Author: Anthony Mitchell

Anthony Mitchell is a Deliverability Consultant with ten years of experience in all areas of E-Mail Deliverability & Abuse Management.
A Blogger & Youtuber, discussing all things email

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Beginners Guide

Lesson 2, the beginning of Commercial email

Lesson 2, the beginning of Commercial email

Now we start to discover the initial beginnings of commercial email. Please note that there are many ISPs not mentioned here, however i shall endeavor to cover them in my blog postings along the line, the major players are mentioned as key points of reference. I found a really cool infographic regarding the history of commercial email.

In 1988 Steve Dorner developed Eudora the first commercial product to be widely used for reading and sending email on local area networks (LANs)

A year later in 1989 Compuserve and MCI mail become first formally sanctioned email carriers connected to the internet (1989)

1991, Ray Ozzie and Mitch Kapor released a major version of Lotus Notes (2.0)

1992, Microsoft releases Microsoft Outlook their answer to Lotus Notes.

In 1993, AOL brought out an ISP, which was accessible internet based email system by this time there were 7 million users.

Continue reading “Lesson 2, the beginning of Commercial email”
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Blog

Brazil to create secure email service; impact?

I recently retweeted about plans to create a secure email service in Brazil,

what implications could this have to those sending to this ISP? i asked myself. The article from the BBC is a good source to start from, but then what about those insecure external sources sending communications to this new email service?

There are some strong stories of late in the media in regards to security threats, snooping and of others obtaining secure information, one of those being the NSA.

So what can we expect?

Continue reading “Brazil to create secure email service; impact?”
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Beginners Guide

Lesson 1, the history of email

Lesson 1, the history of email

Electronic mail, commonly referred to as email or e-mail since 1993, is the method of exchanging messages from a sender to the receiver on a network, generally the internet.

The first email was sent in 1971 by a man called Raymond Tomlinson over the ARPANET. He implemented the first email system that sent an electronic message from one computer to another, in doing so he also coined the ‘@’ symbol to seperate the user name from the senders domain, which has been used ever since.

The ARPANET is famous for securely transferring protected military files between networks. As the ARPANET expanded from 4 research labs to several others, different models of computers were connected, thus creating compatability issues.
The solution was a set of protocols now referred to as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) this was designed in 1982.

ray_tomlinson

 

 

 

 

 

Raymond Tomlinson was also deeply involved in services needed to send emails over networks, these services included;
Mail Transport Agent (MTA) to move emails between machines, setting a standard format for email messages and designing a tool for creating and reading messages.

Continue reading “Lesson 1, the history of email”
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Blog

10 quick wins for responsive email design tailored for your audience

1) Use the information provided via the user at sign up, such as which device they usually open emails with or via your ESP reporting
2) Use the media query (@media) to adapt styling for smart phone environments
3) Determine the width and height of the smartphones you are targetting
4) Experiment with subject line length and pre header text for mobile environments
5) Ensure to check renderability in each environment prior to sending campaigns to ensure compatability
6) Aswell as checking if the email is renderable ensure the syntax of your code is correct here
7) Check your inbox placement rates with your new creatives before sending your campaign
8) After adapting your creative check that your opens and click through rates are consistant for each ISP/platform post campaign
9) Ensure to include an Add to safe sender email address in your creative
10) Add yourself to the seed list to ensure you receive the live campaign in each of the Mobile environments

oldphonedial

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Blog

IOS 7 upgrade, lots of unread emails, gmail reputation boost for some clients..

Upgraded my iphone with the IOS 7 today, couldn’t help but notice i had 87 unread emails, since when?
Well, this is because since the upgrade its taking into account all of the emails you have received in your accounts since day dot, and not just the passed few weeks.

IOS 7 unread

For those that don’t know you can select all and mark them as read, here is a quick how to from pcadvisor. Just make sure you check the fact that they are old emails and you are not in fact MR/MRs popular, i’d hate for you to get me on that one.

Who knows? maybe for those clients who are sending to the spam/promotions folder, they might get a few more opens after all…
hmmm, how can we do this with clicks also. Don’t even think about it, were talking gmail.

Select all, mark as read.

cheers,

Anthony Mitchell

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Blog

Time to get responsive

A high Inbox placement rate is key in order to maximize your ROI.

Once you’ve ticked that box,  it is now time to also get serious about being responsive.
Almost 50% of email is opened in a mobile environment, and the numbers are growing.

responsive design

What’s your strategy?

I read a great article over at litmus, they have some great tips on how to optimize your email for mobile environments.
So what do you do now? you’ve got into the Inbox, you’ve optimized your html creative.

  • Ensure that you test your from label, subject line and pre header text, now is time to mop up on those opens and clicks.

Please keep an eye out for my top 10 quick wins for a responsive email design, hope to post that in the week.
Feel free also to feedback or discuss the best ways you tailor your email campaigns for mobile,

cheers,
Anthony M