Here is some advice on dealing with ISPs over a blocking issue. Do know what IP is blocked if it is an IP based block. Do know what domain is blocked if it is domain based block. Do know what the rejection message is and have it handy. Do be polite. Most of the ISPs get hundreds of contacts a day, many of which are decidedly impolite. If you are the polite one you’re much more likely to...
I’ve been working on a document discussing laws relevant to email delivery and have found some useful websites about laws in different countries. US Laws from the FTC website. European Union Laws from the European Law site. Two documents on United Kingdom Law from the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Data Protection Laws. Canadian Laws from the Industry Canada website...
In the comments of the last post, Gary DJ asked an insightful questions and I think my answer probably deserves a broader audience. How can ESPs honor unsubscribe requests from ISPs without FBL programs (read: Yahoo!) if senders are not aware that subscribers are asking to be removed (via “Mark as Spam” links)? Yes, we can tell which clients are “good” and which are...
On one of my mailing lists there was a long discussion about the Q Interactive survey. Some of the senders on the list were complaining that unless ISPs provide FBLs they should not use complaints to make filtering decisions. The sender perspective is that it isn’t fair for the ISPs to have data and use it without sharing it back so that the senders could remove complainers. This deeply...
This press release has been discussed in a lot of groups and sites I read. One of my favorite comments comes from one of the filter developers at a large ISP. He was asked “does the overuse/misuse of the this-is-spam button significantly affect the ability to do your job?” His response, reposted with permission, The customer is always right. In my opinion, there is no such thing as...
Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa published a press release today about how fundamentally broken the “report spam” button is. They call for ISPs to make changes to fix the problem. I think the study on recipient perceptions is useful and timely. There is an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift in how ISPs are handling email filters. ISPs are learning how to measure a senders collective...
Every once in a while I get a phone call asking me what delivery consultant do. What can I do for them? How can I help them? Delivery consulting is a very new field and it is understandable a lot of people do not know what we do. The overall delivery consulting process here a Word to the Wise involves collecting detailed information about your mailing program and your technical setup, like: where...
There comes an inevitable point in some of my longer term consulting gigs where my client asks me some version of the following question:
I still get spam in my inbox, so why is the email I send blocked?
So what is your best answer?
I did not have a lot of predictions for what will happen with email at the beginning of the year so I did not do a traditional beginning of the year post. Over the last 3 – 4 weeks, though, I have noticed some things that I think show where the industry is going. Authentication. In January two announcements happened that lead me to believe most legitimate mail will be DK/DKIM signed by the...
ReturnPath announced yesterday that SenderScore Certified now covers 1.2 billion inboxes, including mail handled by Hotmail, Time Warner Cable, GoDaddy and eventually Yahoo. A number of filters are also using SSC, including Spam Assassin, IronPort Systems, Barracuda Networks and Cloudmark.
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