We’re in the thick of the busiest time of the year for email. It’s been so busy, in fact, that we’ve seen some slowdowns and delivery issues across the email universe. It may be worth thinking about alternate strategies for end of year promotions beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

I was delighted to chat with Julia Angwin for her ProPublica piece on subscription bombing and abuse prevention. Her piece is a good introduction to the topic, and very much worth reading.

ICYMI, I did a rough analysis of the data from our survey on Google Postmaster Tools. Stay tuned for more insights when I have a moment to explore this further.

I’ve written extensively about unsolicited B2B email, and how frustrating it is to get these messages. As a sender, if you’re reaching out to people you don’t know, you can mitigate this frustration with a few best practices.

Some major industry news this month with the Proofpoint acquisition of Cloudmark and the Sendgrid IPO. Congrats to all involved.

Steve wrote a really terrific post about interacting in online communities. So much of the work we do depends on our relationships with colleagues, and it’s good to remind ourselves of the best practices for maintaining those relationships. My post on “the blighty flag” is a great example of how relationships work in our industry.

Hope you all have happy holidays. I’m taking off blogging until January. See you in the new year!

From our first Christmas with the kittens.
There are no lights because someone fell out of the tree and dragged them all off.