Tag Archives: spam

Email Marketing, Random Thoughts

Idol Gives Back and Deliverability Issues

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At every seminar, conference or industry summit that I attend, the issue of “Email Deliverability” is always a hot topic of conversation. It just seems like in the circles I run in, that is a key thing people talk about all the time (and for good reason). But, it’s not so often that I hear things in the mass media relating to email deliverability.

I bring this up because last night on Idol Gives Back (Donate Now Online), host Ryan Seacrest said that comedians Jonah Hill and Russell Brand begged and pleaded to organize a celebrity phone bank for the event.

The whole thing was a joke, of course, but when asked where all the celebrities were Hill said:

“The truth is, we emailed all those people, but the email might have gone into the spam file, because our email address is Viagraman182@gmail.com.”

I can only imagine that celebrities such as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, etc, etc would have their spam filters set high enough to screen out ‘Viagara’ based emails… I guess celebrities really are just like the rest of us. =)

Although the whole skit was a joke, I thought it was interesting to see the issue of spam and deliverability brought up on such a highly watched show as American Idol.

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Canada’s New Anti-Spam Legislation is Facing Some Opposition

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As email became an integral part of our daily lives, so did the issue of spam. One thing that everyone at Elite Email is always monitoring are the new spam laws being implemented in various countries. The most popular of the laws is the Can-Spam Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush on December 16, 2003 (Wikipedia). It has been amended since then and remains a key regulator of email marketing activities in the United States and also largely establishes a benchmark for email marketing regulations.

In Canada, Bill C-27 (A.K.A. the “Electronic Commerce Protection Act”) was introduced last spring (by Industry Minister Tony Clement) and has steadily made its way through the legislative process. The Standing Committee on Industry is likely to conduct it’s ‘clause by clause’ review this week.

The proposed law has similar limits to the laws already in place in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

There are, however, a growing number of business groups who have mounted attacks against the proposed law claiming that it will create new barriers to doing business online in Canada.

While the final rules in the law remain to be seen, Canadian’s have been down a similar road before with the “Do Not Call List”. The original proposal of the Do-Not-Call List was so gutted by the time it was passed that the end result is that the majority of telemarketing calls are still perfectly legal, even though there is a huge amount of numbers on the do-not-call list.

Since all of our Elite Email clients are sending permission-based messages adhering to email marketing best practices, this new legislation will likely not affect us. But, as always, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this as the story develops.