Archive2016

It's that time of year

I’m winding down blogging through the next week or so. I have a lot to say and blog about in the coming year, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying good bye and good riddance to 2016. Happy Holidays to everyone, whatever events you may celebrate. I have to admit, it doesn’t feel very holiday around here. Part of that is we cut the cord a few months ago and we’ve not...

Poor delivery at Gmail but no where else

I’ve mentioned before that I can often tell what ISP is making filter changes by what my calls are about. The last few weeks it’s been Gmail where folks are struggling to get to the inbox. One of the things most clients and potential clients have mentioned is that they’re not having any problems at the other major ISPs. Gmail’s filters are probably the most extensive and...

Listbombing Webinar

Earlier this week I gave a webinar hosted by the EEC and the DMA discussing the listbombing problem. They will be making the recording available later this week and I will link to it then. I wish I could say the issue was done and over with and that it was something we don’t have to worry about any longer. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Attacks are ongoing. Many of them are...

Is your website up? Are you sure?

“What would you do for 25% more sales?” It’s panicked gift-buying season, and I got mail this morning from Boutique Academia, part of their final push before Christmas. They’re hoping for some Christmas sales in the next three days. They do make some lovely jewelry – ask Laura about her necklace some time – so I clicked on their mail. That’s not good. I...

DKIM Canonicalization – or – why Microsoft breaks your mail

One of these things is just like the other Canonicalization is about comparing things to see if they’re the same. Sometimes you want to do a “fuzzy” comparison, to see if two things are interchangeable for your purposes, even if they’re not exactly identical. As a concrete example, these two email addresses: (Steve) steve@wordtothewise.com “Also Steve”...

Ask Laura: Should we confirm unsubscribes?

Dear Laura, We have some questions about best practices for unsubscribes. Our ESP uses the List-Unsubscribe header by default on every email. I’m not familiar with this, and I have some questions for you. First, do you think this is a good idea? Should we always use it, or just for certain emails? Should we use the mailto:link or link to a web site to unsubscribe? We were also asked about double...

Industry news

Just some stuff going on around email that probably merit a mention but not a whole blog post. Next Tuesday at 1 eastern I’ll be giving a webinar on the subscription bombing and discussing what companies can do to mitigate the problem. Google is working on new “invisible” captchas, that separate out humans from bots without humans having to do anything. EmailonAcid created an...

Outreach or spam?

This showed up in my mailbox earlier today: The tweet in question From Crunchbase: “Pluck is an email prospecting tool that gives you the email addresses of the people tweeting about subjects related to your business.” Prospecting: another name for spamming. Look, I know that you want to sell you’re newest, greatest product to the world. But just because I tweet something with a...

November 2016: The Month In Email

Happy December! Between #blackfriday, #cybermonday & #givingtuesday, pretty much everyone in the US has just survived a week of email from every brand and organization they’ve ever interacted with. Phew. Is this still the best strategy for most senders? Maybe. But it’s always important to be adaptable and continue to evaluate and evolve your strategy as you move through the year. As always, I...

Google accounts breached

Over 1 million Google accounts breached by Android malware. There are some folks I know who really can’t understand why I stick with Apple over Android. The above issue is a big one. Doing what we do, security is a major consideration. I don’t need my accounts, or other accounts I have access to, compromised. It’s not that Apple is 100% compromise proof, but there are more...

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