Recent Posts

Introducing the "No email 'till Monday"

Ever have that day? That day full of delivery problems, ISP problems, headaches and turmoil? That week where you want to just forget email ever existed? Ever have that day extend for a week?
So have we all. In honor of that kind of day, we introduce the “No email ’till Monday”.
Fill a shaker with ice. Then add:
6 fl ounces light rum
4 fl ounces pineapple juice
2 fl ounces cointreau
heavy dash blood orange bitters.
Shake. Pour into 2 cocktail glasses and garnish with a pineapple slice.
Serves 2 (or one if it’s been a really *really* bad week)

We have made this with both light rum and pineapple flavored rum. The pineapple lends a sweeter taste to the drink, but there is a nice burnt sugar edge to the drink with the straight light rum.
I’m headed out on Monday to Amsterdam for a family wedding and MAAWG so blogging will be light for the next 2 weeks. I have some posts stacked up and the people I meet and talk with at MAAWG always trigger new thoughts about email, delivery and spam so do check back while I’m gone.
Those of you who are going to be at MAAWG be sure to stop by my session on Wednesday afternoon and add your perspective to the discussion.

Yahoo delivery problems

Over the last week or so a number of people have mentioned problems with delivery to Yahoo. It seems that some emails are being erroneously rejected. Earlier this week, Yahoo posted a message to the Yahoo Postmaster announcement list saying they were aware of the problem and were working on fixing it.

Another perspective on the Politico article

Yesterday, I talked about the delivery advice that could be gleaned from the Politico article The best e-mail lists in politics. While there are some good practices and attitudes expressed in the article, there are problems with how some of the political lists are being handled.
For instance, Ken Magill signed up for any number of political lists during the last election cycle and has been chronicling the email he has received from the various campaigns. Yesterday he posted about the mail he has received at the address he gave Secretary Clinton’s campaign and how far and wide the list is being shared. He points out a couple truths missed by the Politico article.

Delivery advice from Politico

Politico published an article Sunday looking at the best e-mail lists in politics. Their criteria for choosing the winner focused on list size and recipient engagement, measured by amount of money raised and recipient response to issues. Despite not being a delivery focused article or even mentioning delivery at all, this article is all about delivery.
How can an article be about delivery without ever mentioning the word? By actually looking at the effectiveness of the overall campaign and measuring how the lists actually perform. In the article, Politico used a number of criteria to evaluate different email lists and programs.

ReturnPath customers?

Someone posted the following question about ReturnPath in the comments:

Useful links: May 21

Dave Romerstein over at Cloudmark continues his series on blocked email. While he’s not saying anything different than many of us have already said, his perspective is well worth a read.

CAN SPAM pre-emption in the courts

Ethan Ackerman has a summary of recent cases where judges are splitting over rulings on CAN SPAM pre-emption.

TWSD: Dumb and dumber

I recently received a spam offering to get one of my personal websites listed in foreign search engines. Harvesting addresses off websites is dumb. Even dumber is sending a followup a week later with a notice at the top.

Best time to send email: redux

Last week I wrote about a study classifying different types of email users. My point is that senders should be very aware of how their users interact with email, in order to provide the best user experience and the most revenue for the sender. If, for instance, the bulk of recipients are daytime (9 – 5 M-F) users, then the best time to email is different than if the bulk of recipients are all the time users of email.
At least 2 different people commented on when the “best” time to send email was, completely missing the entire point of my post. When you send email should be related to when your users are active in their email client. Senders know this, because they can track times when people open and click on links in the email. The data is all there, it just needs to be mined.
Plus, if every sender sent mail at the exact same time, that being the best time to send mail, then it will immediately become the absolute worst time to send email.
Pay attention to your recipients, and not to the internet experts. Listen to what your customers and recipients are telling you. Do what’s best for them, not what’s best for Joe’s Bait and Tackle Shop.

Odd Yahoo Bounces

A number of people are reporting seeing a new bounce from Yahoo. “smtp;553 Mail from x.x.x.x not allowed – [10]”. My clients have been asking and other people have been asking about this. It seems that something is changing at Y! More information as I hear it.