More than a decade ago I was included in one of these. It wasn’t work related per se, but the address list included a lot of experienced, BTDT, names-on-RFCs technology folks.
Yeah, even they got stuck in the mess of replying all, unsubscribing, lecturing people about not replying to all. It was a mess, but funny given the names involved. #neverdothis #noreplytoall
When you spend most of your day working on email and spam issues, it starts to cross into all aspects of your life. In October, I was amused by authors who find names in spam, SMTP-related t-shirts on camping trips, and spam that makes you laugh. Maybe I need a vacation?
We were quite busy with conference presentations and client work this month, but took time to note the things that captured our attention, as always. We highlighted a few things we enjoyed reading around the web: Brian Krebs’ Reddit AMA, the results of Jan Schaumann’s survey on ethics in internet operations, and a great post on Usenet from Joe St. Sauver.
In industry news, we covered a few glitches that are worth noting, in case you missed them: Yahoo FBL confirmation emails, Google postmaster tools, Network Solutions email, and weird Lashback listings. Even though these have mostly been resolved, it’s useful to keep track of the types and frequency of these sorts of issues, as they can significantly impact your deliverability and may be useful as your clients or business stakeholders raise questions about campaign performance.
Steve contributed a few key technical posts this month, including a short post on IPv6 authentication issues, following up on the issues he outlined back in July. He also noted Gmail’s upcoming move to DMARC p=reject, which is notable for the ways they are are looking to mitigate risks with their ARC proposal. Finally, he wrote that it’s worth looking at false positives every now and then, as it can reveal interesting patterns in the ESP landscape.
Finally, a good suggestion from the best practices file: engagement through confirming user names, and a not-so-good plan for an app that’s sure to invite abuse and harassment.
Dear Laura,
We are having a bit of an internal struggle on our end as we launch our new quarterly account summaries. What are your views on including an unsubscribe link in these emails?
My personal opinion is that we should. Although the summaries can be classified as “transactional”, they are not tied to a specific recent transaction a customer made and can be viewed as a general reminder to shop again. As I gathered data to present my case, I reviewed several different account summaries and I found it split close to 50/50. Do you have any data or thoughts to support one way or another?
Thanks,
Summary Judgement
Yesterday, after 5pm, I was so happy. I was telling folks to have a great weekend. To take time off and relax. Have fun! Don’t work! Enjoy the weather!
Then someone pointed out it was only Thursday.
But! I got up this morning and got lots of happy Facebook notifications from friends about how TODAY was Friday. I was ready to have an awesome and productive day and go into the weekend with a clean todo list and a well planned next week.
Then I broke my mail client. Trying to add an attachment would crash everything. That got fixed that somewhere around noon.
So! I’ll just grab some lunch and get ready for a productive afternoon!
Then I broke finder.
Yes, that is a picture of my 27 inch monitor with hundreds of Windows opening. I was trying to delete some of the 39,000 .jpgs from my mail client. My finger slipped on the trackpad, though, and instead of “move to trash” I clicked “show in containing folder.” Ooops. I finally crashed finder manually and it restarted and didn’t try and reopen all the windows.
OK. Fine. I’ll go to the bank and pick up mail and drop off tax (ugh, ow) payments.
On the way there, construction screwed up traffic and it took me more than 20 minutes to go 2 miles. (It’s not a safe place to walk, or I would have). On the way back, I went the Other Way. Only to discover a firetruck across 4 lanes of traffic and half a dozen cop cars showing up to a very recent accident.
Then, while writing this blog post I managed to somehow move widgets around and lose them on the wordpress editor.
Apparently I should have taken my friend’s advice and just decided today was not a work day. Because, wow, was it a mess. What all this means is I’m not going to try and blog anything substantial. I’d probably make some total boneheaded mistake and that wouldn’t be any good.
Instead, I will share the song KFOG played every Friday at 5pm (before Cumulus decided to fire everyone). Because I am really in the need of this week to be over.
Have a good weekend. Next week will be better!