The Yahoo bounce problem has been resolved. There were erroneous ‘554: this user does not have a yahoo.com account’ between March 14 and March 16. If you attempted to send mail and received this bounce during that time you can reactivate the address in your database. Most ESPs should be able to help you with this.
Moving forward, though, these bounces are valid and addresses should be removed from your list according to standard data hygiene processes.
I still don’t have any solid information on the cause of the Yahoo bounces. I do know that folks inside Yahoo are looking into the issue.
However, multiple people (including my clients) are reporting that the addresses that are bouncing have very recent click and open activity. Other reports say these addresses deliver on a resend.
It looks like my advice yesterday was incorrect. I’m currently telling clients to continue mailing addresses for the time being.
Today the US government unsealed an indictment against 2 Russian agents and 2 hackers for breaking into Yahoo’s servers and stealing personal information. The information gathered during the hack was used to target government officials, security employees and private individuals.
Email is so central to our online identity. Compromise an email account and you can get access to social media, and other accounts. Email is the key to the kingdom.
This is the time of year when everyone starts posting their predictions for the coming year. Despite over a decade of blogging and close to 2500 blog posts, I have’t consistently written prediction articles here. Many years I don’t see big changes on the horizon, so there’s not a lot to comment on. Incremental changes are status quo, nothing earth shattering there. But I’ve been thinking about what might be on the horizon in 2018 and how that will affect email marketing.