Recent Posts

SpamZa: corrupting opt-in lists, one list at a time

A number of ESPs have been tracking problematic signups over the last few days. These signups appear to be coming from an abusive service called SpamZa.
SpamZa allows anyone to sign up any address on their website, or they did before they were unceremoniously shut down by their webhost earlier this week, and then submits that address to hundreds of opt-in lists. This is a website designed to harass innocent recipients using open mailing lists as the harassment vehicle.
Geektech tested the signup and received almost a hundred emails 10 minutes after signing up.
SpamZa was hosted on GoDaddy, but were shut down early this week. SpamZa appears to be looking for new webhosting, based on the information they have posted on their website. 
What does this mean for senders?
It means that senders are at greater risk for bad signups than ever before. If you are targeted by SpamZa, you will have addresses on your list that do not want your mail. Some of those addresses could be turned into spam traps.

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Blog Olympics – Passing on the stick

Given that it is August and a lot of people are on vacation and it seems to be a general low point in getting things done at work, I expect blogging to be light through the end of the month. Once everyone gets back in September, I will have a more substantive posts up more regularly. Happily, EmailKarma helped me with a somewhat fluffy post today. He tagged me into the Blog Olympics meme. The rules say I am supposed to pick 7 blogs I read and tag them forward. The rules also state that I have to link back to the blog that passed on the stick to me but I cannot add it to the list of my favorite 7 blogs.
I limited my picks to email related blogs. Now, in no particular order (vaguely the order they show up in my RSS feed, but nothing actually that specific):

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Upcoming Conferences

EmailKarma lists a number of upcoming events for email marketers and delivery folks.

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RoadRunner FBL changes

RoadRunner announced changes to their FBL this morning. Everyone who is currently getting a FBL should have received an email. Important dates to remember include the following.
August 28: Existing RR FBL will be frozen. No changes to existing loops will be accepted and no new FBL applications will be processed. All current FBLs will continue to work.
November 17 (tentative): The new FBL will go live. Existing FBLs will not be converted from the old FBL to the new one. Everyone wishing to be a part of the new FBL will be required to re-enroll in the program beginning on this date.
December 31 (tentative): The old FBL ceases to exist.
More information about the migration is available at http://postmaster.rr.com/FBL.html

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Getting whitelisted by endusers

One of the best ways to ensure mail is delivered to a recipients inbox is to encourage the recipient to add the senders from: address to their address book. In cases where an ISP might otherwise bulk folder the email, they will instead put the email into the inbox.
Senders are changing their practices to get recipients to add from addresses to address books. There are a number of companies reminding users to add addresses on the webpage at the time of signup. Most emails have recommendations in each email. Recently, there have been multiple reports of companies who send specific email campaigns to encourage recipients to whitelist the sender.
Cool Email Idea: Customized Whitelisting Instructions from ReturnPath.
How & Why You Need to be Added to Your Recipient’s Address Book from VerticalResponse.
In addition to the direct benefit to the recipient that whitelists the individual sender, there are some hints that ISPs are looking at individual whitelisting as part of their internal sender reputation scoring.

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Updates on upcoming AOL FBL changes

Annalivia posted more information over on the AOL Postmaster blog about the upcoming conversion of the AOL FBL to ARF only. Specifically, she provides instructions for how to read the FBL emails in different email clients.

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Delivery Haikus

As we mentioned earlier Habeas is being bought out by ReturnPath.
While they’ve not actually used it for several years the thing that Habeas will be remembered for is their introduction of the Haiku form of poetry into email headers:

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ReturnPath acquires Habeas

This morning ReturnPath announced they had acquired Habeas.
Goodbye Habeas.
What have you left? Just footprints
in snow as spring comes.

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Letting Go

Derek Harding has an article over at ClickZ, discussing the importance of letting subscribers go.

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Backscatter

The term backscatter describes the email an innocent victim receives when a spammer forges the victim’s email address into a spam run. The amount of mail involved can be just a few emails or can range into the hundreds of thousands of emails. Terry Zink recently wrote an 18 part series on backscatter. It is well worth a read.

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