CategoryBest Practices

January 15, 2020

The variables are not independent

By laura

3 Min read

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15January

In my previous career I was a molecular biologist. Much of my work was done on bacteria but after I left grad school, I ended up working in a developmental biology lab. Bacteria were (mostly) simple: just about every trait was controlled by a single gene. We could study what that gene did by removing it from the bacteria or adding it to a well characterised bacteria. When I moved to developmental...

November 22, 2019

Alt-text and phishing warnings

By steve

2 Min read

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22November

For a long time one of the “best practices” for links in html content has been to avoid having anything that looks like a URL or hostname in the visible content of the link, as ISP phishing filters are very, very suspicious of links that seem to mislead recipients about where the link goes to. They’re a very common pattern in phishing emails. /* This is bad: */ <a href="">>...

October 17, 2019

Forget about engagement, think inboxing

By laura

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17October

While answering a question about how to improve IP reputation at Gmail I realized that I no longer treat Gmail opens as anything about how a user is interacting with email. There are so many cases and ways that a pixel load can be triggered, without the user actually caring about the mail that it’s not a measure of the user at all. That doesn’t mean opens are useless. In fact...

October 16, 2019

Opting out of “service” messages

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

16October

A frequent question in a number of deliverability spaces is how to tell if a message is transactional or marketing. In most cases the decision is related to whether or not to respect an unsubscribe request. All too often companies decide that their messages are too important to allow someone to opt-out of. The problem is, in some cases, there is no longer a customer relationship to send notices...

September 26, 2019

An open is not permission

By laura

4 Min read

1 comment

26September

A decade or so ago I was helping a client troubleshoot a Spamhaus listing. They, as many companies do, had a database with addresses from a number of different sources. Spamhaus was asking for them to reconfirm the entire database, which they didn’t want to do. I came up with the idea that if we had some sign of activity on the email address, like an open or a click and some other...

August 26, 2019

d= for data

By laura

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26August

A few ISPs use the d= value in the DKIM signature as a way to provide FBL and reputation data to senders. This has some good bits, in that senders can get FBLs and other information regardless of the IP address they’re using and whether or not they have sole access to it. There are also some challenges with using the d= as a data identifier. One of them is that ESPs may not be able to get a...

August 22, 2019

Link tracking redirectors

By steve

5 Min read

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22August

Almost every bulk mail sent includes some sort of instrumentation to track which users click on which links and when. That’s usually done by the ESP rewriting links in the content so they point at the ESP’s tracking server, and include information about the customer, campaign and recipient. The recipient clicks on the link in the email, their web browser fetches the link from the...

June 24, 2019

New laptop, old reminder

By steve

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24June

I have a new laptop.

New OS (maybe this year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop?). New hardware problems. New applications. New keyboard layout.

New mail client.

It reminded me of another reason why you want to keep the email address in your From: consistent – it’s something some users will use to automatically load images, which is something you probably want.

April 9, 2019

Low bounce rates don’t mean a list is good

By laura

3 Min read

1 comment

09April

Many people believe that if they remove non-existent addresses from their mailing lists that their lists will make it to the inbox without a problem. In fact, an entire industry has grown up around the idea that sending mail to valid addresses can never be spam. This isn’t true, of course, spammers use many of the same techniques legitimate mailers do to clean their lists. I don’t...

April 4, 2019

Delivery is not dependent on authentication

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

04April

All too often folks come to me with delivery problems and lead off with all of the things they’ve done to send mail right. They assure me they’re using SPF and DKIM and DMARC and they can’t understand why things are bad. There is this pervasive belief that if you do all the technical things right then you will reach the inbox. Getting the technical bits right is an important...