Email Marketing - Spam traps o que são?

Para principiantes em email marketing, spam traps são coisas desconhecidas e até parecem obra do diabo, mas fica aqui uma pequena explicação do que são e que tipo têm:

"There are two types of spam traps:

• Pristine traps: these are new email addresses that never sign up for email. They exist solely to identify spammers who collect email addresses by unscrupulous means.
• Recycled spam traps: these are real addresses that have been abandoned by the user for at least 18 months. Marketers who don’t practice good list hygiene, or who use acquired lists, can be caught in these traps."

Basicamente ou são endereços criados pelos ISPs com o único proposito de serem harvested na net e por isso identificarem um spammer sem dúvidas, ou no segundo caso, são emails reais de utilizadores "normais" que deixaram de usar esse email durante 18meses (isto certamente que depende de cada um dos ISPs). Significando que se estamos a fazer email marketing de forma "incorreta" já que estamos a enviar e-mails durante um longo periodo de tempo para um e-mail que supostamente já não é usado há muito tempo. Dizem as boas regras do email marketing que não devemos enviar e-mails para subscritores que não tenham qualquer actividade (clicks ou opens) nos ultimos 2/3 meses (mais uma vez aqui há uma divisão entre os "opinion makers" em que alguns falam em 2 meses, outros em 6 meses, mas um best guess seriam 3 meses).

fonte: econsultancy

Email marketing research

O site www.marketingprofs.com tem um extenso conjunto de artigos e estatisticas sobre marketing em geral e email marketing em particular.

US Market principalmente

 Um resumo do que me chamou à atenção http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/8560/email-open-and-click-rates-benchmarks-trends
Open rates a cair, click rates a subir (2009 - 2010)
Software Industry é a indústria com maiores OR
Software Industry é das indústrias com maiores CR
Education e Travel estão nos piores valores

http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2211/three-things-you-must-do-before-you-increase-email-frequency
Aumento de 15% de volume por subscritor nos grandes retalhistas entre 2009 e 2010.
152 emails por subscriber... sim 152 emails por subscriber, o ano tem 365 dias ou no máximo 366

http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2604/advanced-email-segmentation
Segmentação ajuda... sim isso já sabiamos. Sobre "28% see lower opt-out" é que tenho dúvidas já que normalmente a taxa de unsubscribe está muito relacionada com a taxa de clicks... e supostamente essa sobe muito.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/8247/email-marketing-sender-reputation-benchmarks-and-trends
Spam complains sempre acima de 1% e a chegar aos 4% num determinado periodo só pode querer dizer que os spam filters estão a funcionar muito mal... caso contrário o e-mail nem era visto pelo utilizador... Estranho muito estes dados.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2540/why-inactive-subscribers-might-be-just-fine
inactivos durante 1 ano??? As boas práticas indicam 3 meses, 4 meses, 6 meses...
Há aqui alguns quotes muito discutiveis, 5% da base engaged é bom? não tem impactos na deliverability? Discordo bastante disso.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/7584/email-content-still-most-likely-to-influence-buying-decisions
Email marketing é o canal de comunicação que influencia mais compras (percentualmente) A comunicação preferida feita entre as marcas e os consumidores é o e-mail (comparando com direct mail, sms, telefone, etc)

Tudo sobre os spamtraps

Para quem se interessa sobre deliverability aqui está uma boa descrição http://blog.briteverify.com/the-truth-about-spamtraps

Wordpress modal box

I was trying to create a modal box for a wordpress blog where after 30 seconds a user has arrived the blog, a modal box would automatically show up asking the user to subscribe a newsletter.


After some research and using this article as source I came to this result (in this example there are 5 seconds delay):


<div id="boxes">

<div id="dialog" class="window">
<b>Testing of Modal Window</b> |

<!-- close button is defined as close class -->
<a href="#" class="close">Close it</a>

</div>


<!-- Do not remove div#mask, because you'll need it to fill the whole screen -->
<div id="mask"></div>
</div>
<style>

/* Z-index of #mask must lower than #boxes .window */
#mask {
position:absolute;
z-index:9000;
background-color:#000;
display:none;
}

#boxes .window {
position:absolute;
width:440px;
height:200px;
display:none;
z-index:9999;
padding:20px;
}


/* Customize your modal window here, you can add background image too */
#boxes #dialog {
width:375px;
height:203px;
background-color:#FF0000;
}
</style>
<script>

$(document).ready(function() {


//if close button is clicked
$('.window .close').click(function (e) {
//Cancel the link behavior
e.preventDefault();
$('#mask, .window').hide();
});

//if mask is clicked
$('#mask').click(function () {
$(this).hide();
$('.window').hide();
});

setTimeout('showbox()',5000);
});
function showbox()
{
var id = '#dialog';
var maskHeight = $(document).height();
var maskWidth = $(window).width();

//Set height and width to mask to fill up the whole screen
$('#mask').css({'width':maskWidth,'height':maskHeight});

//transition effect
$('#mask').fadeIn(1000);
$('#mask').fadeTo("slow",0.8);

//Get the window height and width
var winH = $(window).height();
var winW = $(window).width();

//Set the popup window to center
$(id).css('top', winH/2-$(id).height()/2);
$(id).css('left', winW/2-$(id).width()/2);

//transition effect
$(id).fadeIn(2000);
}

</script>

Hadoop Hive

Interesting information regarding Hadoop and Hive:

Hadoop and hive in Facebook

Infosys regarding Hadoop and Hive for DW

Hadoop Hive in EC2 example

While researching Hadoop and Hive (for dw purposes), I found that

- Cloudera has some AMI which include Hadoop and Hive for Ec2 - I was able to easily use one of these AMI and perform some basic tests (hadoop was already installed in this instance, and all i had to do was "apt-get install hive"). The AMI was for a x86 server with AMI ID ami-ed59bf84

- sqoop is a tool to transfer data from and to RDBMS (Mysql or Postgres for example)

- Here is a project for tracking trends (using data from wikipedia) that uses Hadoop, Hive and EC2. I will give it a try soon.

I'm trying to perform some tests with these technologies, it's not easy because documentation is not easy to find. If you are doing the same please, comment this post and let me know your progresses.

Proxies for other countries

I was searching for a solution for testing some websites, emulating my location. I wanted to pretend that I was, for instance in Italy.

This task was difficult, because there are many "proxie" lists in the internet, but many of those proxies do not work, or are very slow.

Even some payed services offer a monthly list os proxies, however these lists usually have 1/3 of the proxies working, so it's not really an option!

After searching a lot, I found this provider: overplay which is a vpn provider serving over 20 countries and giving the possibility to visit other sites with an another country IP.

As they say, this is interesting if you are testing websites, or services, or even when you are trying to buy online in a different country that will filter your IP address (or does not accept your credit card because you are visiting the website from a different country).

This service also provides encrypted connection that protects your data while browsing the internet or making a transaction. Let's see how it works.

From what i've seen they are now giving access to many European countries: Spain, France, Italy, Dutch, Germany, United Kingdom, Poland, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Swiss and Sweden. There are also non-European countries like Australia, Japan, United States of America, Canada, South Korea, Brazil and many others.

----> Update: tried this software, works very well, however the offer (free month if you post with a link) is not working!