efforts to non-print media - to the Web and e-commerce - according to a survey of 100 catalogers by Transcontinental Printing's catalog group, reports DM News. Some 66 percent of the catalogers identified the internet and e-commerce applications as an area of significant investment. Increasing website and multichannel marketing was a high priority for 72-73 percent of respondents. The shift to e-commerce may be explained in part by catalogers' unease with rising mailing costs, according to Transcontinental. Some 39 percent of respondents said costs associated with mailing and distribution represented the greatest obstacle to growth.
Amber Alerts Now Available on Cell Phones
USA Today
The cell phone alert builds on the existing Amber Alert system that broadcasts descriptions of the missing children and the suspects who may have taken them in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Under the system, law enforcement officials work with local radio and television broadcasters to issue emergency messages when a child is missing and thought to be in danger.
EMarketer Predicts Graying Of The Internet
by Gavin O'Malley
TWO-THIRDS OF ADULTS AGES 50 to 64 use the Internet, and as they age, will significantly alter the digital landscape, according to an eMarketer report released Thursday.
Internet Up. TV Down
According to a recent BURST! survey, 60.9 percent of consumers said they spend more time on the internet today than a year ago, with 32.2 percent spending “much more time” while 28.7 percent said “somewhat more time.” Where does that time come from? More than one-third said they are spending less time with television, followed by less time with magazines (34.1 percent), radio (27.1 percent), and newspapers (30.3 percent), compared to a year ago.
Broken down by age, the picture is even bleaker for TV. For instance, 18 to 24 year olds were much more likely than other age segments to say they are spending less time today than a year ago watching television (40.5 percent). Other demographic segments saying they spend less time watching television include males 25 to 34 (39.6 percent) and males 35 to 44 (41.2 percent).
Gates Sees Mobile Phones Overtaking iPods - Paper Reuters
Microsoft founder Bill Gates sees mobile phones overtaking MP3s as the top choice of portable music player, and views the raging popularity of Apple's iPod player as unsustainable, he told a German newspaper. "As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Hold The Presses
The latest numbers on newspaper circulation tell the story. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), daily US newspaper circulation took its biggest fall in nearly a decade.
That was the largest decline since 1995-1996, when circulation fell nearly 2.1%. Sunday circulation declined 2.5% over the last six months, compared with the same period a year ago.
Does Email Make You Dumb?
In case you got stoned, and you missed it, email has made the news again.
A new study, commissioned by Hewlett Packard and carried out by University of London researchers, concludes that email can have an addictive, drug-like grip, leading to confusion, lethargy, and loss of productivity. In fact, the constant interruption of checking and replying to messages is so deleterious, that it actually lowered the IQ of the study's 1,100 participants by more than double that of smoking marijuana
Spam Defense Budget Estmated st $17 billion
An IBM survey of e-mail found that 81% of it was spam. It dropped to a mere 75% in February, but Big Blue expects it to rise again. Businesses worldwide spent $10 billion last year to stop spam and are expected to spend $17 billion this year. (USA Today)
Papers Might Lose Billions in Classifieds to Online
Newspapers will likely be losing billions of dollars in classified ad revenue to non-newspaper online classified ad sites by 2007, according to McKinsey & Co.
They warned that newspapers could lose $4 billion of classified revenue by 2007 -some 20 percent of their 2004 classifieds revenue and nearly 9 percent of the $46.6 billion in total ad revenue last year - if the trend spreads to automotive and real-estate classifieds.
The problem, according to Ubinas, is what online's pricing is doing to the classifieds model, terming it "price destruction."
AOL goes live with pay-per-call ads
America Online Inc.'s search engine on Friday began displaying text ads that provide a phone number to reach the advertiser, a twist on the conventional approach of having these ads link to advertisers' Web sites.
Text ads that are contextually relevant to search-engine queries and that run along with search results have become immensely popular among online advertisers. This type of ad has fired up the once lethargic online advertising market and turned Yahoo Inc.'s Overture unit and Google Inc. into cash cows.
These text ads have featured mostly live links to advertisers' Web sites. But now AOL has partnered with Ingenio Inc. to give advertisers the option of having this type of ad run instead with a toll free phone number. (Standard)
Manager Removes Schiavo List From Site
A list of donors to a fund set up by the parents of Terri Schiavo apparently was no longer advertised in a catalog of lists on offer from list manager/broker Response Unlimited as of yesterday following a report in The New York Times.
Response Unlimited, Waynesboro, VA, had advertised the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation Active Donors list as early as March 15. An ad on the broker's Web site had offered 4,439 opt-in e-mail addresses for $500 per thousand.
"Each of these donors responded to an e-mail during February 2005 from Terri Schindler-Schiavo's father on behalf of his daughter," the ad stated. "These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward (Schiavo father) Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri."
Spam Blacklists Rendered Useless
One of the major pillars of anti-spam filtering, the blacklist, is rapidly losing effectiveness, according to ZDNet. In the last few weeks spam has been spiking because spammers are sending unsolicited commercial emails not so much through infected zombie computers, but rather through those computers' major ISPs. When the blacklists start to include domains such as aol.com, msn.com, yahoo.com and all of the other major providers of email and internet service, they become practically useless.
SPIT-spam over Internet telephony
Voice over IP (VoIP) promises to radically change the way companies do business, but one side effect of less expensive communications threatens to give the whole ecosystem a black eye.
Overseas telemarketers are quickly learning that they can use IP voice calls to "dial for dollars," getting around both traditional long-distance cost constraints and U.S. Do-Not-Call regulations to flood Internet traffic with phone calls that would make even the most egregious spammer blush.
"If you thought spam was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet," Burton Group analyst Fred Cohen told internetnews.com. "The average enterprise or household could see as much as 150 calls a day from these telemarketers. It has to happen, because it is a market force that takes the market feedback and makes it into a profitable approach."
Spam Absent from DMA Ethics Referrals
The Direct Marketing Association's ethics committee forwarded four internally-policed cases to government authorities, according to DM News. The four members referred to various authorities involved misleading offers or noncompliant telemarketing practices. None involved spam. The DMA has in the past argued to state and federal governments that regulation of email marketing should be left in part to the industry's own self-policing efforts.
Computer Population to Exceed 1 Billion
eMarketer reports that the population of personal computers will soon exceed 1 billion, as found in a new report from Computer Industry Almanac. While the U.S. holds less than five percent of the world's population, it is the home of 27 percent of all computers currently in use. The U.S. has a computer population of 224 million. Roughly a quarter of PCs everywhere are portables.
Real-time Email for Cell Phones
The appeal of so-called "push" technology is real-time synchronization, which means that e-mails are sent instantly in both directions between the device and network. Likewise, a message that is deleted on a device or a desktop computer connected to the same e-mail account is instantly deleted in the other setting as well.
MicroSoft Email Technology
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