Recent Posts

But that's what spammers do!

A few weeks ago I was asked my opinion about a delivery situation. It seems that a sender wanted to mail to a purchased email list. They asked what I thought about getting fresh IP addresses and domains to use to send mail to the purchased list. “We know we’re going to get complaints, probably hit spamtraps and generally have problems with the first few sends of the list. We want to do this without harming our reputation. We figure if we move over to different domains and different IP addresses than we can send this mail and not suffer a reputation hit.”
Uh. Yeah. That’s what spammers do. They split off their mail into discrete sets so that they can spam with impunity and still have one or two ranges that have a good reputation and decent delivery. Some spammers have taken the discrete companies to extremes, and have a series of companies. They purchase a new list and send it through their companies one by one. At each step, they aggressively purge off bounces and complainers. Gradually, they move the list through their steps, resulting in a list that generates few complaints that they can send through their high reputation companies with few delivery problems.
Sure, legitimate mailers can do the same type of thing. But how legitimate can a sender be if they are using spammer tactics? And these are not mailers unwittingly doing something that spammers also do, these are mailers who are using spammer tactics for exactly the same reason spammers do it. They are trying to send mail people do not want, but send it in a way that does not negatively affect their bottom line.
Spammers hide and try to avoid their bad reputation. Legitimate mailers do not.

Mailing old files, part 2

Stephanie Miller at ReturnPath offers suggestions on how marketers can break the rules, mail old lists and reap the rewards.

Confirmed unsubscribe

Whatever one might think about confirming opt-ins I think we can all agree that requiring someone to jump through hoops and confirm an unsubscription request will just annoy that person.
Today I attempt to opt-out from a discussion list. It’s one I *thought* I had opted out of previously, but I could find no record of the request anywhere. OK. So I imagined unsubscribing, I’ll just unsub again and keep better records.
After digging through the headers, I find the unsub link and dutifully mail off my unsubscribe request. I then receive an email that requires I click on a link to confirm my unsub request. This causes me to grumble a bit. I have heard all the arguments about forged unsub requests and the various reasons this is good practice. I believe none of them. Requiring people to confirm an unsubscription request is bad practice.
In this case, the mailing list is a discussion list so there is no CAN SPAM violation. However, I know that some commercial mailing lists have also implemented confirm your opt-out request. For commercial mailing lists, this is a CAN SPAM violation. It’s also just plain rude. If someone says, “Stop!” then you should stop, no questions asked

Old lists have bad delivery

This is something we all know is true, and something that everyone believes. But, Mailchimp has actually published numbers demonstrating just how bad old lists are.

Yahoo delays

People are reporting delivery delays into Yahoo over the last day or so. Yahoo is having some general connectivity problems and are working to correct the issue.

AOL Report Card Changes

Changes to the AOL report card were announced today on the AOL Postmaster blog.

TWSD: breaking the law

I tell my clients that they should comply with CAN SPAM (physical postal address and unsubscribe option) even if the mail they are sending is technically exempt. The bar for legality is so low, there is no reason not to.
Sure, there is a lot of spam out there that does not comply with CAN SPAM. Everything you see from botnets and proxies is in violation, although many of those mails do actually meet the postal address and unsubscribe requirements.
One of my spams recently caught my eye today with their disclaimer on the bottom: “This email message is CAN SPAM ACT of 2003 Compliant.” The really funny bit is that it does not actually comply with the law. Even better, the address it was sent to is not published anywhere, so the company could also be nailed for a dictionary attack and face enhanced penalties.
It reminds me of the old spams that claimed they complied with S.1618.

TWSD!

One important aspect of getting good delivery is to look like legitimate email. A big part of that is to not do what spammers do. More specifically, do not do the things that ISPs trigger on when identifying spammers.
There are a lot of these “tricks” and “delivery techniques” used by spammers. They may seem like tiny things, but these are things that any legitimate mailer will want to avoid doing in order to get the best delivery you can.
When I notice an otherwise legitimate mailer doing something “that spammers do” or a spammer doing something that makes me think “don’t do that” I’ll talk about it here.
Keep an eye open for posts tagged “TWSD” (that’s what spammers do!).

Excite (BlueTie) FBL live

ReturnPath announced today that the BlueTie FBL is live. You can signup for the new FBL at http://feedback.bluetie.com/.

Just Leave Me Alone Already

I tend to avoid online sites that require you to register and provide information including email addresses. In my experiences companies cannot resist sending email and my email load is extremely heavy and I want less email, not more. Sometimes, though, what I need to do requires an online registration and giving an email address to a company I would really prefer not to have it.
Recently, I had to register online with AT&T Wireless. My iPhone was getting repeated text spams and I wanted it to stop. The only way to do this is register online. Registering online required giving them an email address.
The text spam has stopped, but they have been sending me almost daily emails since then. Each email has an opt-out, and I have availed myself of every opportunity to opt-out. Each opt-out link takes me to a different site, a different page, a different process.
In two of the cases, AT&T seems to be violating the new CAN SPAM provisions. For one, I had to tell them what I wanted to opt-out of (email or phone) and then was taken to a page where I had to input my cell number, my email address and request to be removed. In another case, I was forced to login to my online wireless account and then was able to change preferences. In only one of the 3 opt-outs I have requested, was the opt-out form actually a single click, just requiring my email address.
I am wondering just how many mailing lists AT&T added my address to and how often they will continue sending me mail after their 10 days are up. It is this level of frustration, that mail just keeps coming and coming and coming even after the recipient has repeatedly attempted to opt-out, that causes people to hit the “this is spam” button on mail that the sender thinks is opt-in.
But, really, AT&T, please stop sending me mail that I never asked for, and that I have repeatedly asked you to stop sending me by jumping through your hoops. Oh, and you may consider sharing the opt-out data with all the same internal groups that you shared my email address with initially.