The first true marketing email did not arrive until 1978, when a company called DEC (which became part of Compaq, now HP) sent an invitation to the product launch of a new machine to all addresses in the ARPANET directory on the USA’s West Coast. They were heavily criticized for the act, which broke the ARPANET appropriate use policy, and everyone else was reminded of the rule. Well, that happened in May of 1978, so this month marked 34 years since the first true marketing email was sent!
While DEC managed to be the first to ruin their reputation by spamming, don’t forget that it is important to always check your reputation and status as an email marketer. To do this, check sites such as http://rbls.org/, which will let you check several blocklists at once. If you find that your reputation has been damaged, or is not as great as you expected, get in touch with us so we can help you get on the road to repairing it! Remember, even those with the best of intentions and practices can end up being blocklisted, so be sure to stay on top of it!
Now, we first wrote the above in September of 2012, so 10 years ago this month. This year, as we update this in 2022, we are observing the 50th anniversary of the very first networked email ever sent, by Ray Tomlinson. That first networked email was sent in October of 1971, meaning that the email world had a relatively peaceful, spam-free existence until DEC sent that first marketing email in 1978. You can go here to read our 50th anniversary of email observation, including an explanation of QWERTYUIOP
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