I stumbled across this story again this morning, and it’s such a lovely delivery yarn I thought I’d share it. It’s from Trey Harris, and it’s set in the mid 90s. Here's a problem that *sounded* impossible... I almost regret posting the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a conference. :-) The story is slightly altered in order to protect...
I started out with the best intentions to get back into the swing of things with blogging more regularly. But between MAAWG recovery, COVID recovery and life it’s not worked out that way. This is an excerpt of something I wrote over on slack to explain why someone was still struggling with delivery even though best practices weren’t working. Hope it will be helpful for some folks...
A few weeks ago I was on an industry call. We were discussing some changes coming down the pike at the ISPs and filter providers. These changes are going to cause some headache at ESPs and other places that do email but don’t provide mailboxes. During the call I ended up explaining why what the ISPs were doing made sense and how it fit in with their mission and customer needs. At one point...
Everyone has their own way of troubleshooting problems. I thought I would list out the steps I take when I’m trying to troubleshoot them. Clarify the problem. As a consultant, folks come to me asking me to help them solve their delivery problems. My first step is to get them to clarify what symptoms they’re seeing. Something happened to make them contact me, and that’s where we...
I field a lot of delivery questions on various online fora. Often people try and anonymise what they’re asking about by abstracting out the question. The problem is that there are very few answers we can give in the abstract. What are some examples of these types of questions? Should you always remove an address that hard bounces? Well, in general, yes. But there are a small number of cases...
This morning I woke up to a job offer. I hear a number of other email deliverability folks received the same job offer. I am writing to you from [Company]. We are one of the oldest and best reputed partners for Salesforce. We have succeeded because we only hire the best, most experienced developers. We have a need for an excellent expert in deliverability. We have been...
A few weeks ago, Return Path announced they were being purchased by Validity, who also own BrightVerify. Last week, they had a round of layoffs. According to sources inside the industry, Validity is closing the New York headquarters and Indianapolis offices and layoffs involved more than 170 staff members. Return Path has been a fixture in the deliverability space for years. While they...
There’s an ongoing discussion, one I normally avoid, regarding how much impact an ESP has on deliverability. Overall, my opinion is that as long as you have a half way decent ESP they have no impact on deliverability. Then I started writing an email and realised that my thoughts are more complex than that. Here are some excerpts from the email, because in other circumstances I would have...
When asking a for assistance with email delivery, there are some pieces of information that are required before anyone can help. Be prepared with the information so you can get timely assistance. This advice is true whether you’re looking for help from peers or working with paid deliverability consultants. What is the problem? Be very specific about the problem you see. The fix for mail...
A few weeks ago we took a drive down I5 to attend a service at Bakersfield National Cemetery. Amid the acres and acres of almond farms there were patches of black from recent grassfires. Typical but boring California landscape. Wildfires are a hugely destructive but continual threat in California. Growing up on the east coast, I never really understood wildfires. How can acres and acres and...
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