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Back, still catching up

We’re back from MAAWG, but somehow I’ve not managed to catch up with everything from last week enough to have time to get back into the swing of blogging. I do have lots and lots of things to say, just not quite enough hours in the day to get them down on paper.
It was great to meet so many blog readers. I really appreciate each and every one of you that introduced yourselves and told me you read the blog. Not many people comment, so I don’t have a good feel for the number of readers. Hearing from readers was great!
MAAWG itself seemed lower key than it has been in the past, but I really think the organization is getting good work done. I strongly recommend people who haven’t been before to visit. There’s lots of great information about messaging, filtering and abuse prevention. They even have a new name! M3AAWG. (Messaging, Malware and Mobile are the 3 Ms)
 
 
 

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Spam poetry

An actual spam I just received:
Rapturously for laura@myaddress.invalid
But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conction that she would herself regret her words.
Proposal area: Drop in Now
Without equivocation your, Mcpartland Kleutertafel.
 

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So you want to start a company? (part 4)

You’re setting up a company (or a new division or maybe even a new brand) and you’d like to use email to communicate with your customers. In this series of posts I’m going to touch on some of the things you can do today to make email life easier for you in the future. Today’s final post is on DNS hosting and setup.

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So you want to start a company? (part 3)

You’re setting up a company (or a new division or maybe even a new brand) and you’d like to use email to communicate with your customers. In this series of posts I’m going to touch on some of the things you can do today to make email life easier for you in the future. Today, domain registration.

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So you want to start a company? (part 2)

You’re setting up a company (or a new division or maybe even a new brand) and you’d like to use email to communicate with your customers. In this series of posts I’m going to touch on some of the things you can do today to make email life easier for you in the future. Today, choosing a domain name.

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So you want to start a company? (part 1)

You’re setting up a company (or a new division or maybe even a new brand) and you’d like to use email to communicate with your customers. In this series of posts I’m going to touch on some of the things you can do today to make email life easier for you in the future, starting with the naming of companies.

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Only Influencers blog talk radio

I had the privilege to talk with a bunch of experts on the Only Influencers Blog Talk Radio show this morning. The discussion centered around the perceived conflict between Marketing and Delivery.
The conversation was a good one, with a lot of different perspectives aired. I strongly recommend people who are interested in hearing multiple industry experts talking about email marketing and delivery listen to the podcast.
Once I get back from MAAWG I plan to talk a little more about delivery managers as fire fighters and why that is such a good metaphor for delivery.

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Delivery events next week

Next week is MAAWG and I’ll be there talking about delivery, blocking and all sorts of things. If you’re going, be sure to stop by the Choose Your Own Delivery Adventure. It should be lots of fun!
Also next week on Monday I’ll be a guest on the Only Influencers blog talk radio show discussing Delivery versus Marketing.
 

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Before you build a list

I can’t add much more to Steve Denner’s article about building list size.

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Get a helmet

There’s been a lot of interesting reaction to Steve’s security post yesterday. A lot of people seem upset that we have pointed out one of the ways that ESPs may be getting compromised. Complaints range from the message being overly simplistic, through to complaints that we just don’t understand how much of an issue security is, through to complaints that we’re not pointing out that some ESPs actually are secure. Some people have even provided counter examples of how simple it is to compromise any company, so why are we picking on ESPs.
Security is a problem any company faces. Some industries are bigger targets than others, and ESPs have really jumped up the target list. ESPs are getting lists stolen. ESPs are getting reputations stolen.
There’s one ESP I know for a fact that has lost multiple customer lists 3 times. Three companies I get email from are hosted there. When all three of those tagged addresses started getting spam, the only logical assumption was that the ESP was compromised. Again. Those are companies I want to hear from, though, and I changed addresses on their sites after every breach. What’s distressing, though, is the total lack of response from either the customer or the ESP to my notices about the breaches.  To be fair, the problem seems to have stopped more recently.
Silence and refusal to address an issue is a big problem. An address I gave a company on the Only Influencers list was stolen (I’m not going to say leaked because I actually trust them to not have violated their privacy policy) sometime back in early 2011. I didn’t notice right away because my spam filters were catching the mail, but eventually the spammers managed to get one into my inbox. When I saw it, I started checking and realized that address had been compromised a long time ago. I notified the company, with as much history of the address as I could. I ended my message with:

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