Word to the Wise

We make email better.

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We make email better.

Word to the Wise helps email marketers create more effective email messages, programs and infrastructures. We advise you how to skillfully navigate the constant business, technology, and policy challenges so your messages reach your customers.

We can help you with your email strategy, deliverability challenges and many other email issues.

Latest stories

Misinformation on filters

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I’ve seen reports that someone is asserting that utm=COVID19 in URLs results in all mail going to bulk at multiple ISPs. This is the type of thing that someone says is true and dozens of folks believe it and thus a “deliverability phact” is born. For a plethora of reasons, this doesn’t pass the sniff test. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It’s...

Discussion Session

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More than 30 people joined our delivery discussion from last Wednesday evening (Irish time). Thanks to all who joined and participated. I had a number of different topic suggestions, but the thing on everyone’s mind was the current pandemic and how much email many of our customers, clients, and companies are sending. We had what I think was a productive discussion sharing information and...

Deliverability discussion

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Lots of folks are socialising distantly these days, so I thought I’d try a scheduled deliverability discussion over video. Given the time difference, I’ll log on in the evening Irish time which makes this daytime for most of the US folks. The first call will be Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 5pm Ireland time. That’s 1pm Eastern and 10am Pacific. If you’re interested in...

Moment of Zen

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Things are very unsettled right now. Completely and totally unsettled. Even for those of us who are well geared up for and used to working from home are struggling in our current situation. We went for a walk down the canal on Tuesday, and it was very quiet, with almost no traffic on the street. There were various couples and families walking, but most were doing a good job at social distancing...

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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It’s a near silent St. Paddy’s day here in Ireland. We took a walk along the canal and took in the silence. On the way back, our neighbour’s kids had decorated their front window and I had to take a picture.

Things are weird. Be kind to yourself and to others. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Don’t send that email to your entire database.

Advice on coronavirus emails

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Gartner has some really good recommendations for companies considering mailing about the coronavirus pandemic. Launch your COVID-19-themed marketing email campaign only if you can answer yes to four questions: Am I telling customers something different from other brands versus saying the same thing as everyone else? Am I telling customers something they don’t already expect of my company or brand...

Authentication at Office365

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This is a followup from a post a few weeks ago about authentication changes at Office365. We have some more clarity on what is going on there. This is all best information we have right now. Microsoft is now requiring authentication to match the visible from address in order to reach the inbox at Office365. That means, either the SPF domain or the DKIM domain must align (in the DMARC sense) to...

Back at it

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Back at the office after traveling to visit a bunch of our US friends recently. A lot of news, both in and out of the email space, happened while we were gone. The biggest stories are outside the email space and I will admit to following the coronavirus news probably closer than I should. (My graduate work was done across the hall from one of the major avian epidemic monitoring labs. This is the...

What is FCrDNS and why do we care

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It’s been a light blogging month. We’ve been dancing around getting the final plans, financing, and contractors set up for the work we’re doing on the Dublin house and then heading off for our first actual vacation in almost 5 years. But, I wrote half of this answering a question on mailop, so I may as well polish and publish. What is FCrDNS FCrDNS stands for Full Circle reverse...

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