Marketing Websites

What CSS rules work with All Email Clients

Dec 14, 2011 by Paul White

Recently one of my clients alerted me that the HTML newsletter I built for them is not displaying correctly on outlook 2010.  So with a little research I had to figure out the best way to rebuild the newsletter to ensure it displays consistently with all email clients.  If you are a developer that is used to using box model designs ( div tags ), then you might want to rethink that approach.  Here are my findings.

Google Adsense Ad Serving disabled to your site

Aug 29, 2011 by Paul White

To generate a little revenue from your blog or website google adsense is a great option.  But when you an email from google with the subject of "Google Adsense ad serving has been disabled to your site", you suddenly find your only source of revenue gone.

This happened to me, but I was able to appeal this and get my Adsense ads turned back on.  If you find yourself in this situation and are running borderline adult websites, here are some tips that might help you.

Trick to getting past Gmail Spam Filters

Aug 11, 2011 by Paul White

After building a CRM system for a company, we noticed that some of our marketing emails were hitting the Gmail's Spam folder.  A little Trial and Error revealed some interesting facts about how Google's Spam Filter works.

Constant Contact Review Pros and Cons

Oct 4, 2010 by Paul White

The chances are you have received bulk emails from promoters and businesses who use constant contact.  Some people are wondering if constant contact is worth it?  Recently I had the need to setup one of my clients on constant contact so we could blast to our maillist.  Normally we would blast from our own mail server but after the recent move to a new datacenter and getting a new IP, we are starting from scratch with our IP reputation and therefore suffer from terrible delivery rates.  Once the major ISPs can figure out what kind of operation we are running our email delivery should return to normal.  In this post I discuss Constant Contact's pros and cons from my short term experience with them.

ISP Feedback Loop list

Sep 22, 2010 by Paul White

If you run a mail server, and do any kind of bulk emails, you need to sign up with the feedback loops to ensure you keep your mail list clean, and your IP reputation in good standing.  I have put together a complete list of all known feedback loops.  I also include some background information on FBLs and return path who manages most of them.

Should I become sender score verified

Apr 8, 2010 by Paul White

After months of dealing with low open rates with one of my biggest client's email lists, I have finally gotten to the point where I am willing to join return path's sender score verified program which is a paid whitelist to ensure delivery into the inbox. I will be documenting my experiences here for good or bad.  Thus far the program is looking very promising

How much is my traffic worth?

Feb 18, 2010 by Paul White

This is often the question many webmasters ask themselves.  The answer is not a straight forward one, but after discussing this with a few of my clients I have come up with a way to help you decide how much your traffic is worth.  However if you count on Google Adsense you may find yourself disappointed.

Adblockers financial impact on your websites traffic

Feb 12, 2010 by Paul White

Adblockers have a place in the world.  That place was back when we all were using dial up internet.  Now that everyone is on high speed broadband connections, adblockers are doing more harm than good.  I will show you some concrete data to prove that adblockers are hurting any website that is dependent on Google Adsense for Revenue.

How to increase your open rates for your bulk emails

Nov 14, 2009 by Paul White

If you are are like me you have a strong belief that if you want it done right you have to do it yourself.  Running a Mail Server that sends any kind of bulk emails brings many issues that noobie Server Admins don't have a clue about.  I found there wasn't much information about how to properly run a mail server so I thought I would write a complete blog on the issue.  So if you want to greatly increase your open rates, read this

Do Mail Servers penalize for not including Plain Text Email Content

Sep 5, 2009 by Paul White

This was a question I asked myself recently.  Its hard to believe that there are still people out there that don't accept HTML formatted emails.  But do mail servers from major providers punish emails that don't provide some old school plain text formatting for the 5 people in the world who are still get their email via compuserve?  So I will be experimenting to find out.