About that Gmail “Promotions” tab
13 April 2016
It seems that a lot of people still misunderstand what the Gmail promotions tab is and does. How do I know this? Because I still get questions from time-to-time along the lines of “How do we get our mail out from the ‘Promotions’ tab and back into the inbox?” All that Google has done here…
Drafted for the wrong fight
8 March 2016
My friend Al Iverson just wrote a new blog post: “SPF Still Matters in 2016”. One of the things that he said struck a chord with me: “‘But SPF is worthless,’ occasionally a spam fighter will cry.” It struck a chord with me because SPF wasn’t ever really intended to fight spam, per se. While there is…
So tell us how you REALLY feel
22 February 2016
People will sometimes ask me why I hate the Lead Generation (lead gen) and Payday Loan industries. Ultimately, it’s because they have such deep problems that I don’t think that any self-respecting ESP should take them on as a client. This morning, I saw a press release outlining a settlement between a lead gen operation and…
When systems disagree
15 July 2015
A co-worker recently brought to my attention an interesting problem which involves differing ideas concerning precedence between RFC5321 and RFC3463. The result of the issue is that mail systems may experience unneeded delay in delivering mail. What’s going on? Gmail is returning the following error for over quota accounts: “452 4.2.2 The email account that you tried…
Did you catch the death of Postini?
25 June 2015
According to Google, all mail stopped flowing through Postini servers on June 15. Any Postini clients who had not made the transition by the end of May were supposed to have been forcibly transitioned then. Postini was a traditional troublespot when it came to deliverability. That shouldn’t be the case anymore. BibliographyPostini Transition to Google Apps,…
What happened to Compu-Finder?
5 March 2015
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced today that they have issued their first penalty against someone for sending email in violation of Canada’s anti-spam law. The penalty is substantial (C$1.1 million, or roughly US$881,700 at today’s exchange rate), but isn’t anywhere near the C$40 million potential maximum penality. Still, the size of the penalty is…
The ISP should be the last of your concerns
11 February 2015
Hey marketers! Listen up! I’m about to give you the dirty little secret to deliverability. You know those stupid “one simple trick” scams that you see touting weight loss or lower insurance rates? Well, unlike those scams, I have one simple trick that will absolutely improve your deliverability rates. Are you ready? Read moreThe Spock…
Nomenclatura
7 November 2014
“Nomenclatura” is a Latin word which refers to the “assigning of names to things.” It’s something that we often overlook, but is very important. The names that we assign to things tell us something about those things and sometimes will also tell us something about ourselves. I’m one of the first people to kind of blow…
Domain Reputation
16 June 2014
The Spamhaus DBL Team is making some change to their Domain Block List. The new changes will seek to emphasize domains associated with malware and bots, and allow administrators to more easily filter out entries related to legitimate URL shortening services. If you use the DBL, you should go have a look. If you don’t,…
BT Transitioning Away From Yahoo! Mail
8 April 2014
British Telecom (BT) announced last year that they would be transitioning away from Yahoo! Mail’s service for their customers after a decade. The concern at the time was over account security. Many BT customers were reporting that they were losing control of the mail accounts being hosted on Yahoo! Mail’s service. Now, the time for that transition has…