ArchiveFebruary 2016

February 29, 2016

Ask Laura: Will our ESP kick us off for mailing purchasers?

By laura

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29February

Dear Laura, We’re a small online retailer and email is a very important sales and communication channel for us. We do marketing and newsletters with Mailchimp, transaction confirmations with Bigcommerce, and a few other messages via Salesforce. Our volumes are relatively low, but we’re in an industry that can be a bit of a red flag for spam. We have a few different lists in Mailchimp. The...

February 24, 2016

Our green bar certificate is going away

By steve

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24February

Later today we’ll be switching from an Extended Validation (“green bar”) SSL certificate to a Domain Validation certificate. This isn’t exactly a planned change but I’m waiting for responses from Comodo before I go into it too much. I’ll share some more details next week.

February 23, 2016

Email in 2020

By laura

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23February

Late last year Litmus invited me to contribute to a whitepaper they were putting together about email in 2020. Today, they released Email Marketing in 2020. I am honored to be included in the list of experts that they chose. One of the things I find so so much fun in participating in this type of joint project is seeing what other people’s visions are. When Chad first contacted us, his...

February 22, 2016

Catching up from MAAWG SF

By laura

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2 comments

22February

Had a great time a M3AAWG last week. So many familiar faces and a lot of new ones, too. I’ve got a lot of interesting stuff that I can share with readers over the next few days. One of the things I have received permission to share is the new Office 365 IP delisting link. I botched the first time I posted it, so I’m going to try again. Office 365 IP Delisting Page. Many thanks to the...

February 18, 2016

Getting unblocked at Outlook.com

By laura

1 Min read

6 comments

18February

It’s been a crazy week here at M3AAWG. I have a lot of stuff to blog about, but I think one of the really important things to get out is the new unblock request page at Outlook / Hotmail. Submit your IPs and it will be reviewed. (Apologies for the repeated bad links. I’m blaming con crud, lack of sleep and MSN/Hotmail/Office/Outlook for having so many domains I can’t keep them...

February 17, 2016

Security, backdoors and control.

By laura

3 Min read

1 comment

17February

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control. Apple letter to customers Encryption is a way to keep private information private in the digital world...

February 16, 2016

Should you publish DMARC?

By laura

5 Min read

12 comments

16February

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about DMARC. Being at M3AAWG has increased that. Last night we were at dinner and heard from the next table “And they’re not even publishing DMARC!!!!” I know DMARC is the future. I know folks are going to have to start publishing DMARC records. I also know that the protocol is the future. I am also not sure that most companies are ready for...

February 16, 2016

M3AAWG 36 – San Francisco

By laura

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So many familiar faces. So many new faces.
This is my one M3AAWG this year and I’m so excited to be here. The organization has really grown and changed over the 10 years we’ve been a member. It’s only getting better and better.
I’ll be tweeting from public sessions (and probably tweeting random things that occur to me as I’m here) using the #m3aawg36 tag.

February 12, 2016

Ask Laura: Confused about Authentication

By laura

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12February

Dear Laura, I have a client moving from an external ESP to an internal system. They send approximately eight million messages per year, and these are primarily survey emails on behalf of their clients. We’ve had some conversations about authentication, and I’m trying to help them figure out if they just need DMARC or if they also need DKIM and SPF. It seems some ISPs prefer different methods, and...

February 11, 2016

Thoughts on Data Hygiene

By laura

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11February

One of the big deliverability vs. marketing arguments has to do with data hygiene and dropping inactive users. Marketers hate that deliverability people tell them to let subscribers go after a long time of no activity from the subscriber. Data hygiene is good. Email is not permanent and not forever, and the requirements for data hygiene in the email space are very different than the requirements...