SWAKS is a general purpose testing tool for SMTP. For basic SMTP testing it’s a more convenient, scriptable alternative to running a transaction by hand, but it also lets you test things that are difficult to do manually, such as authentication or TLS encryption. It’s a perl script that installs fairly easily on OS X or any Linux/unix system (and can be installed on Windows, if you...
The tri-annual procession of Facebook friends and colleagues to a disclosed location to talk about messaging, abuse and prevention started over the weekend. For me, this M³AAWG conference marks the beginning of a new chapter. We’re hiring, and even before the conference officially started I’ve had some productive conversations with people about what we’re looking for and how we...
As most people know, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) went into effect July 1 of this year. This month, the CRTC concluded its first investigation. A computer reseller based in Saskatchewan was placed under investigation by the CRTC after large numbers of complaints were made through the Spam Reporting Centre. The CRTC revealed that a server owned by the computer reseller sent millions of e-mail...
The last year has been a time of growth here at Word to the Wise. You’ve seen some of this in our new website and branding. The result of this investment in the company has translated to more, and more interesting, consulting work. It’s possible you’ve noticed that I’ve not been blogging as much over the last couple months. Steve’s picked up the slack admirably and...
Recipients can’t click through if you don’t exist A tale of misconfigured DNS wrecking someone’s campaign. I got mail this morning from A Large Computer Supplier, asking me to fill in a survey about them. I had some feedback for them, mostly along the lines of “It’s been two decades since I bought anything other than rackmount servers from you, maybe I’m not a...
A throwback post from 2010 Attention is a limited resource. Marketing is all about grabbing attention. You can’t run a successful marketing program without first grabbing attention. But attention is a limited resource. There are only so many things a person can remember, focus on or interact with at any one time. In many marketing channels there is an outside limit on the amount of...
There seems to be a never ending debate about volume and how it affects delivery and revenue. I regularly get questions asking if ISPs block senders just for volume. The answer is no. Unless you’re actually sending enough mail to overwhelm the incoming infrastructure, something that’s difficult on today’s internet, you’re unlikely to be blocked due to simply sending a high...
Update: As of mid-morning pacific time on 10/7 yahoo.com has been removed from the FCC list. As part of CAN SPAM the FCC maintains a list of wireless domains that require proof of permission to send mail to. Recently, various email folks noticed that yahoo.com was added to this list. According to the law, senders have 30 days to meet the permission standards for any recipients at domains on the...
If Forrester research is to be believe, email marketing is feeling better. In fact, it seems email marketing is more effective than ever. Researchers at Forrester have found that attitudes to emails from brands are actually becoming more positive, despite the fact that most people tend to write them off as annoying “spam.” Business Insider attributes much of this change to the...
Loren McDonald has a great post over at Mediapost listing his email marketing pet peeves. I particularly love this because he includes those things annoy him as a subscriber. Most of what annoys me as a subscriber is sloppy marketing. Really is it so hard to actually check what you’re sending and who you’re sending it to? This was a notice from Ello telling me that they’d get to...
RSS - Posts