In a positive step forward for the technology capital markets, small business email software provider, Constant Contact (CTCT), saw its IPO on Wed. Oct. 3 jump to a 79% gain on its first day of trading.

Constant Contact shares closed at $27.64. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., raised $93.3 million in the offering, selling 5.8 million shares at $16 apiece, surpassing the $12 to $14 expected range of the stock. Constant Contact has 27 million outstanding shares, giving it a market capitalization of more than $800 million.

This surely opens the door for some other ESPs to move closer to their own IPOs. Who is next will be interesting fodder for the email industry as well as a big step in moving email more into the mainstream business and finance world.

Some stories on the IPO:

Constant Contact?s I.P.O. May Bode Well For Tech Offerings

Constant Contact shares soar in debut

You can also read about some highlights from their filing in my earlier post.

Email is certainly not seen as a political luxury item anymore and most politicians have made copious use of the reach of this tool in recent months.

Several articles break down how email is working for the Presidential candidates.

You, Bill Clinton and a bowl of chips

Campaigns get creative in dash for cash

Thanks to Ken Magill and Mark Brownlow for picking these items up.

For the curious and poly sci majors, take a look back at my iMediaConnection piece on the 2004 Presidential email face-off.

Email Marketing and the 2004 Election

An excerpt...

"I feel comfortable saying that Bush?s camp has a very slight advantage over Kerry in terms of email strategy and execution."

So maybe email is a strong indicator of the electoral process and results. Will it foreshadow the winner again in 08?

Stay tuned.

Most email marketers know (or should) Mark Brownlow and his EmailMarketingReports.com (and blog) as the most straightforward, relevant and neutral source of email marketing news, opinions and thought leadership (both from Mark and the many sources he pulls from).

So I was honored to be among his Top 21 email marketing information sources when it first was released.

I am still honored to be part of it (he did take a few folks off and added some as well) and it is well worth checking out for some diverse thoughts on the never dull email marketing industry. I have signed up for most of the RSS feeds from this talented crew and recommend you checking them out as well.

Following on the heels of our study, (Return to Sender - Most Companies Receive Failing Grade in Responding to Their Email Campaigns), Talisma, when reviewing eretailers email response during customer service, discovered some abysmal results of their own.

Their study found "despite this communication channel being one of the most favored by Internet users, 34 percent of email queries went unanswered."

Our findings (which covered other online companies besides retailers) revealed companies performed even poorer when replying to email questions, concerns and other inquiries:

-only 15% of companies that sent opt-in email messages over the span of a week answered subscriber responses to their own emails
-63% failed to reply at all
-15% of the replies immediately bounced as the sender did not have a valid return email address.
-The remaining 7% of email messages had an automated message that said they did not accept email messages.

Wake up, folks. Just because it is cheaper than answering the phone doesn't mean you can ignore it.

Actually, the headline on TechCrunch where I read about this company sums it up perfectly How To Lose All Your Friends Immediately, In Real Time.

Trumpia - a social communicator, is doomed to get press although I imagine it will be mainly skeptical and negative. This sort of business model would fly in 1999 but I hope it doesn't catch on as it makes the work of all of us legitimate email marketers that much harder.

Anyone in the email space, will know what to expect upon seeing Blast as their main value proposition and product name.

Some of their marketing fodder:
-Blast is the perfect tool for people that need to communicate and coordinate things in real-time with a group of people, but cannot rely solely on email to do so. After all, email is old!

-Blast people on their mobile phones, instant messaging and emails at the same time so you can contact everyone in real time no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing...Once you are signed up for Trumpia you can start blasting your friends right away, even if they haven't signed up.

Nice best practices.

As TechCrunch notes, "the only way to make the madness stop is to sign up for the service and tell it not to contact you any more."

MailChimp's Live Chat With a King

Pretty funny stuff and bold that MailChimp posted this dialogue. However, it seems true to their irreverent brand/positioning.