The Ham from the Spam

We all want to get our good email, also known as "ham," but we don't want our inboxes getting crammed with what is commonly referred to as spam. And if you're like most people, you're getting more spam than ever. In fact, a recent study conducted by Message Labs indicated that in June of this year, spam accounted for 90.4% of all email sent. It is the job of your filter to decide which emails you want to read. Filters make that determination based on a combination of things such as content and header filters, as well as taking clues and hints from you about which emails are considered desirable.

The war against spam may be getting easier, thanks to new software developed the Georgia Institute for Technology. The system, known as SNARE (Spatio-temporal Network-level Automatic Reputation Engine), scores each incoming e-mail based on a variety of new criteria such as internet protocol (IP) address, and autonomous server (AS) number associated with an email.

To learn more about the SNARE system and how it works, read the article at Technology Review.

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DigitalNow 2009:
Another great success! Watch videos and download session content at http://www.digitalnowlive.com

Save the Date! DigitalNow 2010: April 7 - 10, 2010.

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Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Seeing through member-tinted glasses

In order to deliver an experience worthy of your members' money, time, and energy, you must have a direct understanding of their expectations and experience with your association.

In other words, you have to look at your association through their lens.

How do you know what your members expect, and how do you evaluate the ways in which they are experiencing interaction with your organization? Are you making decisions based on assumptions hoping you'll provide value, or are your targets based on data and real-life member feedback?

According to www.MarketingProfs.com, an analysis of customer/member touch-points can provide you with the information you need to strategically manage the member experience.

"Because customers' needs and expectations change over time, the way you meet them must evolve in accordance with those shifts," writes Barre Blake. "Customer touch-point management provides a company with a critical baseline from which it can start to evaluate itself through the eyes of its customers and make small improvements to enhance the customer experience."

What do you consider the critical touch-points for your members, and how do you evaluate those interactions to provide continuous improvement?

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DigitalNow 2009:
Another great success! Watch videos and download session content at http://www.digitalnowlive.com

Save the Date! DigitalNow 2010: April 7 - 10, 2010.

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Is free the future of price?

Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” That may have been true once upon a time, but by that measure our modern digital world is full of blockheads. As it turns out, people want to contribute and be creative. They want to produce content and then make it available to the world, an activity that provides its own reward. These content creators have invented the business model of "free."

But in this new non-revenue model, do you get what you pay for? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. According to Virginia Postrel of The New York Times, free doesn't mean "without value" any more than price guarantees value.

The issue of free content and its distribution over the Internet is the subject of Chris Anderson's new book, titled, Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

“People are making lots of money charging nothing,” writes Anderson. “Not nothing for everything, but nothing for enough that we have essentially created an economy as big as a good-sized country around the price of $0.00.”

Read Postrel's review of Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

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DigitalNow 2009:
Another great success! Watch videos and download session content at http://www.digitalnowlive.com

Save the Date! DigitalNow 2010: April 7 - 10, 2010.

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com