Originally Posted March 2005 and Updated There have been a couple of postings on PRSPCT-L recently about why subscribers are getting spam emails. Mass e-mailers tailor their messages to get through spam filters and blockers and constantly revise their strategies – they’re very devious and relentless. Try a search on your email addresses and see where they’ve been published. A public email address can be something as “innocent” as your email in a PDF file in a brochure published on a web site. Robots constantly churn through sites looking for contact information 24 X 7. Don’t publish your email address anywhere unless you’re willing to accept additional spam. Use some of the free email services such as Microsoft Live, Yahoo or Google for subscriptions, signing up for access to web sites, subscribing to email newsletters etc. If you start to get too much spam, you can cancel your account, create another, and sign up again. More than 80% of all business collaboration is typically done through email. …

We’re at a point where there’s so much more data every day and less analytics. One of huge differences in political fundraising over the last few years is the incredible impact of good information required to raise huge amounts of money. Analytics is not about technology – it’s about people – people that make decisions such as voters. Executives and management make decisions about how to sell to the people that make decisions. Hasbro manages about 1,500 brands of toys and needs to understand which is more profitable, which sell more which will trend higher in the sales mix in the future. How do you bring a new product to a market such as a major fundraising campaign? People are not watching television, not reading newspapers as much and are looking at the Internet. In this day and age there may be 15 to 20 channels that we need to use to market a campaign. It’s increasingly challenging to collect and understand the appropriate metrics to have the necessary holistic understanding of how it all ties together….