CategoryBest Practices

August 15, 2016

Subscription bombing, ESPs and Spamhaus

By laura

8 Min read

23 comments

15August

A number of ESPs woke up to a more-than-usually-bad Monday morning. Last night Spamhaus listed 10s of networks, including ESPs, on the SBL. The listings all contained the following note: Problem description ============================ The newsletter service () is using the referenced IP address to send bulk email. Unfortunately, the said newsletter service is not verifying the email address of...

July 21, 2016

SPF ?all

By laura

1 Min read

4 comments

21July

The most read post on the blog is Authenticating with SPF: -all or ~all. In fact, it’s in the top 5 posts every single day. We still get comments on it, too. Usually from folks who disagree with my recommendations. I still stand by my recommendations, though. It doesn’t really matter if you choose ~all or -all in your SPF records. Why? No major provider is rejecting mail solely...

July 15, 2016

Almost Caturday

By laura

1 Min read

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15July

It’s Friday. It’s been a week.
Have a cat picture.

June 29, 2016

Bad data drives delivery problems

By laura

3 Min read

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29June

It’s a wild election season here in the US. In the past few presidential elections, email has played a bigger and bigger role in messaging and fundraising. President Obama’s campaign used email effectively, but sent  huge volumes. In fact, the volume was so heavy, it led to a joke on the Daily Show. (Video: email question at the 5:56 mark) Jon Stewart: “We have been talking here for...

June 27, 2016

Bounce handling is hard

By laura

6 Min read

9 comments

27June

Sometimes I find it hard to find a new topic to write about. I decide I’m going to write about X and then realize I did, often more than once. Other times I think I can blog about some issue only to realize that it’s too complex to handle in a quick post. There are concepts or issues that need background or I have to work a little harder to explain them. One thing I haven’t...

June 22, 2016

Domain transparency

By steve

3 Min read

3 comments

22June

An email I received this morning got me thinking about how your domain name is one of the main ways you identify yourself if you’re sending email. We talk about domain reputation quite a lot – DKIM and SPF let a sender volunteer a domain name as a unique identifier for recipients to use to track reputation, DMARC allows them to tie that domain to the domain visible to the user in the...

June 8, 2016

Permission: Let’s Talk Facts

By laura

4 Min read

4 comments

08June

I’ve commented in the past about how I can usually tell when an ISP makes filtering changes because all my calls relate to that ISP. The more recent contender is Gmail. They made changes a few months ago and a lot of folks are struggling to reach the inbox now. What I’m seeing, working with clients, is that there are two critical pieces to getting to the gmail inbox: permission and...

May 31, 2016

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

By laura

2 Min read

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31May

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...

May 27, 2016

Necessary but not sufficient

By laura

1 Min read

2 comments

27May

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...

May 24, 2016

I cannot feel the Bern.

By meri

3 Min read

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24May

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...