BIMI Certificates and Domains

After years of stagnation in email authentication protocol development we have a new player entering town. The protocol is DKIM2 and it’s in active development over at the IETF. If you want to see the sausage being made, you can visit the IETF datatracker to see the details and sign up for the mailing list.

The spam folder and opens

laura
Apr 9, 2026

Industry

A picture of Tower Bridge in London taken from the Thames facing east. The bridge is open and there's a sailboat just on the far side of the bridge — Open Tower Bridge, London 2022, ©Laura Atkins

There’s a post getting a lot of traction in my LinkedIn feed from someone spreading misinformation about open rates. A bunch of deliverability colleagues have weighed in and pointed out some of the mistakes, but there’s one very big mis-statement I haven’t seen anyone correct. [1]

SPF ?all

steve
Mar 20, 2026

Technical

I was updating my SPF library and discovered that the example code snippets didn’t work any more, as at some point in 2024 AOL switched their SPF record from “(lots of stuff]) ~all” to “(lots of stuff) ?all”. Nothing particularly surprising, folks change their setups occasionally. I updated the example code to expect a neutral response rather than softfail and all the tests pass.

Upcoming webinar on Gmail and inbox signals

laura
Mar 13, 2026

Best Practices

I’m thrilled to announce I’m sitting down at the beginning of April to talk about inboxing in 2026.

Recent Writings and Events

laura
Feb 19, 2026

Industry

I don’t know about you, but we’re more than 6 weeks into 2026 and I can’t figure out where all the time has gone. It’s been a much busier January than I’m used to. I’ve been working on a lot, including a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while. I’m really excited it’s finally taking shape and I hope to be able to share it with folks in the next month or so.

Not Business as Usual

laura
Jan 26, 2026

I don’t know what to say about what’s happening in the US, but I know I can’t stay silent, either. I don’t have anything inspiring to say here. I just cannot keep silent and pretend it’s all business as usual. I’m saddened, I’m horrified, I’m sick about what the government of the US is doing to citizens and non-citizens alike.