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.

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Time for Email Innovations!

After a great experience in Atlanta last week, with the Salesforce and Mailchimp folks, I’m heading off again today. This time it’s Las Vegas for the Email Innovations conference hosted by the Only Influencers group.
My talk is coming together nicely. It’s been a bit of a challenge to try and give enough detail to make sense while not overwhelming with technobabble. There were times when I was all

Thankfully I have some great folks around who talked me down and reminded me that there wasn’t a test and I could gloss over some of the details and still make sense. If you want a preview of part of my talk, check out my blogpost from last week at Only Influencers. Understanding the technical: authentication.
Hope to see you there! My talk is in the Education track after lunch on Thursday.

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Off to EEC next week

We’ll be in New Orleans next week for the EEC conference. Steve will be on the closing keynote panel taking about subscription bombing. Say hi! while you’re there!
Happy Friday!

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