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Changes to CakeMail’s Anti-Spam Policy

By Francois Lane on June 30th, 2008

In order to comply with the industry’s best practices and to ensure the finest and most trustworthy service possible for both our clients and their customers, CakeMail announces 2 modifications to its Anti-Spam Policy. These changes have already been put into practice:

1- The recipient must have been contacted in the past 12 months: If the recipient hasn’t received anything from the emailer in the past year, a message requesting confirmation of the recipient’s opt-in to the list must be sent prior to sending them any other information or offer. This period was previously 2 years.

2- CakeMail requires notified opt-in: In the case of only a single opt-in, the recipient should receive a confirmation email following registration. This email should offer the recipient a clear link to opt-out, if he so chooses. We would also like to add that a double opt-in is, by all experts, strongly recommended in building a confident relationship with the recipients on your list.

If you have any questions following the implementation of these practices, do not hesitate to contact us.

Filed under: Announcement, Best practices — No Comments »

CakeMail part of the CMS of Evolving Solutions

By Isabel Lapointe on June 27th, 2008

Since 2001 Evolving Solutions has been offering their web marketing expertise to more than 100 small- and medium-sized companies in Atlantic Canada and the North Eastern USA. Their flagship product is Big Santo, a CMS tool to which CakeMail has recently been implemented. We had the chance to chat with Chris Nadeau, one of the two brothers behind Evolving Solutions.

- As the Chief Love Officer of the company, how do you intend to use CakeMail to spread tenderness and passion?
As the Chief Love Officer, spreading the love is of the utmost importance and with CakeMail we can now spread the love via email marketing, easier now then ever before.

We have researched many email platforms and CakeMail is by far the most intuitive and affordable we have seen. It literally took a few hours to get up and running with CakeMail’s private label solution, and now we have our own Big Santo Mail. With the integration of CakeMail into the Big Santo platform, our customers can now collect email addresses from their websites very easily and promote their products or services in a very cost-effective way. It makes for much more interactive experiences on their websites. It also makes great business sense.

- How do you work with your brother and not fight? What’s your secret? ;-)
That is the beauty of working with your brother. We have been fighting our whole lives ;-) and as business partners we know how to forgive and forget. By the way, the older brother always wins :-)

We have the highest trust for each other and with any relationship you have professionally or personally, that creates a much better experience.

- Anything else you wish to add?
Customers love the simplicity of CakeMail, and for them to slice and dice their data easily from the dashboard makes us and our organization look like geniuses.

Filed under: Customer Profiles — 2 Comments »

FTC’s CAN-SPAM new rules: are you legal?

By Isabel Lapointe on June 25th, 2008

On July 7, new regulations of the Federal Trade Commission, FTC’s, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) will be effective. Here are the 4 topics concerning the work of email marketers:

(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;

(3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”;

(4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Here is an informative article summarizing the new policies and offering advices on how to make sure you’re complying with these new rules : How to make sure your email is legal.

Filed under: Best practices — No Comments »

Before you press the SEND button

By Isabel Lapointe on June 23rd, 2008

Seth Godin, the marketing Guru, recently wrote an Email checklist.

With his special sense of humour, he presents a list of points to think about before you click on Send. Here are some guidelines related to permission marketing :

  • 4. Did every person on the list really and truly opt in? Not like sort of, but really ask for it?
  • 5. So that means that if I didn’t send it (the message) to them, they’d complain about not getting it?
  • 6. See #5. If they wouldn’t complain, take them off (the list)!
  • 8. Aside: the definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel).
  • 9. Is the email from a real person? If it is, will hitting reply get a note back to that person? (if not, change it please).
  • 12. If it is a cold-call email, and I’m sure it’s welcome, and I’m sure it’s not spam, then I don’t apologize. If I need to apologize, then yes, it’s spam, and I’ll get the brand-hurt I deserve.
Filed under: Best practices — No Comments »

Dutch: The Fourth Language Available on CakeMail Thanks to ZennerMedia from Belgium

By Isabel Lapointe on June 4th, 2008

MailMarketing.beFollowing English, French and Russian, Dutch is now available for CakeMail users. The interface has been translated by ZennerMedia, an Internet company based in Belgium that is happy to have a way to serve customers in their 3 official languages.

We were fortunate to have an occasion to chat with Sam Zenner, CEO of ZennerMedia.

CakeMail: Could you please tell us about what ZennerMedia does?
Sam Zenner: ZennerMedia’s main focus is to help companies get their stories out there. Rather than helping our customers shout louder in a place where everyone is already screaming for attention, we want to provide them with solutions that “take people’s breath away”.

We try to be a full-service agency, serving custom-made websites that adhere to the highest industry standards. This also means that we manage our customers’ blogs as well as their mailing lists.

CM: Why did you choose CakeMail and how will it help your business?
SZ: We chose to work with CakeMail because of its entirely translatable interface. Not having to program an email application from scratch saved us a lot of time and working with CakeMail didn’t interrupt our regular workflow. We’ll be able to offer to our customers an entirely Dutch app less than 2 months after our first contact with CakeMail team.

CM: What language issue is CakeMail solving for your specific needs?
SZ: Even though Belgium is sort of a multilingual country (3 official languages), much of the “older” generation doesn’t understand English all that well. This Dutch version of CakeMail will help our business, in that we no longer have to confront our customers with an English interface. From now on we can direct our clients to the MailMarketing.be website and they’ll find a clean, easy to use interface in their native language.

CM: What were your specific challenges related to the translation?
SZ: Even though the translation module isn’t finished quite yet, everything was fully functional so I don’t have any complaints. The biggest challenge in translating was to abbreviate most of the interface, because the Dutch language tends to need more words than English to explain the same thing.

CM: Anything else you wish to add?
SZ: I hope we can continue to work with The Code Kitchen on new projects. I liked working with the team and there are a lot of app’s out there that would be used a whole lot more if they could be translated!

Filed under: Announcement, Customer Profiles, Feature Release, Languages — No Comments »
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