Some interesting data over on eMarketer today talking about e-mail advertising and the expected growth in spending from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2 billion in 2012. Additionally, JupiterResearch indicates that about one fourth of all email is now opt-in.
What I find interesting is some of the feedback from users about why they decide to no longer opt in to emails from certain companies. One of the primary reasons was that the content was no longer relevant. Is there an echo in here?
This is great news for us here at eNeighbors since the primary traffic driver of our service is the automated e-mail newsletters of weekly content from your neighborhood site (it’s like Facebook’s news feed without all the crap).
The content in these newsletters can’t be more relevant since it’s an aggregated conversation from your neighbors about things that are happening literally on your street.
We recognize that while most people want to stay informed about their local happenings (especially in their own neighborhood) there are only so many hours in the day. We’ve seen that the weekly recap of info is a great way to keep up on what’s going on. And that’s why we are working on some new features and enhancements to the eNewsletters. Stay tuned.
eNeighbors Blog 
Pingback: Best bet for distributing neighborhood news? at Ghost of Midnight
Great post Phil. The solution to irrelvant information, as you point out, is a good filter that weeds out the junk you don’t want and gives you the information that you do want. In general, there are two types of filters: (1) computers and (2) humans. Think Google (computer search) and Mahalo (people search). Computer filters are pretty good at what they do, and really excel in the long tail of information where there is just too much data for us humans to filter. However, when it comes to local information, like neighborhood information, where there is a managable amount of data, human filters are better at providing relevant and complete information. Not only can human filters tell us what’s important to us, but they can provide a deep analysis of the information. Newspapers/journalists are a great example of how human filters are best at providing local news to communities. The question becomes, can human filters, in the role of editor, do a better job at telling a community what’s important to them, or should the community filter the information itself. The answer is probably a combination of the two.