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We sponsor Damian Foxall who is currently aboard the Irish entry, Green Dragon, in the Volvo Ocean race.  At the time of writing (friday 31Oct08) the Green Dragon was a few hundred miles from the finish line for Leg1 at Cape Town.  Full audio: http://urlx.ie/s/greendragon  or get it on iTunes.

When we wanted to bring our customers a contemporary designer look for emails, we knew to look no further than Bafta-nominated creative design studio, Spoiltchild. Owner Alan O'Rourke brought out a sleek ezine designer called Toddle that's built to work with email marketing applications. Using Toddle with Spinnakerpro couldn't be easier. Just design your layout in Toddle, generate the link and paste into the Spinnakerpro WYSIWYG content editor. That's it! What's more, any Toddle design automatically entitles you to 1,000 email sending credits. Sign up here. Shortcode for this blogpost http://url.ie/tyk

Spinnakerpro now has a new "Post to twitter" function from the broadcast screen. If you don't know what Twitter is then you will soon. It's a micoblogging platform where people can quickly share their thoughts in 140 characters or less. Lest you think it's a place where people just say "Drinking a Latte at Starbucks" almost all major brands are on there. So it's an opportunity for you to share your brand updates and also to listen to what others may think. Other Spinnakerpro customers use the "Post to Twitter" function to share the newsletter with others. Some have reported that it increases their subscriber base also.
Get Twittering and follow us on http://twitter.com/spinnakerpro

The FTC has approved new provisions for the CAN-SPAM act. You can read all about it here and download the actual document here. Below is a repeat of the main thrust of the changes from the FTC site. But first a comment on two items in the text. The first is the notion of who is the Sender when an email contains multiple messages from different brands. To cut a long story short it's the from address that is the Sender . So if brand A,B,C are in the message and it's from Brand A then Brand A is the Sender. The second is what is meant by the term Person. Interestingly, a non profit group tried to change this term so that effectively non profits would not be subject to CAN SPAM. Very pleased to see they failed in that regard.

Here's the FTC excerpt:
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;

(3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”;

(4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Shanghai, May 8th 2008. Web2Asia, its parent company MH direkt and Narragansett Technologies have today announced a partnership agreement for the distribution of the professional email marketing solution SpinnakerPro and the online survey tool SensorPro in East Asia.

The East Asian region, particularly China, has shown impressive growth potential for digital marketing. By the first quarter of 2008, 230m Internet users were identified in the Middle Kingdom – more than in any other country of the world. Even though the overall share of online media from most advertisers is still reported to be only 3-4%, current studies predict fast growth in the online ad market of over 50%. Mostly driven by Olympic-related spend, the total online spend in China, including email, is estimated to reach EUR 928m in 2008.

Web2Asia, which is a premium expansion partner for western IT companies in Asia, will localize Narragansett’s products and adapt them to local market needs. Distribution throughout East Asia will be covered by Web2Asias parent company MH direkt, an international direct marketing agency with subsidiaries in Central Europe, India, China and the USA. First campaigns for MH direkt’s customers in East Asia have already proven the efficiency of Narragansett’s tools and their full support for East Asian character sets.

“With a successful combination of eDM and the online survey module SensorPro we could increase the response for our annual customer satisfaction survey by 200% compared to last year. The survey was conducted bilingual in both English and Chinese and we were very pleased with the high quality feedback from our customers and the comprehensive statistical analysis of the results.” says Andy Qian, Senior Marketing Manager Central China, Schenker China – one of the leading international providers of integrated logistics services.

Additionally online campaigns in India and China were carried out to effectively support the FORUM Institute, Germanys largest conference and seminar specialist, in its international expansion. Also the Gildemeister group, a major manufacturer of machine tools trusted in MH direkt to utilize SpinnakerPro for their first eDM campaign in Korea this spring. Web2Asia are offering email sending credits if you use the promotion code “web2asia” on this form http://marketing.web2asia.com/
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About Web2Asia:
Web2Asia (http://www.web2asia.com/) is a full-service provider with headquarters in Shanghai/China that specializes in supporting Western Internet companies and mobile content developers to expand into China, Japan and Korea. The company thereby aims to act not merely as a consultant for entry strategies or a software development outsourcing company but as a complete partner to successfully launch and scale Internet or mobile applications business for its customers. Contact: Mr. Samuel Xiao, samuel.xiao@web2asia.com, +86 21 32270872

About MH direkt:
MH direkt (http://www.mhdirekt.com/) is an international direct marketing agency with headquarters in Austria and subsidiaries in India, China and the USA. The company offers tailor made outsourcing solutions for e-commerce, direct marketing and mail order. Contact: Ms. Susanne Graf, susanne.graf@mhdirekt.com, +43 5574 801 1

About Narragansett:
Narragansett Technologies (http://www.narragansett.ie/) is a leading developer of online marketing software solutions including SpinnakerPro, the leading email marketing solution package and SensorPro, the online research and survey solution, to a global customer base including Coty, KPMG Singapore and Procter & Gamble. Distributed worldwide and under OEM agreement by Epicor Scala, Epsilon Interactive and Exact Target. The solution is a Salesforce.com certified application. Contact http://url.ie/brz