Related Posts

News snapshot

  • The judge in e360 v. Spamhaus has denied Spamhaus’ motion for dismissal. However, the judge also ordered that the 16 new witnesses be stricken and capped damages at the original $11.7M. Mickey has the order.
  • Tuesday the FTC announced it had shut down a major spamming operation. I am not sure the results are visible yet, yesterday there were 2041 spams in one of my mailboxes yesterday versus 2635 a week ago.
  • The FBI announced today it had infiltrated and shut down a international carding ring. While not directly spam related the phishers and carders work together and some of them use spam.
  • Rumor has it that many mailers are seeing problems delivering to AOL the last few days. It seems that AOL is making adjustments to their filtering system. As when any ISP changes filter rules and weights, some of the people just skirting by see delivery problems. What people are hearing is that if they are seeing delivery problems at AOL they need to improve their reputation.
  • Last week Yahoo had another online workshop with the mail folks. They have published a transcript of the talk. I was at the talk and there were only a couple spam related questions.

donhburger: Why does Yahoo sell our email addresses to spammers?
YMailRyan: We absolutely don’t sell your addresses to spammers. No IFs, ANDs, or BUTs about it.
imintrouble: My mom keeps emailing em but I never get it and usually it ends up in my spam box. Why? How do I make this stop? She’s getting pissed that I’m not replying.
YMailTeam: Oh no! Be sure your Mom is on your contact list– this should help keep mom out of spam box and put her back into your inbox.
buergej: Just why do I keep receiving the same kind of spam from a series of what appear to be women day after day after day?
YMailCarl: Spam is, unfortunately a constant problem for anyone using email. The reason you are receiving these emails is because spammers have somehow gotten a hold of your email address and are mailing you their lovely messages. There are several things you can do to assist with this. First, continue to report these messages as “Spam” by clicking the button at the top of the email labled “Spam”. Note that you don’t need to actually look at the message to do this. When you report items as spam it lets Yahoo! know that messages originating from that person are likely spam. This not only helps you, but helps other Yahoo! users as well.
YMailCarl: Second, if the emails are from similar names, you can set up filters in your email account to block those names and send them to your trash or spam folder.
YMailCarl: Obviously these messages you are receiving are not from women trying to sell you products personally – the messages are typically generated by a script which will try to forge or “spoof” the originating address.
YMailCarl: We agree that Spam is a serious issue and have many resources dedicated to fighting this problem.
YMailCarl: You can find some additional information about fighting spam here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/index.html
donhburger: Why when I mark Emails as Spam do I continue to get emils from the same persons?
YMailMaryn: When you mark a message as “spam” from within your Inbox that moves the message to your Spam Folder. And all subsequent messages that are sent from that particular sender will not be delivered to your Inbox, but will be delivered to your Spam Folder.

Read More

Reputation: part 2

Yesterday, I posted about reputation as a combination of measurable statistics, like bounce rates and complaint rates and spamtrap hits. But some mailers who meet those reputation numbers are still seeing some delivery problems. When they ask places, like AOL, why their mail is being put into the bulk folder or blocked they are told that the issue is their reputation. This leads to confusion on the part of those senders because, to them, their reputation is fine. Their numbers are exactly where they were a few weeks ago when their delivery was fine.
What appears to have changed is how reputation is being calculated. AOL has actually been hinting for a while that they are looking at reputation, and even published a best practices document back in April. Based on what people are saying some of that change has started to become sender visible.
We know that AOL and other ISPs look at engagement, and that they can actually measure engagement a lot more accurately than sender can. Senders rely on clicks and image loading to determine if a user opened an email. ISPs, particularly those who manage the email interface, can measure the user actively opening the email.
We also know that ISPs measure clicks. Not just “this is spam” or “this is not spam” clicks in the interface, but they know when a link in an email has been clicked as well.
I expect that both these measures are now a more formal and important part of the AOL reputation magic.
In addition to the clicks, I would speculate that AOL is now also looking at the number of dead addresses on a list. It is even possible they are doing something tricky like looking at the number of people who have a particular from address in their address book.
All ISPs know what percentage of a list is delivered to inactive accounts. After a long enough period of time of inactivity, mail to those accounts will be rejected. However for some period of time the accounts will be accepting mail. Sending a lot of mail to a lot of dead accounts is a sign of a mailer who is not paying attention to recipient engagement.
All ISPs with bulk folders have to know how many people have the from address in their address book. Otherwise, the mail would get delivered incorrectly. In this way, ISPs can monitor the “generic” recipient’s view of the email. Think of it as a similar to hitting the “this is not spam” button preemptively.
This change in reputation at the ISPs is going to force senders to change how they think of reputation, too. No longer is reputation all about complaints, it is about sending engaging and relevant email. The ISPs are now measuring engagement. They are measuring relevancy. They are measuring better than many senders are.
Senders cannot continue to accrete addresses on lists and continue sending email into the empty hole of an abandoned account while not taking a hit on their reputation. That empty hole is starting to hurt reputation much more than it helps reputation.

Read More

We want your mail to succeed

One thing I hear from a lot of delivery folks, both consultants and those who work at the ESPs, is that their customers and clients fight back whenever they say no. A client or a customer proposes this great idea that involves sending irrelevant email to uninterested people. Then, with bated breath, they ask their delivery consultant to agree it is a brilliant idea. Most of the time, their great idea is actually a bad idea. Those of us who have been around a while can even and provide examples and experiences that back up that it is a bad idea.
The result is similar, when told their idea will hurt their delivery they fight tooth and nail. On good days they will argue and decide to listen. On bad days they go off and do what they were warned not to do.
It can be horribly frustrating for all of us in the delivery field. We actually want customers’ mail to succeed. We tell customers no, not because we want to ruin their day or their business or their ideas, but because we want to help their business. Our job is to make their email work, and sometimes that means saying no.
Next time your delivery consultant, or your ESP delivery expert, tells you that an idea may cause delivery problems, give them some credit for their experience and expertise. We really do have your best interests at heart and really do want your email to succeed.

Read More