Netsuite has entered an agreement to acquire Bronto. Congrats to the folks at Bronto.
April 23, 2015
Another acquisition
23April
April 21, 2015
Mistakes happen
21April
As happens every Tuesday, the Magill Report was blasted into mailboxes all over the Internet. This Tuesday was extra special for some recipients, though. These recipients received a dozen or more copies of the newsletter. Ken knows best practices and implements them rigidly in regards to his sending. He’s one of the very few standalone publishers that uses confirmed opt-in, for instance...
April 20, 2015
Where's AOL?
20April
I hear almost nothing about AOL from clients and potential clients these days. I hear a lot from AOL users who are confused and don’t understand that I am not AOL support (I’m not. Really. I can’t help you.). But I hear almost nothing from clients. There are three possibilities I can think of for this. AOL just isn’t a major player in the mail space any more. People...
April 14, 2015
A series of tubes
14April
The Internet and pundits had a field day with Senator Stevens, when he explained the Internet was a series of tubes. I always interpreted his statement as coming from someone who demanded an engineer tell him why his mail was delayed. The engineer used the “tube” metaphor to explain network congestion and packets and TCP, and when the Senator tried to forward on the information he got...
April 6, 2015
March 2015: The month in email
06April
Happy March! We started the month with some more movement around CASL enforcement from our spam-fighting friends to the north. We noted a $1.1 million fine levied against Compu-Finder for CASL violations, as well as a $48,000 fine to Plentyoffish Media for failing to provide unsubscribe links. We noted a few interesting things: the fines are not being imposed at the maximum limits, violations are...
March 30, 2015
Thoughts on Gmail filtering
30March
Gmail has some extremely complex filters. They’re machine learning based and measure hundreds of things about incoming mail. The filters are continually adjusting to changes and updating how they treat specific mail. One consequence of continually adjusting machine learning filters is that filtering is not static. What passes to the inbox now, may not pass in a couple hours. One of the...
March 27, 2015
We're all targets
27March
Last week, another email provider announced their systems had a security incident. Mandrill’s internal security team detected unusual activity and took the servers offline to investigate. While there’s no sign any data was compromised or servers infiltrated, Mandrill sent an email to their customers explaining the incident was due to a firewall rule change. Email service providers are a...
March 23, 2015
When spam filters fail
23March
Spam filters aren’t perfect. They sometimes catch mail they shouldn’t, although it happens less than some people think. They sometimes fail to catch mail they should. One of the reason filters fail to catch mail they should is because some spammers invest a lot of time and energy in figuring out how to get past the filters. This is nothing new, 8 or 9 years ago I was in negotiations...
March 19, 2015
Thoughts on Hotmail filtering
19March
One of the new bits of information to come out of the EEC15 deliverability discussions is how Hotmail is looking at engagement differently than other webmail providers. Many webmail providers really do look at overall engagement with a mail when making delivery decisions. And this really impacts new subscribers the most. If there is a mailing where a lot of subscribers are engaged, then new...
March 17, 2015
Tweets from engagement and deliverability webinar
17March
Want to see some of the tweets shared during the EEC Deliverability and Engagement webinar on March 17? Check out what was said as it happened.
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