No matter how great an email program deliverability is, no one can guarantee that 100% of the email sent will reach the recipient’s inbox. Why? Recipients can make decisions about where mail goes in their own inbox. Every mail client has a way for users to control where mail is delivered. This is good for delivery, when the mail means so much to people that they override spam filters and...
I’m back in the office after a busy June. The 2 continent, 3 city tour was unexpectedly extended to a 4th city thus I was out most of last week as well. What was I doing? We spent a week in Dublin, which is an awesome and amazing city and I love it a little bit more every time we visit. After Dublin I jetted off to Chicago, where I spoke at ActiveCampaign’s first user conference. The...
One thing I really like about going to conferences is they’re often one of the few times I get to sit and think about the bigger email picture. Hearing other people talk about their marketing experiences, their email experiences, and their blocking experiences usually triggers big picture style thoughts. Earlier this week I was at Activate18, hosted by Iterable. The sessions I attended were...
One of the top entries on the list of things deliverability folks hear all the time is, “But my mail is all CAN SPAM compliant!” The thing is… no one handling inbound mail really cares. Seriously. CAN SPAM is a law that is little more than don’t lie, don’t hide, and heed the no. Even more importantly, the law itself states that there is no obligation for ISPs to...
When faced with unexplained deliverability changes one of the first questions many folks ask is “Did the algorithm change.” In many ways this is an meaningless question. Why? Because there are two obvious answers to the question. A1: Of course it didn’t. A2: Of course it did. Both answers are correct, but they’re answering different underlying questions. When we understand...
One of the primary ways to collect email addresses is from website visitors, and it’s actually a pretty good way to collect addresses. One of the more popular, and effective, techniques is through a pop-up window, asking for an address. Users need to provide an address or click a “no thanks” link or close the window. I’ve noticed, though, that many companies drop something...
We took a quick trip to Dublin last week. I had every intention of blogging while on the trip, but… oops. I did get to meet with some clients, and had a great dinner while discussing email and delivery. Coming back, I see a lot of folks still reporting delivery problems to Microsoft properties. I’ve been operating under the assumption this was temporary as kinks were worked out after...
I was chatting with folks over on one of the email slack channels today. The discussion was about an ESP not wanting to implement a particular change as it would hurt deliverability. It led me down a path of thinking about how we think of deliverability and how that informs how we approach email. The biggest problem I see is the black and white thinking. There’s an underlying belief in the...
I had a number of very good talks with folks at the Email Innovations Summit earlier this week. I’m still digesting it all. It’s clear that getting to the inbox isn’t a solved problem. Around a decade ago I figured that the explosion of complaint feedback loops would make my job obsolete. That more data would mean anyone could manage delivery. That’s not the case for a...
In the delivery space, stuff comes in cycles. We’re currently in a cycle where people are unhappy with spam filters. There are two reasons they’re unhappy: false positives and false negatives. False positives are emails that the user doesn’t think is spam but goes into the bulk folder anyway. Fales negatives are emails that the user does thing is spam but is delivered to the...
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