Recent Posts

Metric Monetization

As a digital channel, email provides a lot of different metrics for marketers to use. Not only can marketers measure things like open and click rates, but they can tie these numbers back to a particular recipient. This treasure trove of information leads to obsessing over making the numbers look good. For good deliverability senders want low bounce rates, low spamtrap rates, and high engagement rates.
These metrics are important because they’re some of the things that filters look at when making delivery decisions. We care about this data because the receiver ISPs care about the data. The ISPs care about this data because they are characteristics of wanted and/or opt in email.

Over the past few years a number of companies sell services selling good metrics.

Spring in San Francisco

And, of course, that means M3AAWG is coming to town. I’m speaking on two panels this conference and will be around starting mid-day Monday. Of course, half the fun of M3AAWG is watching the swarms of posts on Facebook of friends traveling to wherever.
Those of you visiting, weather is nice. Sadly (as we’re heading back into drought) we’re not expecting rain next week. And, we’re back up at the top of the hill – across the street at the Fairmont.
Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Another day… another shooting

The importance of email fades when there is yet another school shooting in the US. I cannot fathom the depth of grief and sorry for the parents who lost their children today. It is an utter tragedy that we, as a country, continue to accept dead children as an acceptable price to pay for the second amendment.
I am a graduate of Virginia Tech. I went to class in the building that is no longer there because of that shooting. I shared a major with the first student the killer shot. I had a horrible realization a few years ago that shooting, once the worst mass shooting in US history, was no longer even in the top 3. I’m sure now it’s not in the top 5.
Yes, I could write another post about reaching the inbox. I could announce a new change at an ISP. But, in the face of what happened today, I can’t. Someone shot up a school. Another community is in mourning for their children. Our leaders in Congress offer thoughts and prayers and nothing else. This is the country the NRA has purchased.
“It’s too soon” to talk about gun control. “We shouldn’t react hastily” in response. We can’t travel on a plane with a full size bottle of shampoo and without taking our shoes off because of one man. But let’s not react hastily to another school with dead kids.
I do try and keep politics off this blog, I know how divisive politics is in the US these days.
But that I’m happy because a tragedy that I had a marginal association with is no longer even in the top 5 largest shootings is horrifying to me. How normalized has students, kids, babies getting shot become that I react so inappropriately? Way too normalized.
It’s Valentines day. A day we’re supposed to spend with our loved ones celebrating each other. Yet so many families are, instead, mourning their children or holding vigil in the hospital.
America should be better than this. I thought America was better than this. But I was so wrong. We can BE better that this, but we’re not living up to our ideals.
One of my favorite West Wing quotes (and, oh, there are many) starts:

Following CAN SPAM isn't enough to reach the inbox

One of the top entries on the list of things deliverability folks hear all the time is, “But my mail is all CAN SPAM compliant!” The thing is… no one handling inbound mail really cares. Seriously. CAN SPAM is a law that is little more than don’t lie, don’t hide, and heed the no. Even more importantly, the law itself states that there is no obligation for ISPs to deliver CAN SPAM compliant mail.

Did the algorithm change?

When faced with unexplained deliverability changes one of the first questions many folks ask is “Did the algorithm change.” In many ways this is an meaningless question. Why? Because there are two obvious answers to the question.
A1: Of course it didn’t.
A2: Of course it did.
Both answers are correct, but they’re answering different underlying questions. When we understand how two diametrically opposed answers are both correct, we understand much more about filtering.

More on AOL transition to Oath Infrastructure

AOL posted on their blog today about changes to DMARC reporting and FBL messages as they continue to transition domains to the OATH infrastructure. As AOL domains go to the new infrastructure, DMARC reports for those domains will be included in the existing Yahoo DMARC reports.
After the MX migration is done, they’ll start migrating the actual user mailboxes. Right now, FBL messages for AOL properties are coming from AOL and will continue to do so until the actual mailbox is transitioned to the new infrastructure. Once the mailbox is transitioned, then any FBL emails from that address will come from the Yahoo infrastructure. The blog post at AOL suggests signing up for both AOL and Yahoo FBLs during this transition phase.
It does bring up an interesting question as to whether or not the combined FBL is going to be IP based, DKIM based or a mix of both. It sounds like at least during some part of the consolidation there will be a DKIM only FBL. It could be that there will be some expansion to an IP system in the future. Or, it could be that all FBLs from AOL addresses will be based on DKIM domain.

Where to get deliverability help

There are lots of places to get deliverability help, I thought I’d list some of them here so I have a post to point people to.

Of course, we provide deliverability consulting services and have done since 2001. Our customers are mostly large companies sending millions of emails a month. I focus mostly on complex problems that other deliverability folks haven’t solved. Overall I focus on understanding client programs and business needs as well as current deliverability situation. Once I have a picture of a client’s program, I craft solutions that work with their business processes and get mail to the inbox. We don’t sell tools or certification. Instead, we work with our clients to help them fix delivery and teach them how to analyze the data they already have.
The nature of the work I do is intensive and I limit the number of clients I have in order to provide personalized service. But that’s OK! We have 2000+ blog posts to answer questions. And, there are lots of other companies that provide deliverability help. Here’s a partial list of places to look for resources.

List-Unsub header

Benjamin asked in the comments where in the interface the “unsubscribe” or “block” popup appeared. This is the dialog box Microsoft uses when the add the “unsubscribe here” link at the top of a message. Screenshots taken today from my Hotmail account:
At this point we have 3 of the major webmail providers (Yahoo, Microsoft, Gmail) using List-Unsubscribe headers and at least one mobile client (Apple Mail). 20 years on it seems List-Unsubscribe is finally gaining traction.
Notice, too, that ISPs hold their own mail to the same standards as outside mail. This really is Microsoft offering to let me block everything from MSN News.

GDPR and Whois data

For folks who aren’t following the discussion about whois records and GDPR compliance there’s a decent summary at vice.com: What Is Going to Happen With Whois?

Yahoo List-Unsub header

Last week some folks were mentioning a spike in unsubscribes from Yahoo. This is being investigated.