Recent Posts

Subscription transparency

I regularly tell clients to be transparent with their sends. With email, permission is better than forgiveness. A surprise change in mail frequency or type leads to complaints. Complaints lead to bulk foldering. Once mail is in the bulk folder, it’s hard to get out of there, particularly at some webmail providers.
The permission is better than forgiveness is hard for a lot of senders to understand. Much of marketing is about assuming the yes in the absence of a no. Sure, they’ll back off when there’s a no, in DMA terms it’s the “one bite at the apple rule.” Unfortunately for senders the one bite rule doesn’t work in the email space.
There are a couple reasons that permission is better than forgiveness in the email space. The biggest is that the ISPs own the mailbox and as the owners they make decisions about who gets access. They prioritize the wants and needs of their customers / users over the wants and needs of advertisers. It’s easy for users to give feedback; in many cases they just have to hit a button. But that’s another whole blog post.
Today I get an email from The Guardian. They’re modifying and expanding their newsletter program, so they sent subscribers an update about it.

 

Read More

Gmail filtering in a nutshell

Gmail’s approach to filtering; as described by one of the old timers. This person was dealing with network abuse back when I was still slinging DNA around as my job and just reading headers as a hobby.

Read More

Fun with opinions

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a couple people get on mailing lists and make pronouncements about email. It’s great to have opinions and it’s great to share them. But they’re always a little bit right… and a little bit wrong.

Read More

January 2017: The Month in Email

Between client work and our national political climate, it’s been a very busy month around here and blogging has been light. Things show no sign of slowing down in February, so we’d love to hear from you with questions and suggestions of what you’d most like to see us focus on in our limited blogging time this month. We got a great question about how senders can access their Google Postmaster tools, and I wrote up a guide that you might find useful.

We’re also revisiting some older posts on often-requested topics, such as spamtraps, so feel free to comment below if there are topics you’d like us to address or update. One topic that comes up frequently, both on the blog and in our consulting practice, is about what to do when you’re on a blocklist. I revisited an old-but-still-relevant post on that topic as well.
On the Best Practices front, I wrote about how brands can use multiple channels to connect with customers and prospective customers to promote and enhance email delivery. I also took a moment to look back over 2016 and forward to 2017 in the realm of email security.
I continue to be annoyed by B2B spam, and have started responding to those “requests” for my time directly. Steve also wrote a long post about B2B spam, focusing on how these spammers are using Google and Amazon to try to work around reputation issues.
In case you missed it, I contributed some thoughts to a discussion on 2017 email trends over at Freshmail with my exhortation to “Make 2017 the year you turn deliverability into a KPI.”
I’m also still in the process of completing my 2017 speaking schedule, so I’m looking for any can’t-miss conferences and events you’d recommend. Thanks for keeping in touch!

Read More

Blogging

It’s been a wild week here in the US. I have to admit, the current political climate is affecting my ability to blog about email. I’ve always said email is not life or death. And how can I focus on the minutia of deliverability when things are in such turmoil and uncertainty? There are many things I want to write about, including some resources for those of us who are struggling with the current administration and changes in the US. What we can do. What we must do.  It just takes work and focus I don’t have right now.
 
 

Read More

Email trends for 2017

Freshmail has published a list of email marketing trends for 2017 from some of their favorite experts. I am honored to be included.
Go check it out!

Read More

What about the spamtraps?

I’ve been slammed the last few days and blogging is that thing that is falling by the wayside most. I don’t expect this to change much in the very short term. But, I do have over 1200 blog posts, some of which are still relevant. So I’ll be pulling some older posts out and sharing them here while I’m slammed and don’t have a lot of time left over to generate new content.
Today’s repost is a 2015 post about spamtraps.
Spamtraps are …
… addresses that did not or could not sign up to receive mail from a sender.
… often mistakenly entered into signup forms (typos or people who don’t know their email addresses).
… often found on older lists.
… sometimes scraped off websites and sold by list brokers.
… sometimes caused by terrible bounce management.
… only a symptom …

Read More

Conferences and Events?

What are readers favorite conferences and events around email and marketing? I’m starting to plan out my schedule for this year. I did a lot of talks at familiar places last year, and I’m looking to find some new places.
Tell me your favorite conferences in the comments.
 

Read More

Use all the channels

One of the hardest deliverability situations to address is when all mail from a certain sender is going to the bulk folder. I’ve had numerous clients come to me to address this situation over the years. Ideally, clients come to me before all their mail is going to bulk. Then we can make some tweaks and changes to their mail program, repair the reputation and then recover other addresses. We have knobs we can twist to fix things if some people are still getting messages in their inbox. We have data to measure.
When all mail is going to bulk, though, we lose access to the knobs and the data. There are zero complaints if mail is going to bulk. There are no opens or clicks, because many ISPs disable images and links in the bulk folder. Our normal “fixing reputation” tools are taken away from us.
Senders with all their mail going to bulk are faced with a profound challenge. How can they engage customers who are unengaged and who are not seeing mail at all? How can we fix deliverability when our normal tools and metrics are unavailable?
If we can get even a small percentage of recipients to go pull mail out of bulk or spam and move it to their inbox, then we’re well on our way to repairing reputation. But how can we get them to go look for the mail in the bulk folder. Recent Litmus research suggests that a significant percentage of folks regularly check their spam folder, but this isn’t always enough to repair reputation,
The question becomes how can the senders encourage recipients to go digging through their spam folder. 
This is the point where I start quizzing clients on what other channels they use to communicate with their customers. I’ll run through the whole list: social media, snail mail, push notices through apps, SMS, website popups, Facebook ads. I work with them to identify users who are engaged with their brand and brainstorm ways to get those users to look for mail.
I’m always pleased to see large brands using these strategies. Just recently Blizzard used twitter to communicate with their users about email problems. They tweeted.
BlizzardTweet
The link takes you to the Blizzard support site. Where they give specific instructions on how to whitelist mail and what mail to whitelist.

Read More

One way to deal with B2B spam

We’ve been talking a lot about B2B spam recently. I’ve posted repeatedly, Steve wrote a post about it yesterday. It’s in the forefront of our minds because we’re dealing with just so much of it. Multiple emails a day asking for “just 10 minutes of your time.” Of course, the 10 minutes isn’t really just 10 minutes. Sure, the call might be 10 minutes, but there’s overhead to that call that will probably eat 20 – 30 minutes of time. That’s at best.
Because they’re using providers who don’t notice or don’t care about the spam, there’s little to be done. No one is going to stop them from mailing me. They are required to comply with the law, but 99% of the mail doesn’t. Which gave me an idea.
I’ve started replying to every incident of “just 10 minutes of your time” with a pleasant email thanking them for their interest in our CAN SPAM verification program. I point out that I have noticed at least one violation and we’re happy to consult with them on how to fix it for a fee.
Wait? You mean they’re not interrupting my time simply to receive a sales pitch? Well. Gee. I’m just replying to them.
It seems petty, but we’re less than 2 weeks into 2017 and I already have over a dozen of these “one time” emails. If history tells me anything, these same people will follow up in a week, and then 2 weeks, and then a month. Meanwhile, new people are going to be sending me a request for 10 minutes of my time, and their followups and in a month I’ll be getting a dozen emails a week. In two months I’ll be getting 2 dozen. In 3 months it will be 4 dozen.
And, yeah, most of these messages do violate CAN SPAM. Most of them by not including an unsubscribe links, which makes getting the mail to stop a challenge. There’s no way to unsubscribe, so it’s either answer it or just keep getting contacted. I wrote last year about the woman who continued to email me for months. She even announced she was going to call 911 because clearly I was injured and unable to answer her mail.  Multiple times she promised to stop mailing me, but never did.
I do feel bad for many of these senders. They’ve been sold on a prospecting tool by vendors who fail to provide them with a minimal level of guidance. Even just mentioning that there are laws regulating email, and they should comply with them would be better than nothing.
In many ways I find this kind of spam more annoying than the viagra or the malware that ends up in my mailbox. Those can be selected and deleted pretty easily. These, however, have subject lines that look just like my legitimate business mail. I have to read them and figure stuff out. It’s a total PITA.
EDIT: And it’s not even effective according to some experts.

Read More
Categories
Tags