I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never “The Mailman”. When I hear that term I think of two things, first the guy that drives the little white truck and delivers the vast numbers of print catalogs to my house and second, I think of NBA great Karl Malone, known as “The Mailman” as he always delivered. In this case, however, the term “The Mailman” is being applied to me in a different context.
I am fortunate to have been selected by CRM magazine as one of their Influential Leaders of 2008, for the work that I and the team at Habeas have been doing to help save email. The title of their piece on me is “The Mailman”, thus the title of this post. I am truly honored to accept this prestigious award on behalf of the entire team (past and present) at Habeas. The article praises Habeas for being thought leaders in the drive to educate marketers and email senders about best practices in email through such initiatives as ReputationWiki.org and our participation in industry forums likes AOTA as well as our work with our valued partners such as Lashback, BoxSentry, Campaigner, Summit Projects and many others. We’ve made it part of our mission statement to “save email” and a huge part of that is market education to email senders about differentiating themselves from spammers by adopting best practices in email (e.g., obtain recipient consent, relevant email, prompt unsubscribe, etc.).
This award comes at a very interesting time in my life and the company’s history. As I write this post I’m also multi-tasking by completing the very last byzantine details on the Habeas-Return Path merger. So, yes, Habeas and I are being recognized as industry leaders in email reputation management and delivery simultaneously with the company merging into Return Path.
I admit the timing has a bit of irony, but in the big picture I think this award from CRM magazine is further validation of a few key things that drove the merger:
First, over the last several years email has made a strong resurgence as a marketing communications medium. Both consumers and businesses love and prefer the medium above any other for their interactions. I’ve written about our consumer research with Ipsos and Erick Mott has written about our business research with the EIU's "Digital Company 2013" initiative which supports this assertion.
Second, evangelism of best practices among email marketers is a huge part of what today’s email ecosystem needs. Organizations like eec, AOTA, MAAWG, and others are playing a big role in sender education. But many email sending organizations need more than a list of best practices – they need the rigor, analysis, process evaluation, consulting and performance monitoring provided by email deliverability and reputation service providers like Habeas and Return Path.
Third, email has become critical as a business to consumer communications medium across most verticals in the
We at Habeas are very proud of this award and I am very proud to be associated with the merged Habeas and Return Path. As of August 22, 2008, Return Path has the team to take the mission, saving email, and the company to the next level – evangelizing best practices to senders across industries globally, enabling consumers to have a better inbox experience and supporting the continued healthy growth of the email industry directly and through an extended network of receiver partners. It’s going to be great to see email’s continued growth in the next couple of years – the Return Path team will continue to work hard to make sure the (legitimate) mail is delivered!
A special thanks to every Habeas employee since Day 1 (alphabetical order):
