I was able to sit down with Eric Stockton, President of Marketing Sherpa for an in the field Duct Tape Marketing podcast while attending the Email Summit in Miami.

Marketing Sherpa has done well by building practical know-how and combining it with a passionate membership community.

Here is Eric’s take on Marketing Sherpa’s mission and future.

11:00:10 PM    

Major ISPs like AOL and Yahoo are doing what they can to make sure that their users don’t get spam. Of course they block a lot of legitimate email as well.

One solution that is growing in popularity is the idea of email certification. In other words, a system that could verify that you, the sender, are who you say you are, and that your email gets delivered and maybe even stand out in the inbox a little.

Goodmail Systems is working with ISPs to bring this kind of certification to marketers who meet strict standards for best email practices and low complaint rates. It’s kind of like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for email.

The following is a list of benefits reported by Goodmail
• 100% deliverability
• Images and links automatically enabled
• Blue ribbon image next to your mail in the inbox

I won’t try to explain how it works, but it does involve an accreditation process to qualify. (Here’s a diagram of how it works.)

And now for some further reading
• SenderID - Microsoft’s e-mail authentication technology protocol
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) - provides a method for validating a domain name identity that is associated with a message through cryptographic authentication.
• Static IP vs Shared IP - Good (but technical) article on the technical aspects of sharing a mail server IP address - if you swim in a pond with lots of people you can’t really control what’s in the water.

Reporting this live from the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit

8:00:03 PM    

I am attending the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit in Miami today and will be making frequent mobile posts from the sessions.

Stephan Tornquist from Marketing Sherpa opened the conference with some research findings.

1. Email marketing’s picture in general is fading because getting through to swamped email boxes has gotten much harder, open rates at 25%
2. Users of full service email marketing services are generally more successful - list segmentation is the key
3. Shorten subject lines - 2 and 3 words increase open rates - see Seth Godin’s blog post titles
4. Vary your templates - move ads and content blocks around to help with ad fatigue.
5. You can double your media buy or start testing - effective landing pages are the key to driving conversion. Conversion rate is the key metric
6. Content is more important than frequency

Any open rate tips you’ve found that are working for you right now?

8:00:02 PM    

I’m not referring to plumbing or digestion although that might make a more interesting post.

I’m talking about good old practical, common sense, you know you should do it, but may not know how, backing up your blog posts, members, comments and trackbacks. It’s all the stuff that actually makes a blog a blog.

Backing up important files is a smart business practice and many people extend that to backing up web site files. The thing that makes backing up a blog a little trickier is that you may have your blog design or theme backed up, but the posts themselves in most of the blog software reside in a database that may only exist on your host’s server.

You need to take the extra step of exporting this data or backing up your mySql database.

WordPress uses a mySql database and most hosts have some routine that allows you to back up and download a copy of your database. Here’s a great tutorial on backing up mySql from Wordpress

Hosted blog software such as TypePad also has a feature that allow you to export all of your data and store a copy. TypePad export instructions.

It may not matter, but if you invest a year of two in creating lots of great search engine friendly content it could be a real bummer to lose it all. Especially if you thought you had backed it up because you backed up your web site files.

Your database files are particularly at risk during system or software upgrades. Just go do it and do it again on a regular basis.

6:00:06 AM