Recently there has been a great deal of buzz around the idea that “engagement” is a new metric used by ISPs and other mailbox providers to determine mailbox placement. However, engagement isnt new at all.  It has been a part of the filtering mix for quite a while.  The ISPs are simply adding clicks, opens and a few other measure of user engagement to the long list of other engagement metrics that have been in use for a while.

via MediaPost Publications Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? 10/06/2009.

At a time when the corporate world seems increasingly obsessed with digital solutions, legendary direct marketer Ernan Roman has some compelling news for brands: Recipients actually want your traditional mail. Roman says that prospects and customers have been so overwhelmed with e-mails in recent years that the deluge has turned off many of them. It has also made them more receptive to mail.

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Email: You can’t live with it, and you can’t live without it. For a relatively recent business tool, email certainly plays a big role in the lives of office workers. The average business user sends and receives about 170 messages a day…

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If you follow Internet marketing, you’ve likely been inundated with coverage of the importance of search engine marketing, blogs, RSS feeds, etc. Each of these techniques may have a place in your marketing planning, but it’s time to underscore the importance of e-mail as a critical component of your planning.

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Is e-mail communication so successful for your company that everyone wants to get in on the act? In many organizations, the marketing, sales, public relations, product marketing and market research departments all want to develop outbound e-mail communications.

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Say what you want about e-mail. The fact is, it is the backbone of online marketing and communications. E-mail remains the top online marketing channel today, according to Forrester Research. And for good reason. No other channel provides such clear, consistent and, quite frankly, unparalleled ROI.

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The phrase “online integration” has been bandied about for years, but it appears that few companies really understand and implement it successfully. In fact, many don’t have a clear definition of what integration actually entails.

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In the recesses of Web time-like the early ’90s, when Mosaic was “the” browser-there were few choices for designing on the Web. Now with CSS 3.0 looming on the horizon, the possibilities for designing on the small screen are increasing exponentially. But for those needing to create the digital counterpart of the printed flier, the technical possibilities are not much progressed from the digital Wild West equivalent of the mid-’90s.

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VIDEO IS COMING to email. Email-security firm Goodmail Systems plans to introduce Thursday a new technology to help marketers and media companies send videos via email. It screens video messages for bugs and viruses and emails them to consumers who have opted to receive them. the Mountain View, Calif., start-up is launching its video email service with Time Warner’s AOL unit.

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When it comes to e-mail deliverability, there, is only one way to ensure success: Build a good reputation. The perception lSPs and other receivers have of the mail sent by your mail servers determines whether or not your e-mail stays clear of spam filters and gets delivered to the inbox. Unfortunately, most marketers don’t have a clue where to start when it comes to determining delivery issues, much less figuring out what lSPs think of them.

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