AOL changes bounce behaviour

A couple other bloggers have commented on the recent AOL blog post talking about changes to the MAILER-DAEMON string on bounce messages.

With the changes for inbound mail, ALL bounce messages (mostly due to user-defined spam settings) will have the sender name of MAILER-DAEMON@recipient –domain. For example, a member of yahoo sending to an AIM account with a user-defined block, would receive a bounce message from MAILER-DAEMON@aim.com.

There’s an interesting little tidbit buried in that paragraph that has nothing to do with the subject of the post, but is a useful bit of data for mailers who want to better model their recipients. “All bounce messages (mostly due to user-defined spam settings)…”
This means that senders who are on the ball and can distinguish between bounces and rejections can use the bounce information to get a general idea how many recipients are actively blocking their mail. Given the exact phrasing of the postmaster blog, there are most likely other reasons for bounces from AOL, but there may be some useful data in there for the mailer that can pull out bounces and compare them with other data about a particular recipient.
Things I’d look at:

  • How many emails did the user receive before blocking?
  • Are there any trends in blocking? Is there a spike in the number of addresses blocking? If yes, was there anything I changed before that?
  • How many FBL reports, if any, did I get before a block was put up?
  • Did anyone unsubscribe and then block?
  • Did any users click through or purchase and then block my mail?

The answers may provide some insight into how AOL recipients are reacting to your mail immediately before they block you. This may provide some guidance on how to make your mailings more relevant to your recipient base.

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Winning friends and removing blocks

I do a lot of negotiating with blocklists and ISPs on behalf of my clients and recently was dealing with two incidents. What made this so interesting to me was how differently the clients approached the negotiations.
In one case, a client had a spammer slip onto their system. As a result the client was added to the SBL. The client disconnected the customer, got their IP delisted from the SBL and all was good until the spammer managed to sweet talk the new abuse rep into turning his account back on. Predictably, he started spamming again and the SBL relisted the IP.
My client contacted me and asked me to intercede with Spamhaus. I received a detailed analysis of what happened, how it happened and how they were addressing the issue to prevent it happening in the future. I relayed the info to Spamhaus, the block was lifted and things are all back to normal.
Contrast that with another client dealing with widespread blocking due to a reputation problem. Their approach was to ask the blocking entity which clients they needed to disconnect in order to fix the problem. When the blocking entity responded, the customer disconnected the clients and considered the issue closed. They didn’t look at the underlying issues that caused the reputation problems, nor did they look at how they could prevent this in the future. They didn’t evaluate the customers they disconnected to identify where their processes failed.
The first client took responsibility for their problems, looked at the issues and resolved things without relying on Spamhaus to tell them how to fix things. Even though they had a problem, and is statistically going to have the occasional problem in the future, this interaction was very positive for them. Their reputation with the Spamhaus volunteers is improved because of their actions.
The second client didn’t do any of that. And the people they were dealing with at the blocking entity know it. Their reputation with the people behind the blocking entity was not improved by their actions.
These two clients are quite representative of what I’ve seen over the years. Some senders see blocking as a sign that somehow, somewhere there is a flaw in their process and a sign they need to figure out how to fix it. Others see blocking as an inconvenience. Their only involvement is finding out the minimum they need to do to get unblocked, doing it and then returning to business as usual. Unsurprisingly, the first type of client has a much better delivery rate than the second.

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Yahoo fixed erroneous rejection problem

Yahoo announced over the weekend that they fixed their rejection problem. It may take some time to filter out to all their MTAs, but they do believe the issue is resolved.

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Politico published an article Sunday looking at the best e-mail lists in politics. Their criteria for choosing the winner focused on list size and recipient engagement, measured by amount of money raised and recipient response to issues. Despite not being a delivery focused article or even mentioning delivery at all, this article is all about delivery.
How can an article be about delivery without ever mentioning the word? By actually looking at the effectiveness of the overall campaign and measuring how the lists actually perform. In the article, Politico used a number of criteria to evaluate different email lists and programs.

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