Had an interesting talk with a colleague at a BBQ this weekend. He was at a large ISP and then moved on to do delivery at a large email marketing company. This marketing company was started by a very successful direct (snail mail) marketer. The CEO believed totally in testing and they measured everything. They knew what colors provoked a better response and which fonts were better received by...
Amir Lev has a great post today detailing the 10 ways that spam is like Vuvuzelas. After reading his reasons (and deleting over 1000 messages from Cutwail), I absolutely agree. 10. It’s continuous and unavoidable The vuvuzela emits a loud, irritating, continuous noise that’s impossible to avoid — ruining many people’s World Cup experience. Spam is eyecatching, irritating...
It can be difficult and frustrating for a sender to understand they whys and wherefores of spam filtering. Clearly the sender is not spamming, so why is their mail getting caught in spam filters? I have a client that goes through this frustration on rare occasions. They send well crafted, fun, engaging content that their users really want. They have a solid reputation at the ISPs and their inbox...
You feel the need to add PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A SPAM OR AUTOMATED EMAIL, IT’S ONLY A REQUEST FOR A LINK EXCHANGE. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS NOT BEEN ADDED TO ANY LISTS, AND YOU WILL NOT BE CONTACTED AGAIN.IF YOU’D LIKE TO MAKE SURE WE DON’T CONTACT YOU AGAIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM: <link> PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR CONTACTING YOU. To any of the...
There’s been a bit of court activity related to spam that others have written about and I feel need a mention. I’ve not yet read the papers fully, but hope to get a chance to fully digest them over the weekend. First is e360 v. Spamhaus. This is the case that actually prompted me to start this blog and my first blog post analyzed the 7th circuit court ruling sending the case back the...
Al has a post asking what people would do if their information was shared after opting out of any sharing. It’s a tough call and one I think about as I see mail coming to my mailbox to such addresses as laura-sony and laura-quicken and laura-datran. All of these were addresses given to specific companies and where I attempted to opt-out of them sharing my data with other companies...
Senders with delivery problems ask about “the rules.” “Just tell us what the rules are!” “If the ISPs would just tell us what to do we’d do it!” There is only one rule anyone needs to pay attention to for good mail delivery: Respect the recipient. Not good enough for you? Want more specific rules? OK. The two rules everyone must follow for good mail...
Someone floated the idea of having ISPs confirm that a user really wants to report a mail as spam every time they do so. The original poster was asking for comments and what we thought of such an idea. The only thing I could think of is the poor woman who’s been gone for a week on vacation and is selecting large swathes of her mailbox and hitting “this is spam.” She then gets...
Asis Internet service has been ordered to pay over $800,000 in lawyer fees to Optin Global. Venkat has details. This is the same company that was recently awarded $2.5M judgment in a different case.
There is a lot of mythology surrounding spamtraps, what they are, what they mean, how they’re used and how they get on lists. Spamtraps are very simply unused addresses that receive spam. They come from a number of places, but the most common spamtraps can be classified in a few ways. Addresses that used to belong to someone and subsequently abandoned. This is where a lot of spamtraps at...
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