Happy 34th birthday, SPAM.

That’s right, the world’s first SPAM message was sent today. It was sent to 400 users on the ARPAnet, the very first version of the Internet. And, as you might guess, people who received this unsolicited message were upset about it.

Isn’t this just the way technology works, though? A broadcast medium emerges, people are interested, then more people, then someone seeks to monetize that medium. After all, someone had to pay for “Little Orphan Annie” on the radio, for “The Flintstone’s” on TV, and for “Stories about who Kim Kardashian is dating” on TMZ. So, why wouldn’t you reach out to as many as 2400 users at once?

Still, we wish no one had ever sent that first SPAM message. Why? Because:

1. It wears away at the ease-of-use of email - If you never got another SPAM message, you’d never have to add extra SPAM folders, create a “priority” inbox, buy extra virus- and malware-scanning software…you’d get messages only from people and companies you knew and used.
2. It’s dangerous – People who don’t know a friendly email from an unfriendly one can open themselves up to all kinds of problems. Forget viruses – consider phishing scams. One misplaced username and password and a person can lose their identity, their money, even their job.
3. It’s costly - varying reports state that SPAM costs us (“us” meaning “everyone in the world who uses email”) about $130 billion yearly. Consider, too, that each SPAM message has its own carbon footprint. According to this report from McAfee, the sum of all SPAM carbon could power 2.4 million U.S. homes. Couldn’t we stand to have that energy power…I dunno, anything else?
4. It damages trust – As a company that sends emails for hundreds of businesses across the country, we want people to get helpful messages with useful content. When everyone looks at every message they get with a jaundiced eye, it makes it harder for us to do our job. In a perfect world, users would subscribe and unsubscribe and we’d all get along just fine. Alas, that world isn’t coming any time soon.

So, happy 34th birthday, SPAM. Now, hurry up and die already.

DigitalMailer is proud to announce its new product offering, My Virtual StrongBox. My Virtual StrongBox was created to give customers and members a secure storage space for their most important documents online. Use it to store wills, insurance policies, birth certificates and so much more.

Visit the MyVirtualStrongBox website to learn more.

Our company began shortly after the “Dot-Com Bubble” burst. In a time when others were fleeing from online services, we decided to stand our ground and fulfill our goal – helping financial institutions of all sizes move their users away from costly paper products and toward compliant, secure, sustainable electronic documents and marketing pieces. It’s this desire that has served us so well for these past twelve years, even up to this very day.

We can’t tell you how proud we are of the work our clients and colleagues have done.  We’re thrilled to be one of the most trusted names in electronic documents, online marketing, social monitoring, compliance communication and emergency response technology. When problems arise in the finance industry, we create programs that help our clients get up-to-date and compliant. Client satisfaction is always our most important goal – and that’s never going to change.

We look forward to many more years of helping clients connect, communicate, and grow. Here’s hoping you’ll join us.

My parents love to tell me stories about how different things were when they were just starting out in life. Their first phone line was a “party line”, a phone line that connected several people over a small area. You picked up the phone, you heard everything that was said to everyone on that line. Have something you want to keep secret? Better not say it over the phone. Someone COULD be listening.

Thank goodness we live in a new, digital age of wonders, right? Not only does everyone get their own phone, but their own little “pocket computer”, complete with your emails, your browsing history, your contacts, your text messages…an entire written/spoken/recorded record of everything you’re doing, even a collected list of locations you’ve visited over a three year span.

Um…wait, why do we carry these things around, again? These things should be chained to your neck in some way to ensure you never lose them. And that’s an especially good idea, considering the findings of a recent Symantec study which tells us 96 percent of people who find lost smartphones try to access personal and business data on the phone (here, via BoingBoing).

Terrifying. Instead of the nosy-old lady of yesteryear, listening in on your calls and chatting about it at church, you get someone who tries their darndest to read your emails, snoop on your texts, expose your photos…maybe even disrupt your business?

I can’t help but harken back to my old rant about good passwords. Lock. Your. Phone. Not with a “swipe”, not with a “pull-down” – with a code number or a complex swipe gesture. And change it every so often (once every four to six months, let’s say). And, while I’m at it, consider that your greasy, crummy fingers are giving you away and clean your screen semi-regularly so that, if lost, your phone’s password can’t be guessed thanks to your smudges.

There should also be a setting on your phone that locks people out entirely after a certain number of password attempts. Yeah, it might wipe your phone’s hard drive. But better safe than sorry, yes?

Also important? Don’t lose your phone. Ever.

Northwest Federal Credit Union ($2.2B Herndon, VA) has always been a leader in incorporating digital technology. From triggered email marketing, to automated collections, to document management systems, NWFCU knows the value technology brings to its member products, as well as its internal operations and processes. One of the credit union’s latest electronic solutions yielding positive, bottom-line results: an automated lending response system.

Click here to read the full article on their website.

At the end of last year, we put the word out to our clients about a contest we were running. We called the contest “Move It and Lose It”. Not move it “OR” lose it, mind you, but “Move It AND Lose It”.

The “Move It” part of the contest was moving customers and members to electronic statements. The “Lose It” was losing costs associated with printing and mailing statements month after month. And boy, did our clients “lose it”!

In the contest period, clients added almost 40,000 new eStatement users! Assuming an average savings of $.50 per user per month for twelve months, they’re looking at just shy of a quarter of a MILLION dollars in savings, just from those new users alone! How cool is that?

You can read more about the contest and the results via our press release, and see who won the iPad (the grand prize) on the “Move It and Lose It” page.

Recently, Adele got a heaping helping of Grammys for her “21″ album. She had a great year, with a handful of hits that were all the rage on the radio. I was listening to those hits for months before they ever debuted, because my fiancée was a member of Adele’s online fan club. My fiancée is a big Adele fan. She got to see Adele live in a small DC night club before Adele was filling the Albert Hall with her crowds of screaming fans.

For being such a big fan, my fiancée received an email one fateful evening with a free download of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” in it. That’s right, the song you’ve been hearing non-stop for months? I’ve been hearing it much longer and much more frequently than you have.

Because of this, my fiancée told all her friends about the upcoming album. She bought the album for quite a few of them and she listened to it over and over and over…with one email, Adele’s label had turned the love of my life into Adele’s number one advocate.

Who do you love? Who loves you back?

Recently, we came across a blog post about the value of online communities. This post wasn’t necessarily talking about Facebook, Twitter or other social networks – it was more focused on user’s groups and customer portals set up by companies to help said companies test products and manage the brand.

Many companies use online portals that they open up to loyal customers. These customers aren’t paid for their input, but they are, in many cases, offered things other users/consumers wouldn’t be offered for their insight and input.

These communities can be very valuable. Creating portals for these communities can be very costly. So where do Facebook and other social networks come in?

We’ve seen quite a few financial institutions use their Facebook pages as:

• Focus Groups
• Community Bulletin Boards
• Help Desks

The feedback from loyal customers and members helps these institutions make decisions about which products to implement or change; what’s important with the customer base; and what technological issues need to be solved. That’s a lot of valuable information, and it can be had with a focused effort and thoughtful community management.

One thing about an online community, though – getting people to click on a “Like” button is one thing, but the truly dedicated in your online community are the people who take the time to write you, to respond to postings, and to take you up on offers. Give those people as much respect as they give you of their time. It can make a big difference.

Show the people who love you how much YOU love THEM. It’s a cycle that will turn social media from a noisy nuisance to a critical connection point for your best customers, members and clients.

The Internet can be a tricky thing. Because resolution sizes keep increasing, even on smaller screens, we keep finding new ways to fill out all our pixels. On a standard website, there really are no rules about where content is supposed to go and no restrictions (save for taste and experience) about how many ads one can put around that content.

But there is one thing you should consider about your websites AND your email campaigns – the fact that every image and every piece of content makes a file a little larger. Two lines of text? Not much data at all. A huge website with tons of images? That means tons and tons of data transferred from the server to your computer or your phone. And too much data is a drag for people who just want a little bit of information.

To get you started learning about this, here’s an article from GetElastic.com. While you read about this, keep the advice in mind both for your website AND for your email marketing campaigns. Overloading either with too much data and not enough info means you’re cheating the reader…and, therefore, yourself.

Jim Marous just did a fantastic story over on his blog, Bank Marketing Strategy. In it, he showed the results of a study he did about bank and credit union marketing strategy, conducted in conjunction with the Financial Brand’s Jeffry Pilcher.  According to their results, credit unions are heaver social media users overall whereas your “non-community banks” use progressive online media channels for advertising (banner ads, fully-online account opening, iOS apps, etc.).

But when I read the social media report, I almost fell out of my chair. Not because of the number of channels the respondents said they were using, not because of the high number of people who said they were “planning to use” social media. It was because of the number of respondents that say they were “not sure” about which social media platforms they were using.

You’re not sure? You don’t know?

How is that possible? And what’s worse, according to the post, 82% of respondents work in the marketing department of their financial institution. Of everyone in those banks or credit unions, a marketing person SHOULD know.

I know, it’s a minor quibble – there aren’t many respondents saying they’re “not sure”. But six out of forty-six bank respondents not knowing whether or not their company has a blog? A blog typically sits on the website. That’s something anyone who knows your web address should know. Shameful.

Why am I getting worked up about this? Because it’s foolish. Not knowing whether or not you’re using a particular social network? That’s a problem. Because if you’re not sure, then you’re ALSO not sure that someone ELSE isn’t MISrepresenting you in that space. And you’re ALSO not sure that there’s not a “[Your FI's Name Here] Sucks” page out there. And you’re ALSO not sure that an employee is or isn’t following guidelines.

If Jim Marous and Jeffry Pilcher decide to do this study again next year (and I hope they do, because this is some great info), I hope there’s a big fat zero next to every “not sure” on that chart. Because when it comes to your financial institution’s reputation and customer/member relationships, you can’t afford to be ignorant.

[Click here to learn more about DigitalMailer's new Social Monitoring tool, SocialSentry.]

Thus, we’ve decided to set up a new “Brown Bag Webinar” all about SocialSentry. On Friday, February 3rd and Tuesday, February 7th, join us for one of two sessions (East and West Coast) and let us tell you all about SocialSentry. Bring your lunch!

Click here to visit our webinars page and sign up!