Multiple times over the last few weeks folks have posted a screenshot of Google Postmaster tools showing some percentage of mail failing DMARC. They then ask why DMARC is failing. Thanks to how DMARC was designed, they don’t need to ask anyone this, they have all the data they need to work this out themselves. The DMARC protocol contains a way to request reports when DMARC authentication...
The nice folks over at Postmark shared a new deliverability resource last week. The SMTP Field Manual. This is a collection of SMTP responses they’ve seen in the wild. This is a useful resource. They’re also collecting responses from other senders, meaning we can crowdsource a useful resource for email deliverability folks.
This week there was a reported uptick in user unknown responses for verizon email addresses. The specific response folks were seeing was: 554 delivery error: dd xx@verizon.net is no longer valid. [-20] -mta4047.aol.mail.bf1.yahoo.com This appears to be a problem with their require-recipient-valid-since header checking. They are aware and are working on a fix. What this means for senders is if...
On the emailgeeks slack channel someone asked for advice about going to conferences. There were lots of great suggestions. I threw in the Pac Man Rule and realised a lot of folks haven’t heard of it before. Eric Holscher created the Pac Man rule. The rule is really simple. If you’re standing in a group talking at a conference a circle can make it challenging for new people to join you...
Friday the Tusli Gabbard campaign filed the expected first amended complaint against Google for suspending her adwords account immediately after the first Democratic debate. A full copy of the complaint is available. First reading is that it’s only slightly better written than the first complaint. The document reads to me more like a policy statement than an actual lawsuit. Frankly...
The FTC filed suit against Match.com for using fake accounts to entice people into signing up for accounts. (WA Post) Part of the FTC’s allegations include that Match flagged the accounts and prevented them from contacting paying Match users while simultaneously allowing the users to contact free Match users. I’m actually surprised the FTC took action. I’m not surprised Match...
A decade or so ago I was helping a client troubleshoot a Spamhaus listing. They, as many companies do, had a database with addresses from a number of different sources. Spamhaus was asking for them to reconfirm the entire database, which they didn’t want to do. I came up with the idea that if we had some sign of activity on the email address, like an open or a click and some other...
One of the ongoing recommendations to improve deliverability is to send email that is timely and relevant to the recipient. The idea being that if you send mail a recipient wants, they’re more likely to interact with it in a way that signals to the mailbox provider that the message is wanted. The baseline for that, at least whenever I’ve talked about timely and relevant, is that the...
Spent the afternoon marching through the streets of Dublin with thousands of students demanding climate action now.
DMARC is a protocol that makes it very, very simple to shoot yourself in the foot. Setup is tricky and if you don’t get it exactly right you risk creating deliverability problems. The vast majority of companies SHOULD NOT publish a DMARC policy with p=reject or p=quarantine for their existing domains. DMARC policy statements are, essentially, a way for a company to assert the following...
RSS - Posts