There are lots of places to get deliverability help, I thought I’d list some of them here so I have a post to point people to. Of course, we provide deliverability consulting services and have done since 2001. Our customers are mostly large companies sending millions of emails a month. I focus mostly on complex problems that other deliverability folks haven’t solved. Overall I focus...
List-Unsub header
Benjamin asked in the comments where in the interface the “unsubscribe” or “block” popup appeared. This is the dialog box Microsoft uses when the add the “unsubscribe here” link at the top of a message. Screenshots taken today from my Hotmail account: At this point we have 3 of the major webmail providers (Yahoo, Microsoft, Gmail) using List-Unsubscribe headers...
GDPR and Whois data
For folks who aren’t following the discussion about whois records and GDPR compliance there’s a decent summary at vice.com: What Is Going to Happen With Whois? The problem, briefly stated, is that ICANN has agreements with the thousands of domain registrars around the globe like GoDaddy or HostGator which oblige the companies to post WHOIS data—such as names, emails, and phone...
Yahoo List-Unsub header
Last week some folks were mentioning a spike in unsubscribes from Yahoo. This is being investigated.
Microsoft using the List-Unsubscribe header
An interesting observation from Brian Curry about how Microsoft is using the List Unsubscribe header in their interface. The short version is that Microsoft is only supporting mailto: links. They’re ignoring any List-Unsubscribe links that are a URL. Here are some screenshots. When the sender is using a List-Unsubscribe <; header, Microsoft states that there is no information on how to...
AOL MX Change update
The AOL postmaster team posted some information about the upcoming MX transition on their blog. [S]tarting this week, the majority of AOL’s MX records will point to [OATH’s] new combined servers. This should be transparent to any sender as those servers will operate in simple pass-through mode. This means senders with established FBLs will continue to receive them from our AOL mail...
Still with the Microsoft problems
We took a quick trip to Dublin last week. I had every intention of blogging while on the trip, but… oops. I did get to meet with some clients, and had a great dinner while discussing email and delivery. Coming back, I see a lot of folks still reporting delivery problems to Microsoft properties. I’ve been operating under the assumption this was temporary as kinks were worked out after...
AOL Changes
We’ve known for a while that AOL email infrastructure is going to be merging with Yahoo’s, but apparently it’s happening sooner than anyone expected. The MXes for aol.com will be migrated to Yahoo infrastructure around February 1st. Reading between the lines I expect that this isn’t a flag day, and much of the rest of the AOL email infrastructure will be in use for a while...
Oh, Microsoft
Things have been a little unsettled at Microsoft webmail properties over the last few months. A number of ESPs reported significantly increased deferrals from Microsoft properties starting sometime late in November. Others saw reduced open rates across their customer base starting in late October. More recently, people are noticing higher complaint rates as well as an increase in mail being...