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.
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For a long time one of the “best practices” for links in html content has been to avoid having anything that looks like a URL or hostname in the visible content of the link, as ISP phishing filters are very, very suspicious of links that seem to mislead recipients about where the link goes to. They’re a very common pattern in phishing emails. /* This is bad: */ <a href="">>...
The nice folks at Kickbox asked me what I thought the biggest myths about spamtraps were. I said: I think the biggest misconception is that spamtraps are the reason for delivery failures, whether blocking or spamfoldering. When the article came out, I was highly amused to see that John from Campaign Monitor said the same thing in his first sentence, too. A common misconception is that spamtraps...
One of the interesting things about moving to the EU is experiencing the internet where GDPR is a thing. We get asked permission for everything. Including if we want shopping cart updates. On the email space, though, we’ve been visiting various home shows as we look at options and furniture for our new house. Part of it has involved giving email addresses to various groups in exchange for...
There is currently a phishing attack against a major ESP. The mail came through what I presume was a compromised account hosted at one of the providers. It’s just as possible this was a domain set up for the sole purpose of phishing, though. The underlying attack is pretty good. They took the ESP compliance notification email and changed a couple of the links to point to their phishing page...
Saw a new disclaimer on mail sent to an address harvested off our website today: disclaimer: This is an advertisement and a promotional mail-in adherence to the guidelines of CAN-SPAM act 2003. We have clearly mentioned the source id of this mail, also clearly mentioned the subject line, and they are in no way misleading in any form. We have found your email address through our own efforts on the...
A couple folks have asked me recently about MX records that they don’t understand. These records consist of a single . or they contain localhost or they are 127.0.0.1. In all cases, the domain owners use these records to signal that the domains don’t accept email. What do these records look like? Why do domains do this? In all cases it’s because the domain owners want to signal...
When we talk about filters, we often think there is one filter. But, in many cases there are multiple stages of filters, each examining mail in a different way. In deliverability terms the easiest filters to ignore are the individual user filters. Mostly because there’s nothing we can do about those. These are the baysean style filters built into a lot of email clients as well as specific...
Someone recently asked when they should purge addresses to remove spamtraps. To my mind this is actually the wrong question. Purging addresses that don’t engage is rarely about spamtraps, it’s about your overall communication processes. Well maintained traps will actively bounce mail for 6 – 12 months before turning the address into a trap. In those cases it’s mostly the whole...
There was another thread on mailop today about email filtering. This one was about Microsoft and SmartScreen. After watching a bunch of folks make lots of comments about what SmartScreen was, and get it wrong, I waded in. One thing that I always thought was common knowledge, but apparently isn’t, is that SmartScreen is primarily a content filter. Microsoft does use IP and domain reputation...
On Friday Google’s lawyers filed their response to the Gabbard Campaign’s first amended complaint. They asked for the case to be moved to the Northern District of CA as per the contractual agreement that the campaign signed. They also asked for a dismissal as they are not a government entity nor acting in place of a government entity and thus are not covered under either the 1st or...
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