Digital + Social

As reported elsewhere in this issue of Magilla Marketing, Hawaii legislators reportedly decided the state

Well, we finally found the idiots who respond to spam. They’re apparently getting penis operations.

From the just-when-you-think-you

Tech Web site CircleID.com ran a blog post by Meng Wong, best known as the lead developer of e-mail authentication scheme SPF, in which Wong predicts eliminating phishing will require e-mail box providers to move to a whitelist-only model:

“Just so you know where I’m coming from, the foremost concern in my mind is this: The final solution to the phishing problem requires that people use a whitelist-only, default-deny paradigm for e-mail.

Alliance Data Systems Corp.

In what is believed to be industry first, Petco Animal Supplies is testing to see if including customer-written product reviews in its outbound e-mail campaigns boosts conversion-to-sale rates.

The Georgia state Senate last week took another step toward helping wipe legal, adult content out of the e-mail marketplace by passing The Georgia Child, Family and School Communications Protection Act.

The bill

Alliance Data Systems Corp. has announced that its Epsilon unit will acquire DoubleClick E-mail solutions for $90 million.

The deal will give Epsilon a stronger presence in the retail, travel, publishing and consumer-packaged-goods markets. It will also give Epsilon 400 more clients, such as J. Crew, Patagonia, Unilever and Proctor & Gamble.

For a company that no one heard of until recently, Goodmail sure was able to stir up the Net Nannies with its announcement that AOL was going to start using its certified e-mail service and charge bulk mailers for guaranteed delivery of their blasts with the graphics and links intact.

With all the empty-headed, alarmist crap that was published last week about the AOL-Goodmail announcement, it was refreshing to run across a thoughtful assessment of the news from permission-marketing guru Seth Godin on his blog: