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Is purging always effective?

  Dear Laura, I sometimes get in arguments with clients where I say, “your open rate is 3%, you need to do some list pruning” and they say, “my recipient list is 100% b2b, and b2b filters don’t care about engagement, so it doesn’t matter if my list is really old and unengaged.” This is wrong in cases where the business is using Outlook or Gsuite, both of which are going to care if they see...

Anyone know why…

Countless questions about email troubleshooting start with “does anyone know why.” Unfortunately, most of these questions don’t contain enough detail to get a useful answer. In the case of email, even the smallest redactions, like the IP address and the domain in question, can make it difficult for anyone to provide help. Details matter. Every detail matters, sending IP and...

How to hire an affiliate

Yesterday I talked about all the reasons that using affiliate email can hurt overall delivery. In some cases, though, marketing departments and the savvy email marketer don’t have a choice in the matter. Someone in management makes a decision and employees are expected to implement it. If you’re stuck in a place where you have to hire an affiliate, how can you protect the opt-in...

Affiliate marketing overview

Most retailers have realized that sending unsolicited email is bad for their overall deliverability. Still, the idea they can send mail to people who never heard of them is seductive. Enter affiliate email. That magical place where companies hire an agency, or a contractor, or some other third party to send email advertising their new product. Their mail and company reputation is protected...

SNDS issues and new Gmail

A bunch of folks reported problems with Microsoft’s SNDS page earlier today. This afternoon, our friendly Microsoft rep told the mailop mailing list that it should be fixed. If you see problems again, you can report it to mailop or your ESP and the message will get shared to the folks who can fix it. The other big thing that happened today was Gmail rolled out their new inbox layout...

What kind of mail do filters target?

All to often we think of filters as a linear scale. There’s blocking on one end, and there’s an inbox on the other. Every email falls somewhere on that line. Makes sense, right? Bad mail is blocked, good mail goes to the inbox. The bulk folder exists for mail that’s not bad enough to block, but isn’t good enough to go to the inbox. Once we get to that model, we can think...

No, I won't rate you!

Brick and mortar stores have tried to use feedback as a means of driving customer engagement for a while. Anyone who’s shopped at a big chain here in the US knows what I mean. You buy a pack of gum and end up with a 2 foot long receipt. At the bottom of the receipt there is a URL and bar code. The cashier circles the bar code and cheerfully tells you to go online and tell corporate about...

Laposte rejections

Update: The issue seems to have been resolved and Laposte say they’re no longer sending the 519 responses as of April 25th 2018. Laposte.net are having a bad couple of weeks. There’ve been reports from customers of their IMAP service being unusable, with attempts to move or delete messages timing out and expected emails simply not arriving. Several delivery friends have mentioned that...

GDPR and the EU and Opt-in Confirmation

There’s a lot of discussion going on about just what GDPR requires, and of who, and in which jurisdictions. German organizations in particular have been more aggressive than most about wanting to see opt-in confirmation for years and now seem to be adding “because GDPR” to their arguments. I’m still not sure how this is going to shake out, but I’m beginning to see...

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