Recent Posts

Send Actual SMTP

laura
Nov 19, 2018

Best Practices

It’s rare I find mail that violates the SMTP spec (rfc5321 and rfc5322). I’ve even considered removing “send mail from a correctly configured mail server” from my standard Best Practices litany.

The great folks over at Zettasphere and Emailmonday have released their Email Addiction Survey. Nothing surprising in the data that I can see, although I suspect one particular data point is going to surprise folks.

Why do my URLs have two dots?

steve
Nov 15, 2018

Technical

You take a turn, I take a turn

At the SMTP level email is very much a simple line-by-line text based protocol. The client sends a command on a single line, the server responds with one or more lines (the last one marked by having a space in the fourth column), and then the client sends another command.

Return Path FBL page down

laura
Nov 14, 2018

Industry

As of 6pm UTC the fbl.returnpath.com website is down. Return Path are aware of the issue and are working to fix it. I haven’t seen any estimated time to fix.

Why aren’t they answering my emails?

laura
Nov 12, 2018

Industry

Anyone actively handling deliverability issues has had the experience of submitting a ticket or email and receiving no response. Alternatively, we get a boilerplate response that seems to not address the question. It happens to me, it happens to colleagues, it happens to everyone. One of the biggest challenges we face is taking that lack of response and channeling it into action items for our customers and clients.

Dedicated IPs, pros and cons

laura
Nov 8, 2018

Best Practices

There’s a whole belief system built around the idea that the best way to get good deliverability is to have your own dedicated IPs. In fact, senders regularly approach me to ask when is the right time for them to get a dedicated IP. They assume all their deliverability problems will disappear if they get a dedicated IP.

Midterms in the US

laura
Nov 6, 2018

Uncategorized

It’s probably one of the most consequential midterm elections in the US ever.

Tools aren’t a luxury

laura
Nov 5, 2018

Best Practices

I was on the phone with a colleague recently. They were talking about collecting a bit of data over the weekend and mentioned how great it was they had the tools to be able to do this. Coincidentally, another colleague mentioned that when the subscription bombing happened they were able to react quickly because they had a decent tool chain. I’ve also been working with some clients who are dealing with compliance issues but don’t have the tools they need.