| LED Digest 2216: More on Open Rates and Bounces |
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9 posts on 5 topics with discussions covering Low AOL delivery Rates,
Email Delivery Fall Offs, Improving Rankings, Anchor Text and Linking, and Traffic Portals - Traffic Swarm...
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................. August 2, 2006 Issue no. 2216 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Speaking of Low AOL Delivery Rates ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Email Delivery Fall Offs ==-- ~ Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian "When I 'audit' my lists, I use the 'human reader' test." <Moderator Comment> ~ Janet Pickard "I send my email through netatlantic.com. I pay per subscriber..." ~ Charles Gartrell "In a few cases...we even saw delivery ratios at less than 10%." --== Suggestions on Improving Rankings ==-- ~ James Miller "Keyword optimisation is dubious anyway..." --== Anchor Text & Linking ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "I don't think this reply logically follows at all." ~ Bob Gladstein "This was one link." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Traffic Portals? Traffic Swarm? ==-- ~ Anthony Kirlew ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, Speaking of AOL and low delivery rates... check this out: AOL is suffering large amounts of closed accounts, and are apparently considering a move to an advertiser-supported model. From Slashdot: ------------------------- AOL planning on ad-supported model "In recognition of the fact that its subscriber-based revenues continue to plummet, AOL is planning to shift to an ad-supported business model. AOL's subscriber base, which peaked at 30 million users, now has less than 19 million subscribers and is still dropping -- over 800,000 subscribers dropped the service in this year's first quarter alone. In addition to seeing fewer AOL CDs, a shift to ad revenue also means some serious cuts in staff size, especially in the customer service and retention departments." http://slashdot.org/articles/06/08/01/1413211.shtml ------------------------- More in this article: ------------------------- "Time Warner plans to announce a series of changes at AOL that analysts say will mark the end of the company's paid-subscriber model. The company will begin relying on advertising sales rather than monthly fees paid by customers, according to the Wall Street Journal. 'I don't know whether advertising will work, but my thinking is (the changes) are basically an acceptance of what is happening,' says Joseph Bonner, a media and telecommunications analyst at Argus Research." http://snipurl.com/aol_changes [businessweek.com] ------------------------- ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian Subject: Email deliveries Hi Adam > Early last month we began a controlled audit of > all of our lists including the LED and List X. If it isn't too involved and intricate, could you please post a little more about the exact process this involves? > But List X didn't fare nearly as well. It experienced > massive attrition as auto-deletes bulldozed over > 130,000 subscribers off the list! When I 'audit' my lists (or as I call it, 'trim off the flab'), I use the 'human reader' test. I send out a series (usually 3) of direct response emails, and have a re-subscribe process on each (either give away a PDF for which they need to opt-in, or rarely, just send them to a form to re-join another list) This process decimates my list - often resulting in one smaller by 75% or more. But the small readership left behind at each stage is increasingly loyal, responsive, and a group any list owner would love to be in touch with. So, while technical issues of email deliverability matter, there's one more 'layer' of filtering to overcome to be effective email marketers. All success Dr. Mani .. the Ezine ANTI Marketer ;) http://www.ezinemarketingcenter.com/anti/ <Moderator Comment> > If it isn't too involved and intricate, could you please > post a little more about the exact process this involves? Sure, Dr. Mani. It's all controlled via our distribution software, and while the details are pretty fancy and technical, the way it initiates audits is pretty straightforward. We use L-Soft's Listserv and LSMTP, the high-powered versions of both that cost well into the 5-figure range. These systems were purchased back in the Adventive days (for those of you who remember) and we spared no expense for quality and reliability. Anyway, what Listserv does is pretty neat: it scans email lists using a passive server-level protocol that can be fine tuned and tweaked as needed. We normally have it on a moderate setting that removes emails from the list only if they bounce repeatedly 100 times or 5 days in a row. These auto-deletes are removed from the list but saved in a plain text flat file and can be manipulated from there -- bulk jobs either to confirm that they're bad addresses or whatever. Usually I just delete the file, since they've never *not* been bad emails. I sometimes take a random sample of 20 or 30 of them to be sure. Hope that's helpful. Adam -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Janet Pickard Subject: Email deliveries Hi Adam, In Issue no. 2215 you spoke of auto deletes in email lists. What is this and could it help me? I have a large list, also from way back when. I send my email through netatlantic.com. I pay per subscriber. This list is now double opt-in, but for many years just opt-in. My instincts tell me that 90% of this list is no good. When I check my logs for the day the email is sent, that is about what my traffic increases (every week for years now). Netatlantic says 97% have reached the subscriber. That just isn't so. Since I pay per subscriber, I would love to find a way to delete the bounced or "qmail" type subscribers. Any suggestions? Many thanks! Best, Janet Pickard www.chesscentral.com The Leader in Cutting-Edge Chess [I spoke with Janet off-list about her problem, but thought it would be useful to post here as well. Any LEDers have tips / advice / opinions on her predicament? -ed.] -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Charles Gartrell Subject: Email deliveries > Has anyone noticed a fall off on email deliveries lately? > I suspect that this all has to do with both AOL and Yahoo's > agreements to use Goodmail... - John Wagner, LED 2214 We had noticed this issue a while back, even for smaller lists (few hundreds), with large numbers of bounce-backs and what have you. This coupled with the GoodMail systems did not not bode well for our customers (which generally operate small to modest size mail lists). In a few cases with a list of around 9000 we even saw delivery ratios at less than 10%. We did not have a bunch of happy campers to say the least as result. Since delivery and open rates are for the most part more important to our customers than speed, we tried something a bit different. First we dropped use of our mail list software and developed a custom application. This new system (at least to us) does the following - sends both HTML and text messages to each address, customizes each message with the subscribers name and email address, and sends no more than 50 messages per hour (not exactly true - it sends messages seperated by quarter of a second between each for a group of no more than 50 addresses) until the entire list is completed. Now admitedly this is (very) slow but it works - bounce backs are very small, bad addresses are few and open rates are very good (we have one list over 90%). Is this a universal solution? Nope... this approach is only effective for small to modest lists (< 15000 or so) but it does work and our customers are happy again. How long this will work is another matter - major ISPs will muddy the waters again I'm sure. Charles Gartrell http://www.bearweb.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: James Miller Subject: Improving rankings > When my clients stop using my services, their > sites remain just as visible in the search engines > as they always were, and in many cases do even > better over the years. - Jill Whalen, LED 2214 > [We] do not practice what I call "targeted SEO". > This is the common practice of selecting only a > small number of keywords or phrases and then > optimizing to get the best rankings possible. - Chris Nielsen, LED 2215 I'll agree with both of you. What you're talking about is improving the ranking by site design and content. Keyword optimisation is dubious anyway, as I've found that a lot of my sales come from totally unrelated areas to where I think they will. It's probably the same for many web sites. I've always found that case studies, slightly-related comment and articles and good writing are the best way to go up that list. James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Linking > A site I run was #1 in Google (searching from the US) for over > a year for the term [mannequin Parisien] because of a single > link. My site is in English and doesn't contain either of those > words, but the link was from a French site based in Quebec. - Bob Gladstein, LED 2214 > You don't present enough data to draw any supportable conclusions. > If that is all the data you have, you do yourself a great > disservice by attempting to draw any conclusions at all. - Michael Martinez, LED 2216 I don't think this reply logically follows at all. A number of generalized, global statements are made that are related to but not directly addressing Bob Gladstein's precise point. Those statements are of a provocative and dismissive nature ("groped blindly in the dark", "failing to grasp", "concocting", "wild", "unsubstantiable theories"), finally arriving at this "conclusion". On the contrary, I think being ranked #1 for a term that doesn't exist on the site but only in a link is noteworthy and allows, at least, some preliminary thoughts, if not hard-and-fast conclusions. I also think that it is very interesting that this seems to have taken not a huge number of links (as with "miserable failure"), but only one. If anyone thinks that the rank did not come from that link, a useful reply would be to present an alternative theory on how it happened, with supporting facts or a well-thought-out argument. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bob Gladstein Subject: Linking > There is, so far, no evidence whatsoever > that Google has made any changes to the > core algorithm. - Michael Martinez, LED 2215 Michael, I did not claim that the algorithm has changed. I stated that, "I can't prove it, since it's no longer in the top 50 for that search, but at least about 18 months ago, anchor text was pretty important." [see issue 2214 for Bob's original post: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/543/55/ -ed] That does not mean that I'm claiming it's changed. It means that I can no longer show you this particular example. At no point in my post did I claim that an algorithmic change caused my site to drop. In fact, I suggested no reason why it dropped. Why it dropped wasn't my point. Where and under what circumstances it ranked during the period I described was my point. Where you got the idea that I was claiming that Google has changed the way it treats anchor text is beyond me. I was simply responding to you, when you wrote: > But don't mistake the weight of link QUANTITY for > the weight of link anchor text. Those abnormal > searches... occur because of a large number of links. - Michael Martinez, LED 2213 My point was that I have seen the anchor text of one link carry enough weight to put a page at the top of a search on that anchor text and keep it there for an extended period of time. This was a result that was not caused by a "large number of links." I was in no way "concocting wild, unsubstantiable theories." I was giving a single example of a case in which one link made a difference, and I think that example makes your claim a bit harder to support. > So just because non-English rankings change for an > English document that is linked to with non-English > anchor text doesn't mean that Google started looking > at link anchor text differently... Show me where I said that "Google started looking at link anchor text differently." Yes, that is all the data I have, because it's not a study, or a claim of some algorithmic change. It's a single example that demonstrates that your claim is incorrect. Here's your statement: > But don't mistake the weight of link QUANTITY for the > weight of link anchor text. Those abnormal searches > don't occur because of one or even a handful of links. > They occur because of a large number of links. > Google never put as much weight on linkage as SEOs > continue to believe it did. But because SEOs convinced > themselves that Google put that much weight on linkage, > they focused on linkage, and by overwhelming other factors > through linkage they succeeded in improving rankings > (the hard way) enough that they felt had proof of the concept. [see issue 2213 for Michael's entire post: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/542/55/ -ed] This was one link. I'm sure it's not the only example of a single link carrying enough weight to rank a page that does not contain that text. But you are the one who made the absolute statement (I leave it to the reader to determine whether or not it was a "wild unsubstantiable theory") that "[t]hose abnormal searches... occur because of a large number of links". My simple, single example, in my opinion, is enough to demonstrate that your absolute statement ("They occur because...") is not absolutely correct. And that is all I intended it to do. It was not meant to serve as the basis of some theory that anchor text is the end-all and be-all, or that it was until some major shake-up occurred, and there is nothing in my post that should have made you think that that was my intention. I am not groping blindly, and I have to tell you that I take offense at being labeled in that manner. And believe me, it takes a lot to get me to take offense. I was giving a single example; not making a claim of proof of an algo change. You really need to stop making these absolutist statements and then claiming that's what everyone else is doing, Michael. It isn't nice to twist what others say, or to accuse them of promoting theories when they're simply giving a single example in order to move a discussion forward. If you wanted to actually contribute to the discussion, you could have theorized about why my page had ranked for the term. Maybe there were other links I wasn't aware of. Maybe there were thousands of them. Maybe it was a glitch that wasn't fixed for a long time. But in any case, it did happen, and claiming that I'm groping doesn't change that. Or maybe you should just quit claiming that your beliefs are absolute facts and attacking those who demonstrate that they're not. You do us all a great disservice when you do that. Bob Gladstein Raise My Rank ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Anthony Kirlew Subject: Traffic portals > The company is called Veretekk. One of its > big deals is in creating traffic portals... Another > thing that is used by this program is Traffic Swarm. - Tom Anson, LED 2215 RE: Traffic Swarm We try to test almost every marketing program out there as long as it doesn't seem outright fraudulent, scandalous, or blatantly ridiculous. I took a good look at Traffic Swarm after I read that someone said it had "worked well for him". He was selling ebooks which is pretty common on their network, but I don't know what "worked for him" meant. As you eluded, many people are vague with their alleged successes. Traffic Swarm is a system where you can view websites to earn credits to have your website displayed on the screen of those who are clicking through to sites in order to earn credits so that others can click through to their site. To say it is targeted traffic is a stretch because if people are clicking through to build their click count, they won't care about what they are reading. I assume if you have very compelling web copy, you could make some sales or capture some customers. You can enroll for free or pay $30 per month to not have to click and have visitors come to your site(s). What you will see there is mostly network marketing related, get-rich-quick type schemes, or lots of web marketing stuff (ironically). That isn't to say that you can't get a customer out of it, but it's not something I would ever recommend to anyone serious about marketing a web site. RE: Veretekk We are actually doing a test on this right now, but not really monitoring it closely. I am not impressed however with the connection between Veretekk and FFA's as they are "roots of spam" and again, not something which should ever be used by anyone serious about marketing. I say invest your time in good quality search marketing supplemented by paid search and enjoy true targeted traffic. Anthony Kirlew Principal, Web Traffic Team http://webtrafficteam.wordpress.com - blog "We've just launched The Web Traffic Academy" http://www.webtrafficacademy.com
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