ArchiveNovember 2016

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...

Oracle buys Dyn

Last week Oracle announced they were buying Dyn. Interesting acquisition, but fills a spot in Oracle’s playbook to provide infrastructure.
None of the press releases I’ve seen about the acquisition mentions the Dyn email service platform. Oracle has at least two email platforms already (Eloqua and Responsys). It will be interesting to see what happens with email.

DNSBLs, wildcards and domain expiration

Last week the megarbl.net domain name expired. Normally this would have no affect on anyone, but their domain registrar put in a wildcard DNS entry. Because of how DNSBLs work, this had the effect of causing every IP to be listed on the blocklist. The domain is now active and the listings due to the DNS wildcard are removed. How does a domain expiration lead to a DNSBL listing the whole internet...

Don't forget the strategy

We’re two days out from the beginning of the Holiday Shopping Season here in the US. Three days out from one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year in the US. 5 days out from one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. I’m sure everyone has their mail campaigns planned. Most of the messages are finished, just waiting for a tweak or the exact right image. The...

It depends… no more

The two most hated words in deliverability. Many people ask general questions about deliverability and most experts, including myself, answer, “It depends.” There are a lot of problems with this answer. The biggest problem is that it’s led to the impression that there are no real answers about deliverability. That because we can’t answer hypothetical questions we are...

Recipients and the Spam Button

Earlier this week Litmus and Fluent hosted a webinar title “Adapting to Consumers’ New Definition of Spam.” This had a number of fascinating facts about email marketing, many of which should reassure folks. Litmus has a blog post up highlighting some of the findings specific to millennials and email. Good news is millennials like getting mail from brands and interact with them...

Targeted marketing done badly

There was quite a bit of content I cut out on my rant about parasites in the email ecosystem earlier this week. I had whole section on people who ask to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately send a pitch or scrape your address and add it to their marketing automation software and start spamming. Generally, the only reason I will drop someone off LinkedIn is because they do this. Today, one of...

New shiny

Arrived yesterday! Still working on setting it up, but it’s pretty slick so far.

Parasites hurt email marketing

As a small business owner I am a ripe target for many companies. They buy my address from some lead generation firm, or they scrape it off LinkedIn, and they send me a message that pretends to be personalized but isn’t really. “I looked at your website… we have a list of email addresses to sell you.” “We offer cold calling services… can I set up a call with you...

Changes to AOL FBL

In a blog post today, AOL announced they are changing the from address on their FBL emails from scomp@aol.net to fbl-no-reply at postmaster.aol.com. This change will take place on January 16th, 2017. While this may seem a minor change to announce so far in advance, it’s really not. Because AOL was the first FBL, there are many tool chains that have been kludged together to handle the...

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