I wear a number of hats and have a lot of different email addresses. I like to keep the different email addresses separate from each other, “don’t cross the streams” as it were. Recently I’ve been getting spam to my womenofemail.org address asking about the wordtothewise.com website. I’m not sure where Ms. Catherine Metcalf bought my Women of Email address or...
Responding to complaints
I sent in a complaint to an ESP earlier today. This was mail from a major UK retailer to an address that is not used to sign up for mail. It’s part of an ongoing stream of spam related to UK services and products. I believe most of this is because one of the data selling companies has that address associated with someone who is not me. I did explain I believed this was a purchased address...
Things you need to read
The email solicitation that made me vow to never work with this company again. When sending unsolicited email, you never know how the recipient is going to respond. Writing a public blog post calling you out can happen. The 2016 Sparkies. Sparkpost is looking for nominations for their email marketing awards. Win a trip to Insight 2016! 5 CAN SPAM myths. Send Grid’s General Counsel speaks...
New FBL information
A couple new bits of information for folks interested in participating in feedback loops. If you’re an ESP, you’ll want to sign up for the two new FBLs that were released this month. XS4ALL and Telenor are now offering complaint feeds to senders. If you’re a mail recipient and want the ability to report spam, try the new browser/MUA plugins for reporting spam released by the...
August 2014: The Month in Email
Isn’t August the month where things are supposed to slow down? We’re still waiting for that to happen around here… it’s been great to be busy, but we’re hoping to continue to carve out more time for blogging as we move into the fall. As usual, we reported on a mix of industry trends and news, the persistence of spam, and did a deep dive into an interesting technical topic. Let’s start there:...
Who pays for spam?
A couple weeks ago, I published a blog post about monetizing the complaint stream. The premise was that ESPs could offer lower base rates for sending if the customer agreed to pay per complaint. The idea came to me while talking with a deliverability expert at a major ESP. One of their potential customer wanted the ESP to allow them to mail purchased lists. The customer even offered to indemnify...
Low complaint rates are not always good
Digging another old blog post out of the archives. In November 2011, I talked about how part of the Holomaxx complaint against Microsoft and Yahoo said that their complaint rates were below 0.5% and 0.1%. The argument was that if their complaint rates were low, then the mail must not be spam. Specifically, HolomaXx alleges, its Microsoft complaint rates have been consistently at or below 0.5...
How useful are feedback loops
Things are extremely busy here and blogging is going to be light for a few weeks. I’ll be reposting some older blog posts that are still relevant for today’s email senders. Today’s post is a repost from November 2008. I look at the whys and hows of FBLs, address some of the objections people had to them and discuss how senders should deal with FBL mail. There has been a very long, ongoing...
Monetizing the complaint stream
What if ESPs (and ISPs, for that matter) started charging users for every complaint generated? Think of it like peak pricing for electricity. In California, businesses can opt for discounted power, with the agreement that they are the first companies shut off if electrical demand exceeds supply. What if ESPs and ISPs offered discounted hosting rates to bulk senders who agreed to pay per complaint...