I use a pretty standard mail filtering setup – a fairly vanilla SpamAssassin setup on the front end, combined with naive bayesian content filters in my mail client. So I don’t reject any mail, it just ends up in one of my inboxes or a junk folder. And I have a mix of normal consumer mail – facebook, twitter, lots of commercial newsletters, mail from friends and colleagues and...
I’ve spent much of today talking to various people about IP reputation and bulk foldering. It’s an interesting topic, and one that has changed quite a bit in the past few months. Here are a few of the things I said on the topic. Generally IPs that the ISP has not seen traffic from before starts out with a slight negative reputation. If you think about all the new IPs that an ISP will...
There are a number of reasons I know that mail coming into my mailbox is spam. I get 15 copies. There are a lot of spammers out there who buy and scrape addresses and don’t do even the simplest of de-duping. Send multiple copies to a single address, you’re probably spamming. I get mail to a non-tagged address. I use tags for every signup, and have done since mid-1999 or so. If I get...
Any time you put a URL in mail you send out, you’re sharing the reputation of everyone who uses URLs with that hostname. So if other people send unwanted email that has the same URL in it that can cause your mail to be blocked or sent to the bulk folder. That has a bunch of implications. If you run an affiliate programme where your affiliates use your URLs then spam sent by your affiliates...
URL shorteners, like bit.ly, moby.to and tinyurl.com, do three things: Make a URL shorter Track clicks on the URL Hide the destination URL Making URLs shorter was their original role, and it’s why they’re so common in media where the raw URL is visible to the recipient – instant messaging, twitter and other microblogs, and in plain text email where the “real” URL...
I received an email yesterday with the subject “Please confirm your lunch reservation”. It didn’t look like a typical spam subject line, but wasn’t from anywhere I recognized. I take a look. I’ve reserved a seat for you (and up to 2 guests from Word) at your choice of upcoming, complimentary lunch seminars that I will be hosting around the Bay Area … Sure...
My Mum flew in to visit last week, and over dinner one evening the talk turned to email. We don’t get much spam on Yahoo, mostly because we don’t give our email address out much. The only spam we really get is from <stockbroker website>, and that all goes to the spam folder. We use the site for checking stock quotes – it’s free, and we never see any of the spam they...
A client of a friend was getting rejection messages when they tried to send mail Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 554 554 5.7.1 The IP address of web site www.client.com [75.101.163.44] is listed at...
Daisy at Signup.to posted a list of 11 things to do when mail is going to the bulk folder. Her suggestions are a good start to troubleshooting and fixing persistent bulk foldering of mail. One thing she doesn’t mention is that while bulk foldering can sometimes be the result of poor content, more often it’s the result of unengaged recipients. Think of bulk foldering this way: the ISP...
MarketingSherpa has a case study up today about a company that took an aggressive stance on re-engagement that reduced their house list size by over 95%. While the size of the list went down, online sales doubled. The whole article is a lesson in how to do email right. They are sending relevant and engaging mail to their subscribers. They kept the addresses of people who wanted the mail, but...
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