Blog

May 2016: The Month in Email

Summer, already? Happy June! Here’s a look at our busy month of May. I had a wonderful time in Atlanta at the Salesforce Connections 2016 conference, where I spoke on a panel about deliverability. While in Atlanta, I also visited our friends at Mailchimp, and later spoke at the Email Innovations conference in Las Vegas, where I did my best to avoid “explaining all the things”. Since my speaking...

FCC notice of proposed rulemaking

The FCC recently published a notice of proposed rulemaking that will have an impact on how we fight abuse on the internet. M3AAWG has submitted a comment on the proposal (pdf link). All submissions can be found on the FCC website.

Memories of Spam in May

This morning on Facebook a friend posted a picture saying that 15 years ago was the very first anti-spam conference (Spamcon*). All we have are some blurry scans of pictures and coffee mugs. . That 550 sign belonged to the bar where the night out was held. It got bought by K & P and lived in their garden until it rotted away a few years ago. So many folks who are still active in the space...

Can we put the FREE!!! Myth to bed?

Really. Single words in the subject line don’t hurt your delivery, despite many, many, many blog posts out there saying they do. Filters just don’t work that way. They maybe, sorta, kinda used to, but we’ve gotten way past that now.In fact, I can prove it. Recently I received an email from Blizzard. The subject line:Laura — Last Chance to Claim Your FREE Copy of Warlords...

Necessary but not sufficient

With all the emphasis on getting the technical right, there seem to be people who think their mail will be delivered as long as the technical is right. Getting the technical right is necessary for good inbox delivery, but it’s not sufficient. The most important part of getting mail to the inbox is sending mail users want. In fact, if you’re sending mail folks want, interact with and...

More on ARC

ARC – Authenticated Received Chain – is a way for email forwarders to mitigate the problems caused by users sending mail from domains with DMARC p=reject. It allows a forwarder to record the DKIM authentication as they receive a mail, then “tunnel” that authentication on to the final recipient. If the final recipient trusts the forwarder, then they can also trust the...

Why care about email?

I got my first email address in the very late 80s. I was an intern at a government agency. I learned a lot there: how to sequence DNA, how to handle radioactive material, how to handle human pathogens, and how to send email. I got my first non-work non-school address in the mid-90s. One of the first things I did was join some mailing lists. One of them was a list for folks who had pet rabbits. I...

I cannot feel the Bern.

On a lark (and to do my best to stay as informed as possible via primary sources) I decided to sign up for the official mailing lists of the Trump, Clinton, and Sanders campaigns. Both Trump and Clinton were happy to take my email address and add it to their distribution lists, no confirmation required. Not terribly surprising, since they need to make it as easy as possible to get their messages...

Back from Vegas

Had a wonderful time at the Email Innovations conference last week. Got a chance to see some familiar faces and meet a lot of new ones.
There is so much new and interesting and exciting stuff going on in the world of email. I think we’re hitting another period for real growth and innovation that’s going to change what we see in our inboxes and how we use email.
 

Ask Laura: What about Transactional Opt-Outs?

Dear Laura, We are having a bit of an internal struggle on our end as we launch our new quarterly account summaries. What are your views on including an unsubscribe link in these emails? My personal opinion is that we should. Although the summaries can be classified as “transactional”, they are not tied to a specific recent transaction a customer made and can be viewed as a general...

Recent Posts

Archives

Follow Us