Email Blogs

Australian telecommunications provider Telstra has long provided internet services (including email), initially via the “Bigpond” brand (launched in 1996, later retired). They’re reported to have 18.8 million customer accounts, though I don’t know how many active email accounts that translates to. Even if you assume a 1:1 correlation between user accounts and email accounts (which is unlikely), that’s still quite a bit smaller than, say, Yahoo Mail (which was reported as having 225 million active users as of 2017). Regardless, a multi-million subscriber base is nothing to sneeze at.I don’t have much information on blocking/unblocking information for senders with Telstra/Bigpond delivery issues at this time. I’ll add information here as I’m able to.In the mean time, if you are having a Telstra/Bigpond-related deliverability issue, and if you would like to segment out or suppress mail to the Telstra domains, here’s a list of their primary email domains:telstra.comtelstra.com.aubigpond.combigpond.com.auTelstra hosts email for

Here’s another webinar opportunity that you won’t want to miss! My Kickbox colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz recently wrote a very detailed breakdown of email headers and how they impact deliverability (the series starts here) and now she’ll be sharing her email header-related expertise in this upcoming session with CSA technical lead Sebastian Kluth. Got a question about email headers? Wondering how all that all works? Want to learn about x-headers and what makes them useful? Then this is for you!Behind the Scenes: A Closer Look at Email Headers for Better Deliverability will take place on Tuesday, March 28th at 10:00 am US central time, and you can register for it here.

Did you know? Spamhaus has a free eBook to help email marketers know how to do the right thing.With an introduction by Annalivia Ford, one-time postmaster for AOL (remember them?), this deliverability guide from Spamhaus will walk senders through the concepts of deliverability and email reputation, how to not look like a spammer, and other important things you need to know to stay on the right side of email marketing best practices.And they don’t even make you opt-in to get access to it. Click here to download.And don’t forget to join Spamhaus’ Matthew Stith and me on Tuesday, March 21st at 9am central time for a live webinar where we’ll talk blocklists, Spamhaus, domain reputation and more. You can register here.

It’s Friday! Let’s get silly. Here’s musician Dustin Ballard, aka “There I Ruined It” with his best effort to compile a song entirely out of singers saying “Yeah.” Here’s a link, if the embed doesn’t work. Enjoy.

My Kickbox colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz is back with another deep dive on a very timely topic! This time around, that topic is Gmail, and she covers best practices, email authentication, engagement, and other important things senders need to know about Google’s favorite mailbox provider. Check it out here.

Are emails sent from your G-Suite/Google Workspace corporate email account going to the spam folder (particularly, at Gmail or Microsoft-hosted domains)? Here’s possible reasons why and what to do about it.Make sure you, or your IT person or domain administrator, has fully configured DKIM email authentication for your domain name in Google Workspace. Keep in mind: this does not guarantee inbox placement, but you’ll struggle mightily without it. Outbound email messages need to be authenticated with a DKIM signature specific to your domain name.Ignore the blocklistings. Here’s the scenario: You looked up your Google sending IP address and you see that it’s on the SPAMCOP, SPAM EATING MONEY, SORBS, or UCEPROTECT blocklists. That means it must be related to this spam folder placement, right? No, it is not. Short answer; except for possibly Spamhaus, Google and Microsoft do not use blocklists to determine spam folder placement. There are hundreds of

Today’s guest post comes from my wife! That would be: Kate Harding, an author, teacher, and editor who thinks a lot about feminism, politics, and dogs. You might even have seen her book “Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture–and What We Can Do About It” shown for a split second on screen in a recent episode of of the HULU show “Fleishman Is In Trouble.” We are both known to have opinions.Before I got out of bed this morning, I was already furious at a brand. Hoping to feel productive without putting my feet on the floor, I decided to spend some time unsubscribing from e-mails that no longer interest me (or never did). Mercifully, the majority of unsubscribes are a one-click affair these days, but there are still brands who require additional nonsense, just to ensure that by the time you unsubscribe, you are actively hostile toward

It’s crazy to realize that Gmail released tabs back in May 2013, so we’re just shy of a ten year anniversary of this functionality. A functionality that often confounds and annoys marketers. And it might even be crazier to recall that the guidance of the time (here’s Ken Magill) was essentially send wanted content and you’ll be just fine.Ultimately, that’s still true today, just about ten years later. Gmail’s attempt to categorize messages into the primary, social, promotions, updates or the forums tab isn’t an attempt to marginalize senders, but is instead meant to help both email senders and their recipients. Sender email messages are easily found by those most interested in them, and recipients benefit based on a categorized inbox that organizes inbound messages into coherent and easily-navigated groupings.In the past, I’ve collected and shared guidance from across the Internet on how best to “escape” the Gmail promotions tab.

Zeta Global is searching for an Email Deliverability Specialist. Could that be you?”As an Email Deliverability Specialist, you will be part of our customer-facing deliverability team. You’ll work directly with our customers to provide reporting, best practices, and recommendations to improve their email programs and get the most out of Zeta Global. Teams at Zeta work collaboratively to deliver great customer experiences. You’ll be a close partner with our Client Services, Technical Support, Sales, and Growth Teams to develop and iterate on strategies that improve both our customers and our teams.”Click here to learn more or to apply.

I’m busy as a bee this week, with so much going on with work (and outside of work), that I’ve not been able to update the blog as much as I would like to. But, I can spare a few minutes to talk about helping a client out yesterday, connecting with them just after he running their first inbox tests and sharing understanding on how to interpret the deliverability results. We walked through this snapshot data showing what it can show, with an eye to identifying difficulties. This time around, like is so often the case, Microsoft was the main problem/focus area found. No mail delivered means they’re probably blocked at Outlook.com/Hotmail.com (but not Office 365). Even before the client checks for the text of bounce messages in their sending platform, we know that they’re going to look like this: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [x.x.x.x] weren’t sent. Please contact