Who, Us? Irrational?

Last month I had the great pleasure of once again learning about human behavior quirks from bestselling author Dan Ariely. If you ever have the opportunity to see him, don't think twice. He's brilliant, witty and absolutely approachable.

Dan's a professor of behavioral economics at Duke (my B-school) who wrote Predictably Irrational, now in its second edition. He's been in the news a great deal since the meltdown started last year, often asked to explain how all those Masters of the Universe could have gotten us into such a mess. He had plenty to say on that when I saw him in Charlotte.

I wrote three posts based on his talk and the new chapters in his book. The first, Trust, Revenge and Financial Reform includes a sound file of his talk. The second, Trust and the Meltdown features writing prompts based on Dan's material (for those who need a jump start for a blog or newsletter article). The last, Trust and Healthcare Reform includes an exposé of the presumed infallible Invisible Hand of the Market, which so many people invoke in their reform arguments.

A Special Place for Spammers

I've been waiting for a good case study to illustrate what I've been saying about spam filtering. Last week a global provider of bulk email services had to deal with one of its rogue customers who'd gained a reputation as a spammer. While it did, a large-but-untold number of innocent and spam-compliant emailers couldn't get their messages into customers' inboxes.

Aha!  The rubber hits the highway. Here's how it went down.

Spamhaus Project, the international cyber crime fighting organization, placed the rogue emailer's internet (IP) address on its blacklist of spammers. The rogue's IP address belonged to the rogue's email provider, which meant the millions of innocent commercial emailers also using that provider were painted with the same "spammer" brush. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who subscribe to Spamhaus' blacklist wouldn't deliver anyone's email from that service until the matter was resolved.

The commercial email service provider had to go into damage control overdrive, suspending the rogue's account, communicating with innocent emailer senders about the delay to their campaigns, and proving to Spamhaus that they'd taken the right precautionary and reactionary measures required. Until Spamhaus removed the address from its blacklist, ISPs like Hotmail, Yahoo! and others wouldn't deliver any of the provider's clients' email.

Ouch!

This is tough to convey in words, and I acknowledge using some jargon here, so I suggest you visit Spamhaus for flowcharts that illustrate how filtering works.

The upshot for commercial emailers: if your email service provider advises you to use a double-opt-in subscription process or to certify that you haven't purchased an email list, or subscribed people without their permission, comply quickly and don't complain about the extra steps. These procedures are necessary to convince Spamhaus and the ISPs that you're a compliant emailer, even if someone else using your service isn't. 

This also points out the reason to use a bulk email service instead of sending email campaigns from your own email account.  That way, if you are accused of spamming, you'll have a knowledgeable and experienced company go to bat for you with the international cyber services.  If I may be so bold to ask, please consider using my email service.

The Spamhaus Project is a great study for international cooperation.  I wrote more on Spamhaus on my blog. For a complete list of posts spam hit this link.

Chocolate Copy

Here's a mouthwatering case study in copywriting. 

A friend and his family own The Secret Chocolatier. They needed some fresh copy (<100 words) and sent me these key phrases to work with:

* Family owned/operated
* Passionate about chocolate
* Traditional recipes
* Handmade
* Taste is paramount
* Products: Chocolate Truffles, enrobed brownies, favors, cakes / wedding cakes

Here's what I delivered:

We're a family of chocolate artisans. We channel our passion for chocolate into handmade truffles, enrobed brownies, cakes (including wedding cakes) and all manner of flavors using traditional recipes. There's chocolate, and then there's The Secret Chocolatier's chocolate -- your taste buds know the difference.

As a visitor to my blog remarked, "You get their full story in three bites: who they are, what they do, and how well they do. Sweet!"