Digital + Social

The man behind India-based Data Champions/Sloan Marketing—the company that seemingly operates or has operated under EmailAppenders and dozens of other aliases—may be wanted by U.S. authorities on 10-year-old immigration charges.

According to anti-spam blocklisting site Spamhaus, the owner of Data Champions/Sloan Marketing is a man named Subhakar “Sam” Surapaneni.

“Data Champions owner Subhakar ‘Sam’ Surapaneni appears to reside in the physical jurisdiction of India, probably Bangalore,” according to Spamhaus.org

In 1999, the Detroit News reported that Surapaneni was ordered to pay a $450,000 fine under a plea agreement after federal investigators found he had brought in dozens of immigrants from India under false claims and housed some in squalid conditions.

Cash and debit cards are apparently in and credit cards are out this Christmas season.

One quarter of Christmas shoppers will pay for gifts this year with cash, a 9.1% increase from last year

Someone forgot to tell small-business owners e-mail is dead.

According to a just-released survey done by Hurwitz & Associates on behalf of e-mail service provider Campaigner, 46% of businesses with 20 employees or fewer use e-mail marketing today and of those who don

This week, we received the most irritating letter from my son

The findings from a new Performics and ROI Research survey of more than 3,000 consumers about their use of social media many reasons to get excited about social media marketing strategies.

Marketing software-as-a-service firm Mansell Group announced last week it has acquired the e-mail marketing business of Premiere Global Services. Both companies are headquartered in Atlanta. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The email applications …

Email Data Source, a company that sells intelligence on the e-mail activities of thousands of companies and brands, recently launched a service that it claims enables marketers to measure the effectiveness of their Twitter messages.

Financial services and telecommunications firms were best at engaging their customers with e-mail in the first three quarters of 2009 while retail, travel and hospitality marketers fared worst, according to a just-released study by e-mail consultancy Pivotal Veracity.

Yet another e-mail list-sales firm has surfaced that appears to be related to the same India-based outfit that operated EmailAppenders, a company that has been accused by multiple marketers of ripping them off.

This new firm is going by the name Optin Consulting.