Shawn Collins has a good post this morning explaining why you need to update your mailing lists before July 15 since Yahoo! is cleaning out inactive email addresses by then:
Clear Old Yahoo Addresses Off Your Email Lists – Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “So you’ll either be mailing to dead addresses, which can impact your deliverability, or the new owners will start getting your newsletters, and will be upset that you are emailing them.
They will either unsubscribe or mark you as spam. The latter can negatively affect whether ISPs such as Gmail and Outlook accept your emails.”
More specifically, Yahoo! will be deleting any email accounts that have been inactive for 12 months or more. The folks at AWeber also have a good post outlining what you need to do to clean those addresses of your mailing lists:
Updated: Yahoo Releasing Email Addresses Monday, July 15: “You need to identify what email addresses on your list will be released. Search subscribers from Yahoo who haven’t opened an email from you in 12 months – but were added before that point (so you don’t unsubscribe recent subscribers who haven’t yet opened an email). Save them as a segment.”
Go update your mailing lists and make sure you’re not going to be sending email to the wrong people (in case some of those deleted accounts get claimed by new owners). Yahoo! has said they’re taking measures to unsubscribe accounts on the hit list, but there’s no way to make sure they catch everything.
We use MailChimp at Harrelson Agency, so here’s their post on how to clean up as well:
Yahoo Is Recycling Email Addresses | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog: “If you don’t perform regular list maintenance, let me suggest you start. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to segment out any inactive Yahoo addresses.”
I’ve got a long long history dealing with co-registrations and lead generation going back to the halcyon days before 2003 when email marketing was all the rage (still should be) and FreeSlide was just a twinkle in our performance marketing eyes.
I’m not a defender of the admittedly very tacky and mostly illegal tactics that many “marketers” employed to get iPod-wanting visitors with a zip code and an email address zipping down registration paths towards free Gevalia coffee pots or Netflix DVD’s, but the registration path become an essential part of performance marketing during this “wild west” (as we called it) period.
So, it’s interesting to see Yahoo roll out a new Cost Per Lead (CPL in the industry lingo) ad format in its search results that looks strikingly familiar…
Yahoo Intros Cost-Per-Lead Search Ads, First New Format Under Marissa Mayer: “The new ad format, which can collect information like demographics, email addresses or phone numbers, is called Cost Per Lead for Search. It’s clearly marked as ‘Ad from’ with the advertiser’s name following.”
Affiliate Marketing Legend and all-around geek Todd Crawford and I are back with episode six of our weekly podcast, GeekTo.Me.
We had a ton of fun doing the show and it’s (in my opinion) our best show yet. We definitely keep getting better and better (and geekier and geekier) every week.
So, if you’ve got the stomach for some heavy geek lifting, give it a shot.
The show runs about an hour.
http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pfe44ba46557327b5b5fb78d62425141cbF98QFREYmN9&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap24
MP3 File
Show Notes:
Freemium vs Premium
Google with OpenID
Google Notebook, Evernote or BackPack?
Netbooks vs iPhones
Mac Adoption with the Kids
iPhone App Restrictions
Android
Windows 7: Will It Save Microsoft?
Linux Desktops and New Ubuntu
Google Maps on iPhone
Hulu
Mint.com and Stupid web2.0 names
eCommerce is Big in Japan
Todd’s Picks: Fring, Panolab, Classic eBook Reader
Sam’s Picks: Everest, VoteReport
GeekTo.Me 6: Freemiums
AOL is, on the whole, doing things right by its users and the web in general these days.
However, the mail team blew it with this bone-headed post complaining about GMail and written on the level of a jealous 14 year old girl that didn’t make the cheerleading squad but wore the same outfit as the prom queen last Tuesday at the basketball game.
Come on, AOL. You’re better than this. Don’t you have a pretty strict PR dept??
Make sure to read the comment thread for readers’ reactions.
AOL Mail Blog: “An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween! We love your costume!”
In the most recent Commission Junction newsletter, there was a big announcement concerning a change to Yahoo Search Marketing policies regarding direct linking by publishers:
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