The question came up on a mailing list about how senders classify email. Steve came up with the following list of email types from the recipient (not sender) perspective Transactional & Alerts Marketing Duplicates Duplicates Apologies for the preceding duplicate Just sending mail so you don’t forget us Opt-in confirmations Welcome messages COI challenges Opt-out confirmations Apologies...
More about FBLs and unsubscribes
In the comments of the last post, Gary DJ asked an insightful questions and I think my answer probably deserves a broader audience. How can ESPs honor unsubscribe requests from ISPs without FBL programs (read: Yahoo!) if senders are not aware that subscribers are asking to be removed (via “Mark as Spam” links)? Yes, we can tell which clients are “good” and which are...
FBLs, complaints and unsubscribes
On one of my mailing lists there was a long discussion about the Q Interactive survey. Some of the senders on the list were complaining that unless ISPs provide FBLs they should not use complaints to make filtering decisions. The sender perspective is that it isn’t fair for the ISPs to have data and use it without sharing it back so that the senders could remove complainers. This deeply...
Report spam button broken
Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa published a press release today about how fundamentally broken the “report spam” button is. They call for ISPs to make changes to fix the problem. I think the study on recipient perceptions is useful and timely. There is an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift in how ISPs are handling email filters. ISPs are learning how to measure a senders collective...
How much mail?
Yesterday I had a call with a potential new client. She told me she had a list of 4M Yahoo addresses and she wanted to mail them twice a day. Her biggest concern was that this volume would be too much for Yahoo and her mail would be block solely on volume. As we went through the conversation, she commented that this list is also being used by someone else she knows and they were getting inbox...
What to expect from your delivery consultant
Every once in a while I get a phone call asking me what delivery consultant do. What can I do for them? How can I help them? Delivery consulting is a very new field and it is understandable a lot of people do not know what we do. The overall delivery consulting process here a Word to the Wise involves collecting detailed information about your mailing program and your technical setup, like: where...
Unauthenticated email
A few weeks ago, NetworkWorld posted an interview with Mark Risher of Yahoo. In it, Mark talked about how Yahoo had no plans to outright block or refuse any unauthenticated email. Of course authentication will be a large part of their decision making for incoming emails but they cannot just refuse to accept mail that is unauthenticated, because there are times when unauthenticated email is the...
Updating SenderID records for Microsoft
In the past, bulk senders who wanted Microsoft to check SenderID had to email information to a special Microsoft address. Microsoft would then cache the senderID data from the sender’s DNS records and verify incoming email. Microsoft has simplified the process and now has a webform to submit the data. ; In order to submit your information you will need a contact email address, the domains that...
Do you know where your addresses go?
Being a deliverability consultant, I end up signing up for a lot of lists and providing email addresses to a lot of different websites I may not normally trust with my email address. The only way to manage the resulting volume of email is using a disposable address system. There are a number of commercial versions, but we built our own system. Any time I need to sign up with a client, I create a...
Success!
A few weeks back I posted about changes a client of mine was making in order to improve their IP reputation and their delivery. They are now getting inbox delivery at the major ISPs. Their actions are up and they are seeing great results. They did not implement all of my specific suggestions. Instead, they took the underlying advice, and modified it to fit their needs. They took my advice to...