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.
Last week the megarbl.net domain name expired. Normally this would have no affect on anyone, but their domain registrar put in a wildcard DNS entry. Because of how DNSBLs work, this had the effect of causing every IP to be listed on the blocklist. The domain is now active and the listings due to the DNS wildcard are removed. How does a domain expiration lead to a DNSBL listing the whole internet...
We’re two days out from the beginning of the Holiday Shopping Season here in the US. Three days out from one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year in the US. 5 days out from one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. I’m sure everyone has their mail campaigns planned. Most of the messages are finished, just waiting for a tweak or the exact right image. The...
The two most hated words in deliverability. Many people ask general questions about deliverability and most experts, including myself, answer, “It depends.” There are a lot of problems with this answer. The biggest problem is that it’s led to the impression that there are no real answers about deliverability. That because we can’t answer hypothetical questions we are...
Earlier this week Litmus and Fluent hosted a webinar title “Adapting to Consumers’ New Definition of Spam.” This had a number of fascinating facts about email marketing, many of which should reassure folks. Litmus has a blog post up highlighting some of the findings specific to millennials and email. Good news is millennials like getting mail from brands and interact with them...
There was quite a bit of content I cut out on my rant about parasites in the email ecosystem earlier this week. I had whole section on people who ask to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately send a pitch or scrape your address and add it to their marketing automation software and start spamming. Generally, the only reason I will drop someone off LinkedIn is because they do this. Today, one of...
Arrived yesterday! Still working on setting it up, but it’s pretty slick so far.
As a small business owner I am a ripe target for many companies. They buy my address from some lead generation firm, or they scrape it off LinkedIn, and they send me a message that pretends to be personalized but isn’t really. “I looked at your website… we have a list of email addresses to sell you.” “We offer cold calling services… can I set up a call with you...
In a blog post today, AOL announced they are changing the from address on their FBL emails from scomp@aol.net to fbl-no-reply at postmaster.aol.com. This change will take place on January 16th, 2017. While this may seem a minor change to announce so far in advance, it’s really not. Because AOL was the first FBL, there are many tool chains that have been kludged together to handle the...
Dear Laura, Your blog is the best. Nothing else compares for solid deliverability discussion. I’ve frequently read these two articles: I need IP addresses to avoid throttling I need to deliver my mail fast They are incredibly helpful. But I don’t think you’ve ever answered this question directly: “Is it detrimental to use an IP pool instead of a single, static IP? For...
With my travel / vacation in October, blogging has been light the last few weeks, including a brief hiatus of our Ask Laura series. I’m working hard for the next few editions of Ask Laura and will get those posts out soon. We’ve been getting questions from readers for a while, but I want to encourage folks to contact us with more. What are your questions about email? Got a problem...
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