1786 Defeating iOS Mail’s autolinking feature http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/defeating-ios-mails-autolinking-feature/ 1324520753 Are you checking your email on iOS Mail as part of your QA process? If not, your email layouts might be breaking in unexpected ways.

When displaying an email, iOS Mail parses through the text and if it sees a string that it recognizes as a date or address, it will automatically create an iCal or Address Book link (respectively). While this feature is a nice to have for the email recipient, it’s a disaster for unknowing email marketers.

Here’s an example:

BEFORE



AFTER


As you can see the string “12/22/11” is converted into a link with disastrous results. Adding css styles like “text-decoration: none ! important” or any other styles to try to override have no effect. Please don’t start cursing Apple or replace all of your date strings with images. There is a workaround.

The only way to defeat the autolinking feature is to beat iOS Mail to the punch—turn your date and address strings into links before it does. Wrap those strings in A tags with the href attribute equal to #. Include your desired styling and voila, iOS Mail will ignore them completely. The only downside is that you have links that serve no purpose and link to #.

Have you encountered this issue? Do you have any other workarounds to share?

]]> Jeremy Hilton 2 1779 Environmentally-Conscious SPAM Infographic http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/environmentally-consicious-spam-infographic/ 1318890210 Spam isn’t just an annoyance and inconvenience for our inboxes; it actually produces a negative global impact on the environment. The team at webpagefx.com recently released the infographic below explaining just how this is possible. They claim that each spam email on average causes as much CO2 emissions as driving 3 feet. Compound that with the worldwide volume and you have quite the impact on the global environment.

]]> Bryan Quilty 0 1777 Hotmail Revamps Usability Features; Declares War on Newsletters http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/hotmail-revamps-usability-features-declares-war-on-newsletters/ 1318013829 Hotmail claims that a good 75% of their spam complaints consist of legit email, most of which are newsletters and / or sales offers. Because of this, they are classifying this email as “graymail”. Hotmail recently explained their reasoning behind this on their blog. See their piechart breakdown of what their average user’s inboxes consist of.

So what Hotmail plans on doing is creating a “Newsletter” category, which emails will filter into automatically. How do they determine which emails are newsletters exactly? They plan on using their “Smartscreen” technology, which they claim to have a 95% success rate.

This may be a little troublesome for us email marketers. I have a feeling open rates for Hotmail users will drop briefly, but only until Hotmail users get used to the new automatic filtration process.

Along with their newsletter filtering process, they’re also unveiling a new unsubscribe process which is independent from the CAN-SPAM compliant links within emails. See the screenshot below for what users will see:

Another cool feature they’ve announced is Sweep, which is a part of Scheduled Cleanup. This feature basically removes all previous marketing messages from a specific sender, only leaving the most recent email in your inbox. The rest are filtered out into a different folder. Check out the video below:


This is just the tip of the iceberg for the new Hotmail. It’ll be interesting to see if any other major ISPs adopt similar tactics to keep users’ inboxes cleaned up by default. Personally, I think this is a little too intrusive on Hotmail’s part, but I suppose they have their reasons. What do you think?

Read more about their new features on their blog.

]]> Bryan Quilty 0 1776 Poll: How Do You Deal With Unwanted Messages? http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/poll-how-do-you-deal-with-unwanted-messages-ive-always-wondered-how-people-/ 1317686288 I’ve always wondered how people handle unwanted marketing messages. Now, keep in mind I’m not singling out SPAM either—these messages are usually taken care of automatically by your ISP— I’m talking about any email that you’ve subscribed to that you don’t have the time for at the moment. Do you delete them? Do you leave them just sitting in your inbox unread (this would drive me absolutely crazy)? Do you mark them as read?

If you’re anything like me, you treat your inbox with a fair amount of respect—not allowing it to get too cluttered or mismanaged at any one point. Personally, I mark all unwanted emails as read, but I’m curious to find out what my readers do when they want to blank out their entire inbox quickly.


I’d assume from the outset that the results will show that most people mark as read or delete unwanted emails. But a part of me wonders just how sophisticated the average person is becoming in terms of their inbox and other sources of information online. It’d be very interesting to see if many people have filters setup for their inbox.

]]> Bryan Quilty 2 1768 Crispers: Audio Double Opt-In Instructions http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/crispers-audio-double-opt-in-instructions/ 1314224929 So this is a first for me… After I submitted my email for Crisper’s newsletter, I was driven to this landing page (make sure your speakers are on before you click).

Pretty nifty, right?

If for some reason you don’t have working audio on whatever machine or device you’re reading this on, find the transcript of the audio below:

“In a moment you’ll receive an email message asking you to confirm your email address and activate your subscription. Please check your email inbox now. Open that email and click on the confirm link. Once you do, your subscription will immediately be activated!“

It’s interesting to note that the recording doesn’t mention Crispers by name. Which means this is clearly a default or a templatized audio clip. The domain isn’t a vanity URL either. Instead of it being hosted directly on Crispers’ site, it takes you off-site as it’s hosted by their ESP, AWeber (Hi, Crystal!).

At any rate, I think this is implemented very nicely. It was a nice surprise to hear this coming through my earbuds when I opted in. It was a cool moment. Generally speaking, I think it’d be nice to see more multimedia implementation for instructions to users who are freshly opted-in. Do you think this is a trend that will catch on? Please feel free to leave your comments below!

]]> Bryan Quilty 2