Word to the Wise

We make email better.

W

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

October 2017: The Month in Email

O

October was a busy month. In addition to on boarding multiple new clients, we got new desks, I went to Toronto to see M3AAWG colleagues for a few days, and had oral surgery. Happily, we’re finally getting closer to having the full office setup.  What is an office without a Grover Cat? (he was so pleased he figured out how to get onto it at standing height). All of this means that blogging...

The Blighty Flag

T

Back in the dark ages (the late ’90s) most people used dialup to connect to the internet. Those people who had broadband could run all sorts of services off them, including websites and mail servers and such. We had a cable modem for a while handling mail for blighty.com. At that time blighty.com had an actual website. This site hosted some of the very first online tools for fighting abuse...

Gmail survey rough analysis

G

I closed the Google Postmaster Tools (GPT) survey earlier today. I received 160 responses, mostly from the link published here on the blog and in the M3AAWG Senders group. I’ll be putting a full analysis together over the next couple weeks, but thought I’d give everyone a quick preview / data dump based on the analysis and graphs SurveyMonkey makes available in their analysis. Of 160...

Google Postmaster Tools: Last Chance!

G

I’ll be closing down the Google Postmaster Tools survey Oct 31. If you’ve not had a chance to answer the questions yet, you have through tomorrow.
This data will be shared here. The ulterior motive is to convince Google to make an API available soon due to popular demand.

Mailchimp changes signup process

M

As of October 31, 2017 signup forms and popup boxes provided by Mailchimp will no longer default to a double / confirmed opt-in process. Starting October 31, single opt-in will become the default setting for all MailChimp hosted, embedded, and pop-up signup forms. This announcement was made earlier today in their newsletter and has been spreading like wildfire around the email community. Of...

RoadRunner FBL goes kaput

R

Road Runner is no longer providing a FBL starting today. Earlier this morning a couple ESPs were reporting a decrease in FBL messages from the RR FBL. A few hours later, a senior technical account manager confirmed on mailop that the FBL was ending today. While the announcement says that folks can expect reports to trickle, at least one ESP has reported zero reports today. we usually get 400-600...

The feds are deploying DMARC

T

The US National Cybersecurity Assessments & Technical Services Team have issued a mandate on web and email security, including TLS+HSTS for web servers, and STARTTLS+SPF+DKIM+DMARC for email. It’s … pretty decent for a brief, public requirements doc. It’s compatible with a prudent rollout of email authentication. Set up a centralized reporting repository for DMARC failure...

Troubleshooting and codes

T

Microsoft is still in the process of rolling out new mail servers. One thing that is new about these is some new codes on their error messages. This has led to questions and speculations as to what is going on. host outlook-com.olc.protection.outlook.com [104.47.9.33] said: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [10.10.01.01] weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since...

Recent Posts

Archives

Follow Us