Spam filters aren’t perfect. They sometimes catch mail they shouldn’t, although it happens less than some people think. They sometimes fail to catch mail they should. One of the reason filters fail to catch mail they should is because some spammers invest a lot of time and energy in figuring out how to get past the filters. This is nothing new, 8 or 9 years ago I was in negotiations...
Mythbusting deliverability and engagement
Yesterday I published an article talking about an engagement webinar hosted by the EEC and DMA. I made a couple predictions about what would be said. ISPs do monitor engagement, even if they do it differently than senders thought. Engagement is important for inbox delivery at some ISPs. Different ISPs have different ways of making inbox decisions. Engagement will matter more in the future. And...
Delivery and engagement
Tomorrow is the webinar Mythbusters: Deliverability vs. Engagement. This webinar brings together the ISP speakers from EEC15, plus Matt from Comcast, to expand on their comments. There’s been some confusion about the impact of engagement on delivery and whether or not senders should care about recipient engagement. My opinion on the matter is well known: recipient engagement drives delivery...
Engagement, ISPs and the EEC
There’s been some controversy over some of the things said by the ISPs at the recent EEC meeting. Different people interpret what was said by the ISPs in different ways. The EEC has set up a webinar for March 17 to clarify and explain what was meant by the ISPs. Mythbusters: Deliverability vs. Engagement – Part Deux Join eec MAC Chair Ryan Phelan and Vice-Chair Dennis Dayman as well as the...
Email filtering: not going away.
I don’t do a whole lot of filtering of comments here. There are a couple people who are moderated, but generally if the comments contribute to a discussion they get to be posted. I do get the occasional angry or incoherent comment. And sometimes I get a comment that is triggers me to write an entire blog post pointing out the problems with the comment. Today a comment from Joe King showed...
Dodging filters makes for effective spamming
Spam is still 80 – 90% of global email volume, depending on which study look at. Most of that spam doesn’t make it to the inbox; ISPs reject a lot of it during the SMTP transaction and put much of rest of it in the bulk folder. But as the volumes of spam have grown, ISPs and filters are relying more and more on automation. Gone are the days when a team of people could manually review...
Top Commented Blog Posts on WttW in 2014
Here are the top 6 most commented on blog topics our Industry News & Analysis blog. In April, Laura wrote about the ins and outs about Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance also known as DMARC. If you are not familiar with DMARC or want to know the differences between strict and relaxed alignment, read the blog post here. Earlier this year WttW’s website was...
Email problems are costly
Last week Zulily released their quarterly earnings. Their earnings’ report was disappointing, resulting in a drop in their stock prices. The chairman of the company told reporters on a conference call that part of the reason for the drop in earnings were due to deliverability problems “at a large ISP.” Zulily ran into problems with a large email provider — issues which resulted...
What about the bots?
M3AAWG published a letter to the FCC addressing the implementation of CSRIC III Cybersecurity Best Practices (pdf link) The takeaway is that of the ISPs that contribute data to M3AAWG (37M+ users), over 99% of infected users receive notification that they are infected. I hear from senders occasionally that they are not the problem, bots are the problem and why isn’t anyone addressing bots...
ISP relations in a nutshell
Senders: You’re blocking our mail, why? Receivers: Because you’re spamming, stop spamming and we won’t block you. Senders: But we’re not spamming. What do you mean we’re spamming! How could we be spamming, we’re not sending spam! Receivers: You’re doing all these things (generating complaints, sending to dead accounts, hitting spam traps, not bounce...