Digital + Social

Are social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn becoming the new mass media?

Asked to list all the types of media they used to generate leads in 2009, more respondents to a recent Chief Marketer survey checked off e-mail than any other single channel.

It is with mixed emotions that I announce today that this is my final issue of Magilla Marketing.

Why am I leaving? It

In a case of sad or comical symbolism

There

E-mail bounce and complaint rates are relatively high in North America compared to the rest of the world and the continent’s open rates are relatively low, according to a study by Implix.

The average open rate—an “open” is recorded when the receiving machine calls for graphics from the sender—of HTML messages sent by Implix’s clients in North America was 25.44%, according to the e-commerce software provider. Europe, South America and Africa all came in at higher than 33%, according to the study.

Great, just what we need: a punctuation mark denoting sarcasm.

Everyone reading this by now knows that e-mail

Arguably the strangest idea in the short history of e-mail marketing comes in the form of the Web site BottleOnBeach.com.

Touted as an innovative answer to the spam problem, BottleOnBeach allows marketers to craft a text message and upload a list of e-mail addresses for which the message is intended.

For the stupidest top-10 list of 2010—yes, it’s only January, but it’s difficult to imagine this one being topped—look no further than the top-10 list of e-mail service providers published last week by an outfit called TopSEOs.

Besides claiming to evaluate things it can’t evaluate, actually being an existing e-mail service provider apparently wasn’t a requirement for inclusion.

Social media marketers likely feel a lot like e-mail marketers did 10 years ago—unsure of what tactics would prove to be effective, unable to rely on traditional direct marketing metrics, and eager for someone to introduce standards and best practices the industry could begin to rely on.