I’ve been thinking a lot about the field of ISP relations and what it means and what it actually is. A few years ago the answer was pretty simple. ISP relations is about knowing the right people at ISPs in order to get blocks lifted. The fact that ISPs had staff just to deal with senders was actually a side effect of their anti-spam efforts. In many places blocking was at least partially...
I am one of the moderators of a discussion list working on a document about getting off blocklists. If anyone not on the list attempts to post to the list I get a moderation request. One came through while I was gone. Now, I don’t really think Jim Mills wants to be friends with a mailing list. I think he probably gave LinkedIn his email password and LinkedIn went through and scraped...
Bronto’s Chris Kolbenschlag frames the discussion well: He purchased from an online retailer, they assumed he wanted to receive followup emails, and thus, those emails did eventually commence. This is something I’ve had a lot of experience with. Working for an e-commerce service provider from later 2000 through mid 2006, I was the guy setting permission policy, dealing with spam...
Over on the AOL Postmaster blog, Lili Crowley announced yesterday that AOL has made changes to their spam filtering system. Specifically, more senders may be subject to blocking with CON:B1 errors. AOL’s website explains that CON:B1 errors indicate that an IP address is being blocked “due to a spike in unfavorable e-mail statistics.” This strongly suggests that a sender blocked...
Return Path released their 3rd quarter email intelligence report this week. And the numbers aren’t looking that great for marketers. Complaints are a major problem for commercial mailers. In the data Return Path examined, commercial mail made up 18% of the total inbox volume. That same mail accounted for 70% of all email complaints. Additionally, 60% of the email sent to spamtraps was...
In many cases these days, many more cases than a lot of senders want to admit, delivery problems at the big ISPs are a result of sending mail recipients just don’t care about. The reason your mail is going to bulk? It’s not because you have minor problems in your headers. It’s not because you have some formatting issues. The reason is because your recipients just don’t...
The Return Path In the Know blog listed 4 reasons mailing those old addresses is a bad idea. Ashley, the author, is completely right and I endorse everything she said. (Although I’d really like to hear what happened to the customer that added back all those addresses. What was the effect on that campaign and future email marketing?) As I was reading the article though, I realized how many...
I checked our SenderScore earlier this month, as quite a few people mentioned that they’d seen SenderScore changes – likely due to changed algorithms and new data sources. It sure looks like something changed. Our SenderScore was, for a while, zero out of a hundred. That’s as bad as it’s possible to get. I didn’t get a screenshot of the zero score, but I grabbed...
Ken has an article today about how Pro Flowers managed to get their mail out of the bulk folder at Gmail by asking their recipients for help. This year, ProFlowers apparently took into account Gmail’s use of sender reputation and user engagement in its spam filtering rules by using subject lines, such as: “Gmail Customer Notice: Open if you missed yesterday’s special discount!” and “Help Teach...
This is a great story from Trey Harris about a real email delivery issue from the mid 1990s. Here’s a problem that sounded impossible… I almost regret posting the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a conference. 🙂 The story is slightly altered in order to protect the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the whole...
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