We would like to believe that since we're web-savvy enough to be interested in finding out how to bring success to our organization via augmenting our web-presence, paying attention to our email formatting is so 1997. I thought so too until I received the following email:

ALEX I WOULD LIKE TO TALK WITH YO ABOUT THE MILLENNIALS PROJECT DOES ANY TIME THURSDAY WORK??

Now for the quiz:

This email was from:

Our domain got spoofed. The first indication was a ton of auto-responders in the past week that all got delivered to our catch-all email account. Most of these auto-responders were supposedly in response to our emails. But looking at the message header revealed a ton of emails with our domain name but unknown user names. TerimaddoxSilver@appropriateit.org, JennaeconometricGalindo@appropriateit.org, HenriettasuperstitiousLin@appropriateit.org, and so on and so forth. This is just a sample. We had 70+ such unknown users on one single day.

Setting up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is one way to prevent domain spoofing.

My colleague Eric Rardin just posted  a calculator on our Frogloop blog
that allows you to plug in your data and measure the value of an email
address. I thought everyone might be interested.

RSS to me is going to be the next email. Alot of people make the argument that "RSS hasn't caught on as much...", but I don't completely buy it. Over 65% of consumer marketing sites use RSS feeds today...that is a huge chunk of the web! Now, what I personally feel is happening...well, marketers are not sure what to do with it.

RSS is a great way to deliver content to your constituents wherever they are through aggregators. I personally subscribe to over 30 sites to keep up with the lastest political and nonprofit technology, as well as general tech and business news. Google Reader is just as great a companion to me as my inbox; I categorize incoming news, email it to friends and archive it for research purposes.

I've been thinking about beginning to more aggressively email people and organizations that I find on the web who I think might be interested in my podcast.  The conceived email would just include a short introduction and invitation to check out the show.

I'm sensitive about the unsolicited emails that I receive and this has me thinking, what is spam?  If I take the time to find people that I think might be interested in something that I am doing, and send an email to the person, should that exclude me from junk mail category?  What if I personalize each email?  What if I don't and just bcc every address?   If  the email is readily available on the web, does that mean that the person is open to receive  solicitations?