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Remember way back when Facebook first announced that it was rolling out its custom email addresses? A lot of marketers, myself included, thought it was a clever play and that it would affect email marketing adversely. Tonight, when I logged into Facebook, I saw the following notice:

Facebook

Looks like that didn’t pan out so well. Of course, this creates an interesting unintended consequence. Every @facebook.com address is now effectively a mail relay for the primary email account, so if you can’t find someone’s personal email address, you can just send it to their Facebook address and it’ll get relayed. To avert this harm, I’d strongly encourage you to give Facebook its own email address, like a Gmail account that you plan to never check, so that unscrupulous marketers don’t take advantage of what is now the world’s largest open mail relay. (Dear Facebook: you may want to sunset those Facebook.com email addresses at some point soon-ish)

Speaking of Gmail…

Gmail_adding_prominent__Unsubscribe__option_to_marketing_emails___PCWorld

That’s right… Gmail wants to make it easier for readers to unsubscribe. I’ve been a promoter of this philosophy for years, which is why the unsubscribe buttons are always giant graphics in my newsletters. It’s nice to see Google following suit. That said, this is going to make a lot of email marketers even more unhappy, because Gmail’s deliverability was already a guessing game.

Get ready by committing not to send another crappy, pointless, useless email to your customers. Be willing and eager to invest the time to make your newsletter not just good, but great enough that people look forward to it. Remember the 3L test, and apply it rigorously to your next email piece.

Exciting times in the world of email marketing.


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