Taghygiene

November 5, 2019

Identifying domains that don’t accept or send email

By laura

2 Min read

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05November

A couple folks have asked me recently about MX records that they don’t understand. These records consist of a single . or they contain localhost or they are 127.0.0.1. In all cases, the domain owners use these records to signal that the domains don’t accept email. What do these records look like? Why do domains do this? In all cases it’s because the domain owners want to signal...

October 28, 2019

Purging to prevent spamtraps

By laura

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28October

Someone recently asked when they should purge addresses to remove spamtraps. To my mind this is actually the wrong question. Purging addresses that don’t engage is rarely about spamtraps, it’s about your overall communication processes. Well maintained traps will actively bounce mail for 6 – 12 months before turning the address into a trap. In those cases it’s mostly the whole...

June 2, 2017

Disappearing domains

By laura

4 Min read

2 comments

02June

On May 31, British broadband provider EE discontinued service for a number of email domains: Orange.net, Orangehome.co.uk, Wanadoo.co.uk, Freeserve.co.uk, Fsbusiness.co.uk, Fslife.co.uk, Fsmail.net, Fsworld.co.uk, and Fsnet.co.uk. These domains were acquired by EE as part of multiple mergers and acquisitions. On their help page, EE explains that the proliferation of free email services with...

May 4, 2016

Changes coming to Verizon email

By laura

2 Min read

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04May

Last year Verizon bought AOL. As part of that merger some @verizon.net email is being migrated to the AOL backend. FAQs published by Verizon say this change is only affecting users in FL, TX and CA. Users will still have @verizon.net addresses but the backend and filtering will be managed by AOL. This shouldn’t have a huge impact on commercial senders. However, one thing I did notice while...

July 30, 2012

Bounces, complaints and metrics

By laura

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30July

In the email delivery space there are a lot of numbers we talk about including bounce rates, complaint rates, acceptance rates and inbox delivery rates. These are all good numbers to tell us about a particular campaign or mailing list. Usually these metrics all track together. Low bounce rates and low complaint rates correlate with high delivery rates and high inbox placement. But sometimes the...

June 21, 2012

Spamhaus changes

By laura

3 Min read

3 comments

21June

A number of ESPs are reporting an increase in SBL listings of big, well known brands. InterestingSBLs seems to confirm this. Just on the month of June I see tweets reporting SBL listings for: Disney (again, and again) AAA Michigan, NRCC, the Mitt Romney campaign, Macy’s (again) Facebook, Walmart Brazil, Safeway, Bacardi. What happened? I think there are a number of reasons for an increase...

November 1, 2011

Six best practices for every mailer

By laura

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01November

People get into all sorts of details when talking about best practices. But so much of email depends on the type of email and the target market and the goals of the sender. It’s difficult to come up with universal best practices. I’ve said in the past that I think that best practices are primarily technical. I don’t believe there is a best frequency or a best time to send mail...

September 28, 2011

Six months or out

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

28September

Mickey Chandler has a great post up about Triage vs. Planning. Where he talks about the decisions you make differ depending on the context. It’s a good read, and I strongly encourage everyone to go give it a look. But his post led me to a post by Andrew Kordek at Trendline where he claims that there is an industry rule of thumb that says 6 months is the rule of thumb to define an inactive...

May 13, 2011

Don't take my subscribers away!

By laura

3 Min read

3 comments

13May

Tom Sather has a good summary of the problems with inactive email addresses and why data hygiene is critical to maintain high deliverability. These recommendations are some of the most difficult to convince people to implement. Some of my clients even show me numbers that show that a recipient that hadn’t opened or read and email in 18 months, suddenly made a multi-hundred dollar purchase...

November 9, 2010

Size isn't the only metric

By laura

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09November

MarketingSherpa has a case study up today about a company that took an aggressive stance on re-engagement that reduced their house list size by over 95%. While the size of the list went down, online sales doubled. The whole article is a lesson in how to do email right. They are sending relevant and engaging mail to their subscribers. They kept the addresses of people who wanted the mail, but...