Tagemail address

September 13, 2017

August 2017: The month in email

By laura

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13September

Hello! Hope all are keeping safe through Harvey, Irma, Katia and the aftermath. I know many people that have been affected and are currently out of their homes. I am proud to see so many of my fellow deliverability folks are helping our displaced colleagues with resources, places to stay and money to replace damaged property. Here’s a mid-month late wrapup of our August blog posts. Our favorite...

August 23, 2016

Open subscription forms going away?

By laura

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23August

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a potential client. He was all angry and yelling because his ESP had kicked him off for spamming. “Only one person complained!! Do you know him? His name is Name. And I have signup data for him! He opted in! How can they kick me off for one complaint where I have opt-in data? Now they’re talking Spamhaus listings, Spamhaus can’t list me! I have...

April 25, 2016

The source of deliverability problems

By laura

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25April

Most deliverability problems don’t start where many people think they do. So very often people call looking for deliverability help and tell me all about the things they’re doing to reach the inbox. They’ll tell me about content, they’ll tell me about bounces, they’ll talk about complaints, engagement, opens and clicks. Rarely will they bring up their list source...

March 7, 2014

Horses, not zebras

By laura

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07March

I was first introduced to the maxim “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras” when I worked in my first molecular biology lab 20-some-odd years ago. I’m no longer a gene jockey, but I still find myself applying this to troubleshooting delivery problems for clients. It’s not that I think all delivery problems are caused by “horses”, or that...

March 5, 2014

This month in email: February 2014

By laura

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05March

After a few months of hiatus, I’m resurrecting the this month in email feature. So what did we talk about in February? Industry News There was quite a bit of industry news. M3AAWG was in mid-February and there were actually a few sessions we were allowed to blog about. Gmail announced their new pilot FBL program. Ladar Levinson gave the keynote talking about the Lavabit shutdown and his new...

July 17, 2013

Growing your list carefully

By laura

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17July

Karl Murray wrote a great set of recommendations for growing an email marketing list. I really can’t think of anything I would have said differently. Touching customers and getting contact information from them is great, but there are situations where this gets bad addresses. Too many bad addresses can impact delivery. So how do you grow your list without falling into a delivery trap? The...

June 27, 2013

Yahoo retiring user IDs: why you shouldn't worry

By laura

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27June

A couple weeks ago, Yahoo announced that they were retiring abandoned user IDs. This has been causing quite a bit of concern among email marketers because they’re not sure how this is going to affect email delivery. This is a valid concern, but more recent information suggests that Yahoo! isn’t actually retiring abandoned email addresses. You have to remember, there are Yahoo! userIDs...

June 5, 2013

About the @ sign

By laura

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05June

The @ sign is ubiquitous online. We use it and we don’t think about it. But the history of the @ sign is more complicated than we realize.

January 24, 2012

Can you verify email addresses in real time?

By laura

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24January

In a recent discussion about spamtraps and address lists and data collection a participant commented, “[E]very site should be utilizing a real-time email address hygiene and correction service on the front end.” He went on to explain that real time hygiene prevents undeliverable addresses and spamtraps and all sorts of list problems. I was skeptical to say the least. Yes, there are...

August 5, 2011

A brief guide to spamtraps

By laura

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05August

“I thought spamtraps were addresses harvested off webpages.” “I thought spamtraps were addresses that were valid and now aren’t.” “I thought spamtraps were addresses created to catch spammers.” There is a lot of “I thought…” about spamtraps. Most of the theories are accurate but limited. Like the blind men and the elephant, they catch...