A decade of blogging

August 2017 marks 10 years of blogging. In that time we’ve written almost 2200 posts. We’ve had millions of visitors.

My first blog post was a bit of a cliche. The first real content on the blog was a post about the 7th circuit court of appeals ruling in the E360 v. Spamhaus lawsuit. I continued following that case for the next 4 years as various arguments, filings, and rulings were made.
A decade ago deliverability was very, very different. Many of the things we take for granted as best practices hadn’t been proposed much less standardized. There were a tiny number of FBLs. DKIM was still in development. CASL didn’t exist. There were no tabs in Gmail. Email clients didn’t have unsubscribe headers. Most senders didn’t use List-Unsubscribe headers. APWG didn’t exist. Goodmail and Habeas did exist. So many changes in a relatively short period of time.
Even more astonishing, though, is how the deliverability industry has grown. Many of us calling ourselves deliverability experts fell into the career accidentally. Now, there are deliverability engineers, compliance specialists, delivery consultants and a number of other position types. A few weeks ago, I was talking with some colleagues at an ESP, an their deliverability department includes engineers, data specialists and consultants.
While the number of people working deliverability has grown, we’re still a fairly tight knit community. Just yesterday we raised over $2000 in less than 24 hours for a colleague whose apartment was flooded in Houston. We’re very happy they’re safe and have temporary housing.
Here’s to watching deliverability grow for another 10 years.

Related Posts

State of Email Deliverability

I had other posts in the pipeline, but saw a link to the Litmus 2017 State of Email Deliverability Report and decided that deserved a mention here.
There’s all sorts of interesting data there, and well worth a download and read. I was, of course, interested in the “most problematic subscriber acquisition sources.” Senders having blocking issues or blacklist problems in the past 12 months use list rental, co-reg and purchased lists more often than senders that didn’t have problems.

Senders acquiring addresses through list rental are 104% more likely to be blacklisted than senders not using list rental. And they’re 47% more likely to be blocked.
These stats are the primary reason that most ESPs don’t allow list rentals, purchased or co-reg lists. They cause blocking and blacklisting. The ESP ends up having to deal with lots of problems and clean up the mess.
I’m unsurprised that lead generation by giving something away (a report, ebook, whatever) is related to problems. Most of these forms do little to no data checking and accept any and all fake data. There are fairly simple ways to enforce better data, but that does limit the spread of the information.
I am surprised to see signup through direct mail and catalog sales is so bad. Unless maybe people don’t know how to say no when asked for an email address over the phone. I know it seems awkward to say no when asked for an email address. Maybe some folks are giving fake addresses. I sometimes say I don’t have email, or just tell them no, they don’t need one.
The white paper itself is well worth a read. Go download it yourself (but don’t give them a fake email address!).

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Women. Technology. Moving Forward.

Women of Email Logo: goats climbing moutainsA little over a year ago, Kristin Bond posted an article (reprinted here) looking at the diversity of speakers at marketing conferences. As with many articles pointing out gender issues in technology there was quite a bit of discussion about it on a related mailing list.  Some of the comments were supportive and open to the idea that gender diversity is an overall good. Some of the comments, while well meaning, indicated the commenters didn’t understand some of the more systemic issues that result in conferences with speaker lists that consist primarily of white men.
Kristin, I, Jen Capstraw and April Mullen started talking privately about the issue. What I discovered during those conversations is that I wasn’t alone in how I felt about some spaces. Being a woman in tech I expect to feel left out in many places. When I go to a conference, or I participate in an online space or I meet up with colleagues in social situations, I expect that someone will say something sexist. As a woman I regularly feel like an outsider. What I didn’t realize is other women in those same spaces felt the same way. By not saying something I was missing an opportunity to find a supportive atmosphere with other women who also thought spaces were unfriendly or toxic to women.
But we didn’t just complain; we decided to take action. What would happen if we created a space to help conferences find women speakers? What would happen if we set up a framework for women to find mentors? What did we have to lose by trying? Thus, Women of Email™ was formed.

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Happy Fourth

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