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Outrunning the Bear

You’ve started to notice that your campaigns aren’t working as well as they used to. Your metrics suggest fewer people are clicking through, perhaps because more of your mail is ending up in junk folders. Maybe your outbound queues are bigger than they used to be. You’ve not changed anything – you’re doing what’s worked well for years – and it’s not...

We're hiring again and travel

We’re looking for a new employee. Full job details are available on our career page. I’m excited with how the company is growing and developing. I’m looking forward to seeing the candidates and what they can bring to us. For those of you going to the APSIS Email Marketing Evolved conference next week, I hope you will stop by and introduce yourself. I’ll be presenting at...

The holiday mailing season

We’re half way through September and it seems way too early to start thinking about the holidays. But for marketers, even email marketers, planning should be starting now. This planning shouldn’t just be about content and targeting and segmentation, but should also cover deliverability. Most retailers use email marketing to drive traffic to their websites during the holidays. Experian...

Do you run spam filters?

Jan Schaumann is putting together a talk on ethics in as related to folks managing internet operations. He has a survey and is looking for folks who wrangle the machines that run the internet. I’m copying his post, with permission, due to a slightly NSFW image on his announcement. August 3rd, 2015 Actually, it’s about Ethics in Internet Operations. No, seriously, it actually is. As...

Reputation is about behavior

Reputation is calculated based on actions. Send mail people want and like and interact with and get a good reputation. Send mail people don’t want and don’t like and don’t interact with and get a bad reputation.   Reputation is not … about who the sender is. … about legitimacy. … about speech. … about message. Reputation is … about sender...

Organizational security and doxxing

The security risks of organizational doxxing.  These are risks every email marketer needs to understand. As collectors of data they are a major target for hackers and other bad people. Even worse, many marketers don’t collect valid data and risk implicating the wrong people if their data is ever stolen. I have repeatedly talked about incidents where people get mail not intended for them...

It's not about the spamtraps

I’ve talked about spamtraps in the past but they keep coming up in so many different discussions I have with people about delivery that I feel the need to write another blog post about them. 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...

Thank You

Today will be my last day at Word to the Wise.  I joined WttW in December of 2014, and it has been a wonderful journey.  I have enjoyed working with Laura, Meri, and Steve, and I’ve enjoyed working with all of our clients helping solve their deliverability challenges. Laura has such a deep understanding and knowledge of deliverability that every day I would find myself learning from her and...

Your system; your rules

In the late 90s I was reasonably active in the anti-spam community and in trying to protect mailboxes. There were a couple catchphrases that developed as a bit of shorthand for discussions. One of them was “my server, my rules.” The underlying idea was that someone owned the different systems on the internet, and as owners of those systems they had the right to make usage rules for...

August 2015: The month in review

It’s been a busy blogging month and we’ve all written about challenges and best practices. I found myself advocating that any company that does email marketing really must have a well-defined delivery strategy. Email is such vital part of how most companies communicate with customers and potential customers, and the delivery landscape continues to increase in complexity (see my post...

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