Recent Writings and Events

I don’t know about you, but we’re more than 6 weeks into 2026 and I can’t figure out where all the time has gone. It’s been a much busier January than I’m used to. I’ve been working on a lot, including a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while. I’m really excited it’s finally taking shape and I hope to be able to share it with folks in the next month or so.

Meanwhile, there’s some things I want to share with you.

Back in November 2025 I did a keynote for Mauticon. The video of that talk: The Future of Deliverability: Recipient Rules was just posted to Mautic’s YouTube channel. Also, they’re an open source project and are facing some funding challenges in 2026. They’re looking for community support to help cover the shortfall.

I wrote a guest blog post for the Certified Sender’s Alliance and they published it earlier this week. Everyone is looking for a crystal ball into the future, and CSA was no different. The post, titled Email in 2026: Evolving Technical Requirements, Individualized Filtering, and AI Integration has some predictions about where I think deliverability is going. As I shared on LinkedIn, the AI piece was the challenging bit to write. Even as I was drafting the post, Google announced Gemini was being integrated in to Gmail. So, yeah, I gave up trying to predict AI’s impact on the inbox. Do visit the CSA blog and give it a read.

Today Bram Van Daele from Engagor.ai wrote a good post about bounce handling standards and why there aren’t really any. I’m thrilled with the post, honestly. Brad managed to present the issue clearly and logically in a way I’ve wanted to for a long time. But I tend to be overly wordy and complicate things. This is definitely going in my reference library.

We’re also both going to be speaking at the Deliverability Summit in Barcelona in April. When I headed over to LinkedIn just now I saw Andrew posting they were almost out of tickets so if you want to go, better hurry.

I have a whole list of topics to blog about and even some partial outlines, but I’m happily swamped with client work and developing this new program right now. I am trying to reserve some time for blogging, though, as I really do miss writing here.

Not Business as Usual
Upcoming webinar on Gmail and inbox signals

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Prepping for EEC


Tomorrow I head off to New Orleans to the EEC conference. It’s my first one and I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the people I only know online.
I’ll be speaking on two panels on Friday:
All You Ever Wanted to Know about Deliverability (But Were Afraid to Ask) at 10:50. This is your chance to ask those questions of myself and other experts in the field. I always enjoy Q&A panels and actually hearing from folks what their big deliverability questions are. (and remember, if you have a question, you can always send one to me for Ask Laura)
and the closing Keynote panel
ISP Postmasters & Blacklist Operators: Defending Consumer Inboxes at 1:10. I’m on a panel with various ISP postmasters, blacklist operators and we’ll be talking about what it’s like dealing with the deluge of mail. For instance, there is a huge outbreak of bot-spam at the moment, and a lot of the filters are struggling to keep up. In fact, I’m a last minute replacement for one filter company as they are in all-hands-on-deck firefighting mode to keep their customers safe.
Hope to see you there!
 

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Happy New Year

Well, it’s 2020. The start of a new year and a new decade, or not depending on what number theory you use to count decades. Personally, I think we, as pattern loving humans, just happen to love numbers that end with 0 and we’re going to consider it special whether or not it’s the actual end or start of a decade.

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Speaking in June

ActiveCampaign is hosting their very first user conference in Chicago in June. I am honored to be a part of their speaker lineup.
Early bird registration only $450 through April 30.

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