Dear Colleagues at ESPs, We have a problem. More specifically, YOU have a problem. You have a spam problem. One that you’re not taking care of in any way, shape or form. There was a point where ESPs started caring about spam out of their networks. They got blocked enough they had to take action. Because they took action a lot of the big blocklists started being nice. Spamhaus, for instance...
Over the last few years I’ve reduced the complaints I send to ESPs about their customers to almost nothing. The only companies I send complaints to are ones where I actually know folks inside the compliance desk, and I almost never expect action, I just send them as professional courtesy. The sad fact is, many ESPs are really horrible about dealing with spam coming from their networks. The...
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...
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...
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...
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 July 2009. I discuss why recipients complain about mail and how senders can lower the complaint rates. While this addresses complaint rates directly, the same series of questions...
There has been quite an interesting discussion in the comment stream of my earlier post about monetizing the complaint stream. I’ve found all the perspectives and comments quite interesting. There is one thing multiple people have brought up that I don’t necessarily see as a problem. They assert that this idea will only work if all ESPs do it because customers can just say...
Yesterday I posted about why the reasons a lot of people give for not unsubscribing from spam are mostly wrong. Unsubscribing from spam doesn’t seem to confirm your address and it doesn’t seem to increase your spam load. But does that mean you should unsubscribe from spam? I’m not sure about that. I’ve been working on a project where I am unsubscribing from every message...
Return Path released their 3rd quarter email intelligence report this week. And the numbers aren’t looking that great for marketers. Complaints are a major problem for commercial mailers. In the data Return Path examined, commercial mail made up 18% of the total inbox volume. That same mail accounted for 70% of all email complaints. Additionally, 60% of the email sent to spamtraps was...
I’ve been sitting on this one for about a week, after the folks over at IBM/Pivotal Veracity called me to tell me about this. But now their post is out, so I can share.
There are ISPs providing real metrics to senders: QQ and Mail.ru. Check out Laura Villevieille’s blog post for the full details.
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